[mrweasel]

While I can absolutely see why people would view this as cheating, I'm also not sure what he was suppose to do. It's a case of: "Hey, look, I really want this job so I took the time to prepare and studied the kind of question you might ask. I happen to know the answer to this question, could you ask a new one that I don't know the answer to?" If I where the interviewer, I'd just stop the interview at this point and move the candidate along to the next interview anyway. He's clearly smart enough and has already invested time.

Personally I don't put a ton of value in question like this, so I'm less inclined to view it as cheating, and more like proper preparation... and a bit of luck.

[redredrobot]

You tell the interviewer you are familiar the question instead of pretending to come up with a solution on the spot. Is that not obvious to everyone?

[TrackerFF]

Low risk, high reward.

Close to 0% chance someone would find out, as that would involve the person revealing the question also facing consequences - unless the company has some elaborate scheme involving modified and unique questions tailored for each candidate, and keeping track what candidate got which question. But that obviously wouldn't work with a trivial question like the one OP got.

Either that, or some third party which could have intercepted the communication between OP and the friend revealing the question. But again, what are the chances...

And on a tangent - should candidates "grinding leetcode" reveal that they've encountered the question before? That's the whole point of leetcode.

[ThrowawayR2]

> "Low risk, high reward."

I've seen candidates deny that they've seen the problem given, blitz through the basic version (intended as a quick warm-up), and then completely choke when a slight twist is added. Let's just say that really raises some questions...