Everybody Cheats!
Silicon Valley staring in the Mirror
A recent tweet that has now garnered a whopping 18 million views sparked another viral moment on tech Twitter:
This tweet unleashed a plethora of memes, but also prompted dozens of startup founders to share similar experiences with Soham. They recounted how his excellent interviewing skills got him hired, only for them to later discover he was likely juggling multiple jobs and adept at delaying his inevitable termination.
Beneath the hilarity, however, was a palpable outrage amongst founders. Reading through the tweets, you couldn't help but feel a collective pressure to side with the companies against Soham.
This takes me back to when I was at UC Berkeley studying, amongst other things, Computer Science. For those unfamiliar, the culture of the Berkeley CS program often imitates Silicon Valley. In fact, in some aspects, the influence might go the other direction, given the number of Berkeley grad SWEs and founders in Silicon Valley.
When I was a student, a couple of my buddies got caught cheating on a midterm. They both claimed to be sick, took the exam remotely together (the disasters of college during Covid), but ultimately had too many of the same mistakes not to get caught.
In the aftermath, I asked them, “Why did you cheat?” knowing despite their questionable work ethics, they were smart enough to do alright.
Their response has stuck with me to this day: “Everyone cheats.”
This response was followed by some rationalization on how grades matter if they decided to go to grad school or become quants, and if people were cheating, then they were at a disadvantage if they didn’t cheat. However, the sentiment stayed the same: everyone cheats.
Fast forward to today, Roy Lee, who gained notoriety for cheating on his job interview with Amazon, has become, though controversial, celebrated in the tech space. This is mostly due to his creation of the company Cluely, which promises to allow people to cheat on everything. It has since received 15 million in funding from a16z and embodies the “Just Do Things” ethos of the tech world, regardless of the ethical implications.
Perhaps the tech world is missing the irony that in the Soham situation, it is merely staring itself in a mirror.
You can’t simultaneously celebrate cheating as a part of your culture, then be outraged when you get cheated yourself.
You can’t champion “just do things” with no introspection of the consequences, and then be shocked when someone embodies those very ideals.
You can’t simultaneously be obsessed with novelty and disruption for their own sakes and be surprised by the perverse phenomenon it creates and encourages.1
The tech world incentivizes and selects for guys like Soham, and perhaps should reflect on the fact that this is not optimal.
Though clearly, every life saved by a doctor, every rocket launched into space, and every self-driving car is evidence that no, not everyone cheats. However, perhaps given the seemingly never-ending wealth in the tech world, there is always something better than you. And perhaps, this leads to an insecurity, where it’s simply easier to explain those who succeed more than you as cheaters. Perhaps “It’s not greed that drives the world, but envy.”2
From tech thought leader Roon, https://x.com/tszzl/status/1940888983434907980
Charlie Munger, of course