Hello Guys! Welcome to the first episode of my blog series where I expose the best cheat.... I mean coders that are popular among us. I am planning to release further episodes in this series based on thorough research along with the evidences (If this blog isn't taken down unlike the ones that were initially written against big names like Psychotic_D).
In today's episode, our celebrity star is the most popular Indian DSA coach, striver_79 aka Raj Vikramaditya. If you are a coder from India, it is impossible that you don't know this guy. For those of you who aren't Indian, THIS IS HIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL. Although a lot of the content on his channel is free, this guy has minted a lot of money from the people who are beginners in DSA or preparing for placements by selling his courses. I am not here to comment on his business strategies of first giving something for free and then selling his services like referrals and courses here (if you don't know he is a Google employee who sells referrals to Google and is one of the most tagged Indian in DSA related LinkedIn posts). The main topic of this blog is going to be about how he built his empire of scams on the most common scam of this platform — CHEATING!
Claim: Raj Vikramaditya aka Striver became a Candidate Master by cheating in multiple if not all contests and eventually used this "milestone" as a source of credibility to build his empire.
Evidences:-
An initial look at his profile won't bother you much. But if you paste his username in Codeforces Visualizer, you see something like THIS. Notice that grey patch over there? That's the percentage of skipped solutions! But that's just 0.9% maybe he just cheated in one or two right?
Well a deeper look at his profile suggests something else. In fact the skipped solutions are so much that it took me another screenshot to show them all.
Judging from the dates when he got skipped, it seems like he got skipped at 8 contests! The contests too are so dispersed that we can't say he used to be a cheater who got on the right track. NO! THIS GUY GOT SKIPPED CONTESTS FROM 2017 TO 2019!!!
And it looks he deliberately wanted to push ranks to be credible. Look at the contest on 19-August 2018 in his skipped submissions. He jumped to Candidate Master in that one before getting the skip. A similar one can be seen when he tried to cheat his way to specialist. You can also notice he stopped giving contests after becoming CM because he got that "credibility" to fool the public and to get into Google. What's more concerning is these are only the instances when the instances of his cheating were blatant enough to be caught. From what I have seen, cheaters are only caught when they aren't careful enough to change their codes. That's like 1 in 10 instances (more when they are at the brinks of a new rank and are desperate for a push because then they even copy codes they don't understand and end up leaving a crucial detail). But even if we ignore those, it is safe to assume he cheated in at least 70 contests(being very conservative here. The plagarism checker back then was much worse than today and I am quoting this number as of today) to be caught in 8 (he isn't dumb enough to not change the leaked code and get caught in every contest he cheated in). So of all the contests in his profile, at least half (or maybe all) of his contests are cheated.
Final Message: If you are an Indian who is a fan of this guy (which you most probably are if you are an Indian), not every of your online teachers/coaches are clean. Some of them have a dark patch you haven't seen yet. Don't fall for the number of subscribers, rating or popularity. This mindset creates more cheaters like him who eventually scam you like he does. If someone builds a business out of lie, don't expect them to be honest while selling their services. Next time when you tag Striver in your post, remember promoting a cheater makes you no better than them. Maybe you don't cheat but is having a cheater as your idol or mentor any better?
If anyone from google is reading this feel free to research about his referral business :)
Dumbass skipped not only occurs from cheating it also might be due to resubmission. It seems he cheated in one only
Yet another Striver fanboi! Ok the blog does get it wrong on the number 8. But there is still 1 contest where he is out of competition. And in that one he did become a candidate master. So this is enough to prove he did all those desperate cheating attempts to become a candidate master and get into google. Mind it he got caught by plag checker when it was so primitive and not exposed by anyone else unlike Dhruvil Kakadiya. Kakadiya too admitted to cheating in many contests but was never caught by the plag checker. The only skipped contest from his profile is of the one that got exposed from that blog. Striver too might have removed plag from the other contests and in the one he got caught he just happened to fail to understand the code and couldnt remove it and got caught!
so what, he is already 8 months offline
I wonder why there are so many downvotes! Looks like this blog got raided by Striver fans! Hope people notice it.
Weird. I don't see him in the internal employee database. Are you sure he's still at Google?
Most probably ( source: LinkedIn )
yes he says so in his recent videos
I see. He shortened it to Raj Vikram
celebs lol
I'm sorry but even if getting to CM was enough credibility to get into Google, it is not for his first full time employment stint at Media.net, the indians will know :)
That credibility thing isn't just for Google. It is for his course and referral selling business. He mints more money from those things in a month than what Google can get him in a year. Beyond that is the fame and respect he has achieved in India by boasting the achievements he achieved by cheating. Any company would have hired him because when he initially became a candidate master, he marketed it so much that everyone today solves his sheet before placement interviews in India. If you ask about any DSA sheet or DSA course for placement to any one in India the first thing that comes to them is Striver. Almost every Indians linkedin post related to DSA, CP or interviews has him tagged. He more or less has a monopoly over DSA courses in India. That's way more than job or money. He is no less than a celeb here. All that he attained based on a lie, a title he never achieved genuinely. Just another PsychoticD!
And I am not saying he is totally dumb (but certainly is dumber than PsychoticD that he wasn't able to remove plag from his codes that too at a time when it was lineant). He does know coding and DSA its just that he might be a legit Pupil or Specialist. Maybe better but he got there by cheating. Promoting people like him will only increase cheating culture when people come to know he got that much by cheating and never got shamed! If cheating can bring you so much good and no one raises a question even if you get publicly caught by a dumb plag checking algorithm (unlike the case of psychoticD who never got caught by it) then why wouldn't anyone cheat? And he takes profile review sessions and resume review sessions where he still shows and boasts his cf profile! And one more thing to notice — look at his problems solved vs no of contests. Doesnt it look fishy? He just uses LeetCode and Codechef apart from cf and on CodeChef too he hasnt solved much problems apart from contests. Its like he never practiced any problem apart from giving contests sill his rating went up (wont count leet code since you cant get beyond specialist with that)
So he might have cracked media.net legitly but he definitely cheated his way at cf and exaggerated his achievements with it to attract audience. Its not allblack you have to mix some white to appear legit.
Well lets just keep aside the fact that he is a CM and how he got it, I have studied via his free channel and felt it was good and easy to understand as for his paid course, I would never buy it not because it is shit or something (it might be idk) but because his free content is good and anything beyond would just be spoonfeeding. If you cant learn to identify problems and apply algorithms you know to a problem and need help everytime ,you are learning the wrong way.
Also google doesn't grant job because you are CM or above he would have cracked the interview,another possible case would be he isnt as good as his rating but questions asked to him in interview might have been something he had done a lot of times but this is pure luck and if it is the case nothing much can be done.
he has obviously cheated. But he is pretty good at explaining things. So people dont care much. But yeah he is not genuine CM like he claims to be.
I think it is a waste of time to expose someone. One should focus on themselves and how they can become the best version of themselves.