>> the interviewer might toss out "So, tabs or spaces?" ... maybe you also honestly believe this is something worth flaming about ... I wouldn't advise revealing the latter information.

> this reads as "if you want the job then you [should/are entitled to] misrepresent yourself to bypass the filtering mechanism".

I don't think so... it's more like, if you have a deeply held viewpoint, can you effectively work with others who have different viewpoints? If you can strike a compromise or convince them to change, that's the best. If you can bury your differences, that's not ideal but at least workable.

Given the spaces/tabs example, if you are sincerely passionate about using spaces instead of tabs, and you're able to convince a tab-user to switch to spaces without upsetting them, that's the best, demonstrating leadership. Almost as good, is if you can explain how much you like spaces but have happily worked together with tab users (tabbers?). Finally, if you say you like spaces but you're happy to keep silent about it (or if you don't mention it at all), that's not as good as the others, but probably fine too.

Any company that values innovation should encourage differing viewpoints to be raised, but not to the point that it becomes a distraction and hinders overall productivity.

If one of your strongly held beliefs is "spaces over tabs" and you think that belief is information that has sway in the interview AND you take the advice to not reveal the information, then how are you not misrepresenting yourself?

You're answering like a person who doesn't hold strong beliefs to a question designed to identify strong beliefs, knowing that you are a person who holds those strong beliefs. Is that not misrepresentation to bypass the filtering mechanism?

We might be talking about slightly different things - if you have a strong belief then I agree you should try sell it, and doing so would demonstrate leadership qualities.

> If one of your strongly held beliefs is "spaces over tabs" and you think that belief is information that has sway in the interview AND you take the advice to not reveal the information, then how are you not misrepresenting yourself?

In your example, yes, you would be misrepresenting yourself. But the OP's example is different. Anyone who believes strongly in "spaces over tabs" would/should also know how many silly unproductive flame wars they've started, and also how there may be reasonable arguments on either side. If you do indeed believe strongly in something, then by all means go ahead and say it. But you'd better be able to talk about it intelligently and have considered both sides of the argument. If you're not as educated on the subject, then it's probably not the best idea to wade into the subject during an interview.

That's all this is. Just know your own positions relative to others.

I'm not sure how you're relating anything there to commentary on cheating...

My complaint is with interviewers and their wasteful, unfair hidden criteria. You could phrase it as a complaint that interviewers make use of filtering mechanisms that are impossible to know about without the ability to read minds. There's not necessarily anything wrong with certain filters per se, but it's important the candidate be aware what they are, as early as possible -- if it's in the job description this allows for candidate self-filtering, even.

My advice to interviewees who nevertheless have to deal with such hidden criteria isn't "just always be honest!" but "since you can't mind-read, you have to guess at the hidden criteria, sorry."

I'd suggest being honest as the default, especially if you have no good guess what the real criteria is, or if you're not even presented with anything that gives you a whiff of a hidden criteria being present. But you can be honest without also going into details about grandpa's barn incident. Sometimes you do have a good guess into the interviewer's mind, though, or at least a sense of "reading the atmosphere". (Some interviewers explicitly use hidden criteria but drop more and more hints throughout the interview to eventually reveal it, hoping the candidate notices on their own first.) It might indicate that you should answer the question with a silly meme that came to mind, instead of directly. Or hey, maybe now you realize those details about the barn would be helpful to elaborate on after all. You might also want to adjust your posture if you're getting the sense that they don't appreciate slouchers here, which would be a hidden criteria applied to the interaction itself rather than a particular question.

I wouldn't advocate misrepresenting yourself, but it's standard advice to represent yourself in the best light you can.