Companies such as Amazon, Apple, or Google conduct a series of interviews for potential candidates, and one of the most difficult ones is a technical one, which often has to be done online on camera and under the supervision of another employee.
Roy Lee, a second-year student at Columbia University, started looking for a potential job in Big Tech alongside his studies, but was exhausted already at the stage of preparing for technical interviews, which took him more than 600 hours (profile on LeetCode is proof of that).
The guy says that he managed to hate programming during this time and realize that interviews often cover topics that no one will ever see at work — it’s just «a show for managers»
«The answer to many of these problems is so algorithmic. They also don’t reflect at all what you do as a programmer on the job».
So Lee decided to write a program with less than 1000 lines of code (it’s already on GitHub) called Interview Coder to help him bypass this process. The guy says that it is «completely invisible» to the tools that big tech companies use to monitor a potential employee’s computer.
«The product is actually very simple, — he said. «You take a photo and then ask ChatGPT: “Can you solve the problem in this picture?”».
Eventually, the student’s program helped him pass technical interviews at companies such as TikTok, Meta, and eventually Amazon — all of which allegedly sent him job offers.
«I recorded a full loop from Amazon as the best product demo to show that it works».
Meta and TikTok did not respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo, which first reported the story, while Amazon provided generalities about a hiring process that «is being improved to meet the demands of the modern age»
Lee faced a disciplinary hearing at the college after the story, and plans to drop out after it is over. As for the job, the student believes that the vacancies and requirements offered by Big Tech are already outdated — and his program is proof of that.
Source: Gizmodo
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