A Columbia University student is facing a disciplinal hearing at the college after he used an AI program to help him kingdom internships at Amazon , Meta , and TikTok . Roy Lee , the scholarly person face down Columbia , tell me he wo n’t be on campus when the audience happens , that he plans to will the University , and that the program he built to dupe Big Tech is proof that the jobs they ’re offering are obsolete .
land a chore for a Big Tech society is a incubus . Colloquially bed as FAANG ( Facebook , Amazon , Apple , Netflix , and Google ) , the companies put potential software engineers through a barrage fire of interviews . The most hated part of the process is the expert consultation . During a technical interview , software engineer solve esoteric dupe problems . Often , they have to do it live on camera while an employee from the company watches .
Lee is a sophomore at Columbia , he ’d graduate in 2026 if he deposit around . He planned to get a degree from the college and use it to get a job in Big Tech . Training for the technical consultation shoot down his passion for the job . “ It was one of the most miserable experience I ’ve ever had while programming , ” he told me . “ I feel like I had to do it . It ’s something I need to do for a big technical school Book of Job , and there was just so much to ascertain , so much to con , and so many random problems I could carry to have been fuddle at me . ”
© Roy Lee
Lee said he ’s a “ bit of a perfectionist , ” and that it direct to him spending 600 hours on education for technical interviews . HisLeetCode visibility , a website that let programmers to direct for the esoteric interviews , is a testament to his devotion . “ It made me hate programming , ” he said . “ It ’s derisory that that ’s the way technical interviews are done and behave and that that ’s the manner they ’ve been conduct for the past two decades . ”
According to Lee , these audience often traverse topic no one will ever see on the business . Instead , it ’s a performance for executives . “ It ’s whether you ’ve seen the problem before , memorized the result , and can play like this is your first clock time seeing the problem , ” he said . “ The answer to a hatful of these problems is so algorithmic . They ’re also just not representative at all of what you do as a coder on the line . ”
So Lee write a program calledInterview Coderto serve him and others bypass the cognitive process . Lee ’s program does the hard study of the technological interview for you and he claims it ’s altogether inconspicuous to programs that the Big Tech companies employ to monitor a prospective employee ’s computer .
“ In reality , the merchandise is really simple , ” he say . “ You take a picture , and then you ask ChatGPT , ‘ Hey can you solve the problem in this picture ? ’ Literally , that ’s the entire product . Someone could probably build a work out epitome variation of this that works in less than 1,000 seam of codification . ” Do n’t take his word for it . It ’s onGithub here .
According to Lee , he used his program to pass proficient interviews at companies like TikTok , Meta , and Amazon . He say they all gave him whirl . “ I memorialise the full cycle with Amazon as the ultimate product demonstration to show that this works ; the recruiting procedure is now break . ”
Meta and TikTok did not return Gizmodo ’s request for comment . Amazon declined to remark on Lee , specifically , but tell its recruiting cognitive operation is evolving to run across the demands of the import .
Margaret Callahan , a spokesperson at Amazon , told me that Amazon welcomed candidates to share their experience turn with generative AI tool but said that those candidates needed to promise not to use unauthorized cock during the interview process .
Lee commemorate his entire technological interview with Amazon and posted the whole thing , uncut , on YouTube . Then they made him an offer . He rejected it . For Lee , the point was establish that Interview Coder worked , not passing a technical audience and land a position .
Two days after Lee posted his technical consultation with Amazon on YouTube , someone mail a line to Columbia and accused Lee of cheat during the audience . Lee became cognisant of the charge when Columbia forwarded a redacted translation of it to him and schedule a disciplinary hearing for March 11 .
The complaint Columbia transport Lee say that Amazon would be vacate its offer and that it was disquieted that a student of the University had “ shaft ” on a technical audience . “ Amazon has a long custom of work with Columbia Engineering … and it deeply worry us to see situations like this occur . We commit Columbia to take proper activity with regards to this student , and we go for to continue this long - standing partnership . ”
The identify information on the ailment is put , so it ’s insufferable to have a go at it where it in reality come from . ”Columbia decline to remark on the number , cite Union privacy regulations that prevent it from weighing in . ” Amazon would not point out directly on the topic . Lee shared various material from Columbia with Gizmodo that avow the disciplinary hearings are real .
Lee order me he wo n’t be serve the hearing . He said that LLMs have made draw a job at big technical school pointless . “ Maybe it ’s stupid of me to say this , ” he say . “ Most human intelligence operation work is going to be obsolete in two old age . So I have two years to make something pass off . Meaning I need to swing as big as potential and I do n’t have the time to work two class in a giving technical school occupation , nor do I want to any longer … by the time I calibrate , these LLM are going to get advanced enough to the stop where there is no significant intellectual oeuvre that I could produce time value for society . ”
He said he ’s book a one - manner ticket out of the city and wo n’t even be on campus when Columbia want to talk to him . His fib went viral in computer programing roach after he station his telecasting on YouTube and got even further hit after he posted about the disciplinary actions from Columbiaon X.
The tending has been good for him . He ’s sell subscription to Interview Coder for $ 60 a month . Lee admit that going out for big interviews with tech society and the technical part to send online was a marketing scheme . “ I did n’t really have the Ball to do something like this until quite recently , ” he say .
But he was adamantine that the technological audience process was a waste pipe on programmers and the world . “ adult tech companies do n’t have an incentive to convert , ” he said . “ LeetCode is a slop organization that works for them , but it ’s a gigantic last negative on the development ecosystem around the humanity . ”
“ It ’s an try at a standardized test that appraise problem solving , but in today ’s human beings that ’s just disused . ”
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