Columbia Student Exposes Big Tech Hiring Flaws with AI Tool, Gets Expelled After Going Viral

SOURCE : NEW18 NEWS

Last Updated:April 05, 2025, 17:00 IST

An AI tool developed by Columbia student Roy Lee helped him ace coding interviews and land internships at big tech companies.

A Columbia University student has said that he used an AI tool he created to help students successfully cheat during their coding interviews to land summer internships at tech behemoths like Amazon, Meta, TikTok, and more. An invisible program called Interview Coder was developed by Roy Lee to help students pass LeetCode interviews, which include algorithmic and coding challenges.

Baptiste Vicini, a tech entrepreneur and API pioneer, recently posted some insider information on X (previously Twitter) about how a 21-year-old student earned $170,000 each month “trolling” Silicon Valley.

“This is Roy Lee. He is an undergrad student who just got EXPELLED from Columbia. Not for cheating on exams. But for EXPOSING Big Tech’s hiring secrets. Here’s how a 21-year-old made $170K/month “trolling” Silicon Valley,” his lengthy post begins.

“Meet Chungin “Roy” Lee. 600 miserable hours of practising LeetCode (tech’s most brutal coding interview prep platform) almost made him quit programming forever. But instead of giving up, he had an idea that would expose Silicon Valley’s biggest weakness,” this post added.

Roy Lee invented Interview Coder, an AI assistant that is unobtrusive and capable of instantly resolving any coding issue. The part about genius? The software for screen recording was unable to identify it. Surprisingly, Lee wasn’t finished, though. Something crazy was about to happen to him.

He went after the world’s largest tech firms: TikTok, Meta, and Amazon. Four interviews and 96 hours later? Each one offered him a position.

Lee rejected their proposals. His true purpose? It was to show the true state of tech hiring’s dysfunction. To demonstrate how he deceived them all, he posted the interview video on YouTube. After 1 lakh views, Silicon Valley blew up.

Executives at Amazon went crazy. They sent Columbia University a frantic email regarding Lee’s “disturbing” behaviour. All corporate offers were immediately withdrawn.

In the meantime, Lee earned $170K in a single month, and Interview Coder expanded by 50 per cent per week. The tool that reveals the flaws in Big Tech’s system? It was growing into an empire worth millions of dollars. But there were repercussions.

First, Columbia University suspended him for a week. The disciplinary board of the university determined that he was “responsible for facilitating academic dishonesty.” Lee, however, didn’t leave quietly. He uploaded pictures of university employees to the internet and leaked tapes of his disciplinary hearings.

How did Columbia University react? A suspension of one year. However, Lee wasn’t even bothered by it. His reaction to going viral? “Update: I got kicked out!”. In any case, he had no intention of returning to Colombia. Traditional paths already didn’t matter to him.

“Lee’s logic was bulletproof: “Everyone programs nowadays with the help of AI. It doesn’t make sense to have an interview format that assumes otherwise.” One week of coding exposed decades of outdated practices,” Baptiste Vicini’s lengthy thread also added.

Despite being specifically instructed not to, 80 per cent of students are reportedly already using AI in coding assessments. Big tech firms like Anthropic, Deloitte, and Google were thinking about drastically changing their employment practices.

Vicini’s tweet claims that Lee has already enlisted viral creators to assist with Interview Coder’s marketing. In addition, he is working on an enigmatic new project. Where will Lee go next? San Francisco. At the age of 21, he decided to pursue entrepreneurship instead of corporate America.