He Built a Tool to Get Around Big Tech’s Recruiting Process, Columbia Kicked Him Out of School

Columbia University student Roy Lee says he’s been suspended after he built an AI program that helped him pass the brutal technical interviews for Meta, Facebook, Amazon, and TikTok. “I just got kicked out of Columbia for taking a stand against Leetcode interviews,” Lee said in a March 26 post on LinkedIn. I spoke with Lee earlier this month after his story went viral on social media. Lee is, or was, a sophomore at Columbia who had an eye towards graduating in 2026. As a computer science whiz, he was all set to matriculate into the world of big tech and land a job for a FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google) company. He just needed to pass the technical interview. The tech interview, or “Leetcode” interview is a grueling process where a job candidate is forced into a lengthy and tedious coding test, often while an employee at the company watches. The technical interview usually involves problems the programmer will never face on the job. To hear Lee tell it, practicing ... Read full article.