Columbia Student’s AI Tool Lands Internship Offers at Amazon, Meta, Then Controversy
Roy Lee, a student at Columbia University, developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool called Interview Coder to help him with coding interviews. The tool proved successful, leading to internship offers from major tech companies like Amazon, Meta, and TikTok. However, the use of the tool also resulted in controversy.
Lee, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), stated that he created Interview Coder to assist him in solving coding and algorithm problems during job interviews. The tool, described as a hidden application, was designed to help with challenges similar to those found on LeetCode.
In his social media post, Lee shared that he used Interview Coder to pass interviews and secure summer internships. A screenshot of his LinkedIn profile showed internships at Meta, TikTok, Amazon, and Capital One, starting in February 2025. Facing multiple offers, he indicated he would choose one if some were later withdrawn.
Lee also posted a YouTube video demonstrating his use of Interview Coder during a live Amazon interview. Following the video’s release, Lee shared an email allegedly sent by Amazon to Columbia University, expressing concerns about his actions:
Chungin, or Roy as he prefers, recently interviewed for our Amazon SDE Intern role in which he proved to be a strong candidate. Soon after, I received a link to a YouTube video created by Roy in which he showed himself using an invisible cheating tool to gain an unfair and unapproved advantage during the interview process. While this is disturbing enough, further research showed that Roy is selling this tool to other students and engineers, spreading the tool to many users.
Lee responded that he had already declined the Amazon internship and had no intentions of working for the company. He wrote, “Point of the software is to hopefully bring an end to Leetcode interviews. This tool took me a week to build and a better engineer could’ve built it in half a day.
