A few years ago, I had an interview with this company. I received a job offer but didn’t end up joining because we couldn’t agree on a good financial package.
Now, a couple of years later, their recruiter reaches out again, asking if I’d be interested in continuing the conversation. I think, okay, let’s discuss.
They send me a test assignment as the first step. I read it — it’s exactly the same assignment I did a few years ago. Naturally, I wasn’t too excited to do it all over again. So, I used ChatGPT to generate the entire code based on the task description, copied it into my IDE, ran it. There were a couple of bugs — I asked ChatGPT to fix them, copied the updated version, ran it again.
Everything worked fine, good enough for a first discussion, so I sent it over. I was transparent and clearly explained that I used ChatGPT to accomplish the task.
A couple of weeks later, I got a response saying that using AI agents is prohibited. Goodbye.
I ask, “Where exactly is that written?”
They reply, “Right there, in the first paragraph.”
I double-check my assignment — there’s nothing like that in the first paragraph.
So I write them back, explaining that there’s no such clause in the version I received — in other words, no one told me I couldn’t use AI.
Their response just stunned me: “Oh, sorry, you’re right — we accidentally sent you an old version of the assignment where that rule wasn’t mentioned. But since our policy prohibits it (even though we didn’t tell you, of course), we’re rejecting your application.”
Brilliant!!!
