This man has the worst tech interview ever, but the company wants help stealing his code

An unemployed tech worker recently detailed what might be the most egregious job search experience ever, revealing that after eleven technical interviews and a week-long project, the company rejected him, but the story seems to take a weird turn based on his X post. This unbelievable situation shows just how utterly wild the hiring process has become in the tech sector, blending extreme gatekeeping with outright intellectual property theft.

The candidate, known online as Steve the Beaver, posted a screenshot of the official rejection email he received after what he called at least eleven interviews for a single role, per DailyDot. The email itself is a masterpiece of corporate audacity. It thanked him for completing the “first phase of our interview processes,” which included the eleven technical interview rounds and the completion of the intensive, one-week take-home project.

But here’s the kicker: the email immediately pivoted to say they were impressed with the quality of his submission, confirming that his work had “actually been accepted into our codebase.” Imagine reading that! The company essentially thinks that his code is great, we’re using it, but they don’t want him.

It is hard to tell if this is legal or not

The email went on to describe the decision not to hire him as “incredibly difficult,” especially given his technical capabilities. This whole situation is just awful for Steve. He put in a full week’s worth of labor on top of enduring nearly a dozen screening calls and meetings, only to have his work appropriated without a single cent of compensation.

If you thought that was bad, hold onto your hats. After the official rejection, Steve posted an update confirming that the company had the sheer audacity to send him a follow-up question about the code he wrote, asking him how to fix something within the submission. I can’t believe the nerve of that company, asking for free tech support on the property they just told him they stole.

Unsurprisingly, the story immediately blew up online, sparking intense debate about the legality of the company’s actions. Many users asserted that putting a candidate’s test submission directly into a live codebase without any contractual compensation is clear intellectual property theft. One commenter noted that unless Steve specifically signed a contract giving away his rights, the code he wrote still belongs to him.

Suggestions for recourse started pouring in. Some advised Steve to ask for his code back, while others suggested he release the work under a GPL license. This would make it incredibly difficult for the company to continue using the code commercially without adhering to open-source rules. Steve, for his part, initially considered taking the company to court but admitted he didn’t want to “put a perfectly good startup out of business.”

This extreme example resonated deeply because many people have faced similar, drawn-out, and abusive interview processes. Steve remarked that “interviews are getting out of hand,” which seems like a massive understatement.