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My Friend GPTed His Way Into Big Tech

Pen Magnet
Level Up Coding
Published in
8 min readJan 14, 2025

He deserved better if only he had waited

Photo by Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash

Before 2022, my programmer friend often called me for FAAMG interview advice. I would tell him: It’s not worth it.

Why? Am I not good enough?

He would anxiously ask.

Me: You are no longer a college kid. You are a husband and a father. I don’t want you to chase a mirage while ruining your work-life balance.

Still, optimist that he wasy, he always called me with a new company name, hoping I would cheer him up someday.

I didn’t.

After 2022, the year of ChatGPT’s astronomical rise, his calls stopped. And within a year, he clinched a high-salary senior developer role in a Fortune 500 Fintech company.

In his call, he shouted, “I made it! Though it isn’t FAAMG, but it’s big! And it was totally worth it, every moment!”

I congratulated him. After expressing my friendly jealousy over his package, I hung up. Thoughts kept circling in my head. Thoughts that couldn’t take the shape of words, because I didn’t want to spoil his victory moment.

He had truly made it with the help of the newest chatbot. The whole thing wasn’t taxing on him — my warnings were completely irrelevant.

Written by Pen Magnet

Author of eBooks: Coding Interviews 2.0 & Comprehensive Approach to Senior Developer Interview, Startup writer, Programmer, Education Engagement Enthusiast

Responses (5)

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