cheat code for a tech interview #techjobs #developer #developerlife

17 Sept 2025 · 1 min

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0:44

Send a hiring manager a demo that solves a real problem at their company. One engineer reports a 10/10 response rate doing this instead of applying through the normal channels.

It is a cheat code. Why don't more people do this? If you can create a demo of a product of the company you want to interview and lead with that in a DM to the manager, the response rate in your DMs is going to be incredibly high.
It is a cheat code. Why don't more people do this?
That's what I don't understand. Like, literally, if I was like, hey Sunil, I don't like the way Cloudflare does this, I created a quick proof of concept, what are your thoughts on this? I'm pretty sure you're probably going to respond to that person 10 out of 10 times.
Oh yeah, absolutely. You're using my stuff. I'm so lucky that you bothered giving me 5 minutes out of your day. Yeah, the resume, which is like, hey, here's all my feedback, I tried out these things, By the way, I already sent you 2 quick PRs. Your interview questions are not going to be, tell me about yourself. It's like, hey, let's talk about the projects we're working on. It changes the entire mode of the conversation.