devRant - A fun community for developers to connect over code, tech & life as a programmer

hello thx for applying to our startup :) we are looking to hire an engineer asap so let's get things in motion. We will only interview candidates that pass our custom take home challenge, which is designed to test your ability to solve real problems.

Anyone who passes our take home challenge immediately gets an interview with our CTO and thus has a high likelihood of being hired.

Vibe coding warning:
If you cannot write code without AI assistance, you will not pass our live technical interview so please do not waste your time now attempting this challenge; we won't hire you.

Here is the take home challenge:
Figure out how to programmatically send disappearing photos on Telegram web using a chrome extension.

What we measure with this take home challenge:
This challenge is designed to measure your resourcefulness and ability to quickly learn new things. Being an expert on chrome extensions or javascript won't help much.

More details:
Telegram on mobile allows you to send disappearing photos, but Telegram Web doesn't expose sending disappearing photos in the UI. You'll have to dig deeper.

Rules (!important):
Your submission will not count if it breaks any of these rules.
1) Your solution must be fully contained in a chrome extension. This means no other code (ie. localhost server) outside of the extension is allowed.
2) You are not allowed to bundle outside libraries (ie. gramjs, mtproto, mqtt, etc)
3) You must be on web.telegram .org/a which is version A of Telegram web, not web.telegram .org/k which is version K or others.
4) Your solution must be able to send photos programmatically and not require manually sending photos in the UI

Expectations:
Although a solution that just follows the rules will get you an interview, the quality of your submission will be a key factor in our hiring decision. We expect your code to be clean, production ready, and easy to review. This means removing all unused code and files you may have added during experimentation/testing.

Video guide:
Don't let the high view count on the video scare you, if you are seeing this we are still accepting submissions.
Please watch the video I made describing the challenge and showcasing the solution

Here is the job posting in case you lost it:

Here is the code for the challenge:
You are given a simple boilerplate chrome extension, feel free to change any file or add new files as needed

Submission:
Do NOT upload your submission to GitHub, you wouldn't want others stealing your work and submitting it. Please reply to this only with a public **Google Drive** link containing:
-Your chrome extension code as a **folder** (not as a zip or rar file), this makes it easier for us to review
-A short screen recording showing your solution works

Deadline:
Please try to finish by the end of day Friday (December 5); speed is one of the things we are measuring here too. We will not make hiring decisions before this date so please attempt the challenge if you are seeing this before the deadline.

Communication:
Please only reply to this message with your Google Drive link submission, otherwise I will ignore and assume you are an AI. If you have questions, please figure them out on your own as that is part of the challenge.

Good luck, and I hope to hear from you soon :)