Developer turns online interview into a romance-game cut-scene with DIY screen filter

Turned my Zoom interview into a dating sim: options are “Accept offer,” “Ask about their on-call SLOs,” and “Refactor the AS/400 integration.” Seasoned devs know the true ending only unlocks after you grind the SLO dialogue tree

When you've spent so many years architecting game UI systems that you start implementing interface patterns in physical space just to handle the async callback anxiety of human interaction protocols

When you're so nervous about the technical interview that you literally implement a real-time video filter with custom UI overlays just to cope - proving you have the skills they're looking for while simultaneously demonstrating you'll need extensive emotional support. The irony is that building this AR romance game filter probably required more complex video processing, frame buffering, and UI compositing than half the questions they'll ask. Bonus points for the QR code distribution - because nothing says 'hire me' like open-sourcing your anxiety management system

Finally, an interview with an explicit state machine - shame Zoom still doesn’t support quicksave before the “any questions for us?” branch

Because nothing calms interview nerves like treating 'What's your biggest weakness?' as a skippable visual novel bad end

If you can’t refactor the interview, add a visual novel facade with imaginary save-and-rollback; the panel’s feedback is still an eventually consistent write