November 7, 2025
Copilot speedrun, anyone?
Sweep (YC S23) is hiring to build autocomplete for JetBrains
YC startup wants “Copilot for JetBrains” built fast, 5 days in-office — devs split between hype and side-eye
TLDR: Sweep is hiring for an AI autocomplete inside JetBrains IDEs, asking candidates to quickly prototype a Copilot-like plugin and work in-office five days a week. Comments erupted over “free labor” vs “fun challenge,” remote vs office culture wars, and cheers for enterprise-friendly privacy as JetBrains finally gets AI love.
Startup alert: Sweep, a Y Combinator company, says it’s hiring to build an AI coding assistant for JetBrains (think IntelliJ and PyCharm). The catch that set comments ablaze? The interview is basically: grab this JetBrains plugin template and whip up a GitHub Copilot-style autocomplete — and do it fast. Cue the drama. One camp’s yelling “free R&D,” arguing the take-home smells like building their product as an interview. The other camp calls it a fun speedrun that filters real builders from resume cosplayers. And then there’s the five-days-a-week, in-person in San Francisco’s Dogpatch — a line in the sand that sparked remote-work PTSD and “I don’t even go five days to the fridge” jokes.
Privacy was the plot twist: Sweep claims no code leaves your own private network (VPC), which enterprise folks cheered as the anti-Copilot they’ve been waiting for. Skeptics fired back: if it’s “Copilot for JetBrains,” how “quickly” can someone realistically prototype it without years of polish? Meanwhile, IDE fans reignited the eternal JetBrains vs VS Code flame war, with JetBrains loyalists chanting “finally, some love,” and VS Code fans dunking on the interview test as a “plugin grind.” The vibe? Equal parts curiosity, chaos, and caffeine-fueled memes — with devs speedrunning diplomacy between “this is exciting” and “this is exploitative.”
Key Points
- •Sweep is hiring for roles to build an AI coding assistant for JetBrains IDEs.
- •The role uses Python, Kotlin, and machine learning.
- •Work is in-person five days a week at Sweep’s Dogpatch office.
- •Interview task: quickly build Copilot-like autocomplete using the IntelliJ Platform Plugin Template.
- •Sweep’s product targets enterprises, keeping data within the customer’s VPC, with large customers already in production.