I failed my Anthropic interview, came to tell you about it, so you don't have to

https://blog.goncharov.page/i-failed-my-anthropic-interview-and-came-to-tell-you-all-about-it-so-you-dont-have-to

by fxlrnrpt • 1 year ago

44 29 1 year ago

blog.goncharov.page

blitzar5• 1 year ago

I probably would not have hired you based on your description of things, you probably wouldnt have hired you either.

Nevertheless, based on the process, it sounds like they will end up hiring pretty medicore candidates.

wiz21c• 1 year ago

I doubt so. Open ended questions like "generating ideas" allows the interviewer to judge what your level of reasoning is. If you propose "add more GPU" or "let's tweak the transformer parameters with some quantization, like in this research article published a year ago" it makes a huge difference.

IOW the expectations are hidden from the interviewed person.

blitzar5• 1 year ago

Open ended questions like generating ideas was the "Culture Fit" session (and if it wasnt or the company doesnt realise it is then it is an even bigger problem)

fxlrnrpt4• 1 year ago

Well, I definitely failed the brainstorming stage. Disappointed with the result, but have no hard feelings. Wish they let me do the take-home assignment, but it is what it is. Rolled the dice. It was not my day. Will roll it again with as many companies as it takes to get a good gig.

ai-christianson• 1 year ago

Nevertheless, based on the process, it sounds like they will end up hiring pretty medicore candidates.

What would you change in order to hire higher quality people?

blitzar5• 1 year ago

Its the answer nobody hiring wants to hear, spend more (skilled not hr) human time screening and interviewing the candidates.

The process outlined put a stronger emphasis on luck, and catching fire in the 6 minutes you had than skill.

Starlevel004• 1 year ago

This would be a more compelling post if it wasn't written in Linkedin Standard English.

fxlrnrpt4• 1 year ago

If only I knew English well enough xD Originally, it was in Russian.

ryandrake2• 1 year ago

I found OP's English to be fine and the article sounded authentic. Nothing like "LinkedIn fluff".

s__s3• 1 year ago

Sure. From the employers perspective, I get the appeal of references.

As a candidate I find them to be a huge overstep and will almost never provide them.

No, I’m sorry. I’m not going to pester my friends and colleagues to “hop on a quick call” or fill out a 2 page survey every time I interview somewhere.

Quite frankly, I really don’t need or want my friends to be intimately involved in my job search.

This poor guy had to have all his references book a call, only for them to all be notified shortly after that they weren’t needed any more, because he flunked the interview.

blitzar5• 1 year ago

I don't usually give, as references, people who think I am a useless waste of space.

I get the appeal of references.

Referals and word of mouth are 1000x more valuable than the references candidates put on their CV.

someotherperson2• 1 year ago

Sure. From the employers perspective, I get the appeal of references.

Respectfully, it doesn't seem like you do. References in many cases are actually needed for compliance purposes. An example for Anthropic is if the employee might be exposed to medical data, then reference checks can be used as part of a larger validation of employee identity to satisfy HIPAA requirements.

Amazon and others have the importance of reference checks baked into their agreements for those who work with them.

snailmailstare• 1 year ago

Don't you mean background checks? A company sees the value in talking to 4 people of the candidates choice for HIPAA is just sad.

s__s3• 1 year ago

References in many cases are actually needed for compliance purposes.

Those aren’t the kind of checks we’re talking about. In any case, those can be performed once an offer is made.

nunez• 1 year ago

So references are popular again? Interesting.

linotype• 1 year ago

Thanks for posting this, interesting to see the process at a large AI company.

patrickhogan1• 1 year ago

Don’t worry. I found a bug in one of their repos, fixed it, documented it, and submitted a PR—four months later, it’s still not merged.

People love to believe that Company A has top-tier engineers while Company B doesn’t based on mostly nonsense interview practices. The best ideas come from deeply thinking through a problem from the customer’s perspective for days and days not from rushed coding interviews.

xyzsparetimexyz• 1 year ago

That sounds absolutely awful and like you dodged a bullet. Meanwhile deepseek is hiring college grads and the like, for way better tech.

I highly doubt that they've got a better ai but are too scared to show it off. Is there any independent verification of that?

fxlrnrpt4• 1 year ago

Thank you or your support! I am disappointed with the result, but, to be honest, no hard feelings. Wish they let me do the take-home assignment, but it is what it is. Rolled the dice. It was not my day. Will roll it again with as many companies as it takes to get a good gig.

Meanwhile deepseek is hiring college grads and the like, for way better tech.

If only I knew Chinese...

I highly doubt that they've got a better ai but are too scared to show it off. Is there any independent verification of that?

Nope. Just the rumor

Xmd5a• 1 year ago

Also, 3.5 Sonnet was not trained in any way that involved a larger or more expensive model (contrary to some rumors).

Source: https://darioamodei.com/on-deepseek-and-export-controls

HacklesRaised• 1 year ago

Seems like you dodged a bullet.

fxlrnrpt4• 1 year ago

I would rather take the "bullet" but it wasn't my day xD Tbh, I don't think there was anything substantially wrong with the process. They have a ton of CVs from thousands of the smartest people out there. They have to filter somehow. I'm certainly sad I did not make the cut, but it's not like the guy next in line is any worse then me.

spoonsies• 1 year ago

yeah, interviews like that are artifical bullshit interviews whose main purpose is ensure conformity with the way the company thinks rather seek innovation. Be glad you didnt make it thru

I failed my Anthropic interview, came to tell you about it, so you don't have to

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