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Flunking my Anthropic interview again

taylor.town

21–30 of 374 posts

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#21

> Over the past decade, I've been striving to spread joy, to do good, to be better. I'm trying so hard. To give some advice that is loving but entirely unkind: knock it off. No amount of spreading joy or do gooding is going to make you feel better. It can not, anymore than doing math homework will convince yourself that you are smart. The problem is not what you want, it's how you want it. Or to put it another way, b…

[deleted]

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#22

> take-home assignment That's the point at which I would have stopped the process personally.

> That's the point at which I would have stopped the process personally. Why is that? I love take-home assignments. At least, if it's just an initial get-to-know-you interview, and then the assignment. What I utterly despise is the get-to-know-you interview, then a tech interview with the entire dev team, then a take-home, then a meeting with the CTO. I will never, ever, ever go through with any job that has an inter…

If a take-home or anything else (automated half-hour online test or whatever) taking more than a couple minutes and not requiring as much time investment from them as you comes before they've winnowed down much of the field—if it's used as any kind of screener—I'd be out. That time's better spent sending more applications (or, IDK, drilling leetcode) if there are more than a very-few candidates still in the running for a given position.

If you want early stage bulk screeners, go for it, I'm sure you need them, but don't take much of my time or the math don't math.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#23
The disappointment of not getting a job offer seems reasonable. The disappointment about things that are core to who you are seems overboard to me. I feel the author could learn to be more comfortable in their own skin.

Also re this:

> “He’s cute, but he’s too weird”

If someone’s thinking this about you, you’re just not a good fit for each other. It isn’t that you’ve failed somehow. Maybe they’re cute but too “normal”.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#25

I have no idea to what extent Anthropic or other employers delve into prospective candidates’ blogs; but this strikes me as too much self-disclosure for one’s own good. We all have idiosyncrasies; but calling oneself weird on a now widely published blog article seems like it risks defeating the goal of making oneself an ideal candidate for many job opportunities. Look, many of my own eccentricities have been (net) va…

Maybe a good point, but honestly, interviewers barely read resumes, they’re very, very likely not going to read your blog, or remember “hey it’s the person from that blog post I ready 7 weeks ago.”

I expect that for a Developer Relations role, someone read the blogs.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#26

I have no idea to what extent Anthropic or other employers delve into prospective candidates’ blogs; but this strikes me as too much self-disclosure for one’s own good. We all have idiosyncrasies; but calling oneself weird on a now widely published blog article seems like it risks defeating the goal of making oneself an ideal candidate for many job opportunities. Look, many of my own eccentricities have been (net) va…

Maybe a good point, but honestly, interviewers barely read resumes, they’re very, very likely not going to read your blog, or remember “hey it’s the person from that blog post I ready 7 weeks ago.”

> interviewers barely read resumes

I feel like this is the biggest lie ever told in this industry. Do you, as an interviewer, not read resumes?

I read loads of resumes and the truth is more like everyone are terrible communicators. Especially software engineers. Most resumes are badly formatted, badly typeset, full of errors and give me confusing/contradictory details about what your job responsibilities were rather than what you accomplished.

Most peoples' resumes are so low-effort that they're practically unreadable and I'm trying to read between the lines to figure out what you're capable of. I might as well not be reading them because I'm trying to figure out what you've done, what you're good at and what motivates you and nothing you've given me on that paper helps me do that.

One of these days someone is going to figure out how to cross-polinate technology people and sales people in the office to smooth out each others' rough edges. Whoever does is going to revolutionize industry.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a good point, but honestly, interviewers barely read resumes, they’re very, very likely not going to read your blog, or remember “hey it’s the person from that blog post I ready 7 weeks ago.”

I expect that for a Developer Relations role, someone read the blogs.

[deleted]

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#28

I have no idea to what extent Anthropic or other employers delve into prospective candidates’ blogs; but this strikes me as too much self-disclosure for one’s own good. We all have idiosyncrasies; but calling oneself weird on a now widely published blog article seems like it risks defeating the goal of making oneself an ideal candidate for many job opportunities. Look, many of my own eccentricities have been (net) va…

Maybe a good point, but honestly, interviewers barely read resumes, they’re very, very likely not going to read your blog, or remember “hey it’s the person from that blog post I ready 7 weeks ago.”

[deleted]

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#29
The post reads to me like all those movies about the nerd with a heart of gold that the hot girl will recognize and eventually marry.... which only happens in those movies.

Do people really not understand that companies don't care one whit about your personality? They only care about whether you can make them more money. And that extends to interviewers; the number one thing interviewers care about is can you meaningfully contribute to the existing roadmap, not whether you can bring your own unique perspective. This is especially true at mega huge corporate places like anthropic.

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