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Flunking my Anthropic interview again

taylor.town

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Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#121

Post by bowsamic »

lisper wrote: post #111

> I can't turn my weird off That might be your problem right there. Deciding you can't do something is always a self-fulfilling prophecy. How hard have you tried? I learned to turn my weird off a long time ago. It wasn't easy. It took many years. It was painful at times. But I did it. If I can do it, you probably can too. P.S. You might want to think about whether or not turning your weird off is something you actual…

Really refreshing to read this. Sometimes I feel like an alien among the weird for having gone over to the “dark side” (to the normies)

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#122

Post by striking »

lisper wrote: post #111

> I can't turn my weird off That might be your problem right there. Deciding you can't do something is always a self-fulfilling prophecy. How hard have you tried? I learned to turn my weird off a long time ago. It wasn't easy. It took many years. It was painful at times. But I did it. If I can do it, you probably can too. P.S. You might want to think about whether or not turning your weird off is something you actual…

Faking normalcy can often make you more unattractive than being yourself. I suspect that people can sense when someone isn't being genuine about themselves.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#123

Post by constantly »

gwbas1c wrote: post #112
jp57 wrote: post #68

One great piece of advice an informal mentor gave me long ago is that there is no information in a rejection . That is to say that you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit that you typically get back. There are so many reasons that a candidate might get rejected that have nothing to do with one's individual performance in th…

> there is no information in a rejection Building on that: There's a few reasons why a company won't explain why they reject a candidate. One of the reasons is that they don't want candidates to "game" the system, because it makes it hard to screen for the people they want to hire. Another reason is that often rejections are highly subjective, and telling a candidate that "we didn't hire you because of X" could be hi…

I used to provide feedback but often got candidates who were argumentative about it rather that accepting that the decision was final. This turned me off on the whole concept.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#124

Post by reactordev »

margalabargala wrote: post #119
tibbar wrote: post #110

I recently did a round of interviews at various AI companies, including model labs, coding assistants, and data vendors. My first takeaway is that, wow! the interviews are very hard, and the bar is high. Second, these companies are all selecting for the top 0.1% of some metric - but they use different metrics. For example, the coding assistant interview focused on writing (what I felt was) an insane volume of code in…

> Also, none of these companies will actually give you your purpose in life, your dream job will not make you whole:-) Some people really do find a whole lot of personal meaning from their work. And that's okay. It's their life. If someone is the sort of person who might find meaning working for Anthropic, they would find that meaning at a lot of other jobs as well. I think that's a better emssage; not that "you shal…

I get it, we all want to be somebody, but is the juice worth the squeeze?

They may find a candidate that succeeds, they may not. In the end, it’s up to you to decide whether that kind of environment is for you. I also interviewed at a few AI startups and while difficult, I wasn’t impressed with them. They seem to be too high maintenance with little to no experience.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#125

Post by bowsamic »

ilc wrote: post #20

You be you. You will find your people and your place. It may just be that Anthropic isn't it. I had a company that was like a white elephant for me for a long time. Got in there, and I will say: It was one of the worst experiences I had in my career. Not all that glitters is gold, and happiness is often only discovered when it is gone. If you can avoid those two pitfalls in life. You'll do well better than me.

I can’t imagine why someone would want to work for a specific company. Even team to team can go from terrible experience to great experience

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#126

Post by lisper »

striking wrote: post #122
lisper wrote: post #111

> I can't turn my weird off That might be your problem right there. Deciding you can't do something is always a self-fulfilling prophecy. How hard have you tried? I learned to turn my weird off a long time ago. It wasn't easy. It took many years. It was painful at times. But I did it. If I can do it, you probably can too. P.S. You might want to think about whether or not turning your weird off is something you actual…

Faking normalcy can often make you more unattractive than being yourself. I suspect that people can sense when someone isn't being genuine about themselves.

Yes, that's what makes it hard. You can't just fake it. It's is the same thing that makes acting hard. Good actors aren't faking it.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#127

Post by switchbak »

lisper wrote: post #111

> I can't turn my weird off That might be your problem right there. Deciding you can't do something is always a self-fulfilling prophecy. How hard have you tried? I learned to turn my weird off a long time ago. It wasn't easy. It took many years. It was painful at times. But I did it. If I can do it, you probably can too. P.S. You might want to think about whether or not turning your weird off is something you actual…

Well, they could also dial down the weird during an interview, and slowly reveal their more personal side as they get to know their co-workers better. This seems so obvious it's barely worth stating, but it seems like there's a false dichotomy in their post (no weird XOR weird).

I mean, everyone is weird when you look really close. But we can be cool with one another. To me it just sounds like they're still quite sensitive to judgement, and looking for explanations as to the rejection. I totally get that, I'm in the same boat. Sometimes you just don't have a good explanation, and you have to solicit valuable feedback elsewhere.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#128

Post by spicyusername »

tibbar wrote: post #110

I recently did a round of interviews at various AI companies, including model labs, coding assistants, and data vendors. My first takeaway is that, wow! the interviews are very hard, and the bar is high. Second, these companies are all selecting for the top 0.1% of some metric - but they use different metrics. For example, the coding assistant interview focused on writing (what I felt was) an insane volume of code in…

    your dream job will not make you whole
In fact, they tend to do the exact opposite, unfortunately!

Like the great Mike Tyson once said, "God punishes you by giving you everything you want... to see if you can handle it".

For many, achieving your dreams usually comes with the hard lesson that you had the wrong dreams and that the real dreams you should have had were many of the things you already gave away to get there.

Then again, infinite AI-developer money isn't the worst outcome, either. Something something land among the clouds.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#129

Post by tibbar »

margalabargala wrote: post #119
tibbar wrote: post #110

I recently did a round of interviews at various AI companies, including model labs, coding assistants, and data vendors. My first takeaway is that, wow! the interviews are very hard, and the bar is high. Second, these companies are all selecting for the top 0.1% of some metric - but they use different metrics. For example, the coding assistant interview focused on writing (what I felt was) an insane volume of code in…

> Also, none of these companies will actually give you your purpose in life, your dream job will not make you whole:-) Some people really do find a whole lot of personal meaning from their work. And that's okay. It's their life. If someone is the sort of person who might find meaning working for Anthropic, they would find that meaning at a lot of other jobs as well. I think that's a better emssage; not that "you shal…

That is fair. I suppose what I meant is, the idea of working at one of these companies can be really exciting, almost a fantasy, but in practice: it might actually hurt you in many ways. 'Look what they make you give', as a certain character once said. With that said, obviously I think it's cool and worth doing, but there are significant and painful downsides, too.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#130

Post by switchbak »

lisper wrote: post #126
striking wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faking normalcy can often make you more unattractive than being yourself. I suspect that people can sense when someone isn't being genuine about themselves.

Yes, that's what makes it hard. You can't just fake it. It's is the same thing that makes acting hard. Good actors aren't faking it.

You can definitely fake it. Most people at $BIG_CORP aren't half as jovial and excited as they seem. Whatever, it's fine - we don't need to be perfectly authentic at all times, sometimes you can just go with the flow a little.

Is "God actor" a term reserved for only the best actors? :P

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