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Flunking my Anthropic interview again

taylor.town

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Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#161

Post by WalterBright »

mordechai9000 wrote: post #113
WalterBright wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HR handbooks say that for good reason. Telling a candidate why they were rejected means they'll argue with you, or worse, file a lawsuit.

A couple years ago I was turned down for a position after an initial screening interview because they said my writing sample didn't meet certain criteria. I felt it arguably did, but I just said "thank you for your time and consideration", and moved on. I was just glad to get a clear "no" at an early stage. They've probably revised their policy by now, I suspect, but I appreciated that they made the effort.

Their policy will last until they're sued. All it takes is one to ruin it for everybody.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#162

Post by busterarm »

dasil003 wrote: post #88
busterarm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where someone at the front (is supposed to have) vetted the person already. I think that's a mistake, personally. Each interviewer needs to make an independent decision and relying on the judgement of a screener early in the process is giving that person disproportionate weight towards hiring for your team. Usually that resume screener is someone in HR. Would you trust them to decide who your team hires? Your posts…

If it’s truly only HR and then direct to full interview panel then I agree with you, but I’ve never worked somewhere where a technical person wasn’t involved in screening. Yes recruiters will winnow the inbound, but usually there a technical phone screen, hiring manager screen, or both.

And yet still that screening almost always has less technical depth than further interviews. It should not carry the most weight in the process, but because of practices like this it does.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#163

Post by kelnos »

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…

> you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit

And every role usually only gets one person accepted into it, or at most, a small number. Ideally they want the "best" person for the role (where "best" is highly subjective and context-dependent). Say 200 people applied for the role. Are you really going to feel bad about yourself because you weren't the absolute best person out of 200 applicants? Is it going to be a huge blow to your self-esteem that you might have been the 2nd or 3rd best out of that 200? (And that's assuming their interview process is perfect and accurately measures who the "best" person is, which is rarely the case.)

Rejections are hard. I get it. I don't enjoy them either. But it's so important not to take them personally.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#164

Post by renewiltord »

kashunstva wrote: post #12

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…

They're in devrel. If they're not publicly visible devrel isn't for them.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#166

Post by kelnos »

almostgotcaught wrote: post #75
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…

[flagged]

I don't love the boring, uselessly pedantic takes some people have on what is otherwise truly good advice.

Give it a rest, please.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#167

Post by Xcelerate »

Lately I’ve been thinking I might have better odds making a straight shot for ASI on my own over practicing and rehearsing the material that needs to be presented almost perfectly in the AI interviews. I’ve worked at FANG in ML / applied research for almost a decade but still can’t even get a screening interview at the top places without asking someone I know for a referral. And I really hate bugging former coworkers for referrals. Normally end up procrastinating on reaching out until the job postings just disappear haha.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#169

Post by okwhateverdude »

joshdavham wrote: post #62
amarcheschi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still have to meet a person in computer science who isn't weird

Most CS people I know aren’t weird and are actually pretty corporate and conformist. But at the same time, the people I know who do open source are some of the weirdest people I know haha

I'll take an eclectic bunch of weirdos who all do and like cool shit over the corpo conformist normies any day. Super easy to suss out who is who when you first meet them. Just ask what they like to do when they aren't laboring under the thumb of capitalism. The cool people will talk your ear off about some esoteric whatever.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#170

Post by kelnos »

dakiol wrote: post #38
julianeon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the age of social media. This person has hit the front page of HN twice now. That's a commercially valuable skill. At this point, having proved that can do something commercially valuable a couple times now, I think they should run with it. Start a YouTube channel. Keep racking up views. Then, eventually, do partnerships and sponsorships, in addition to collecting AdSense money. If you like to write or perfor…

You think too much of HN.

I expect many tech employers also think too much of HN, which is exactly the point being made here.
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