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Flunking my Anthropic interview again

taylor.town

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Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#171

Post by kelnos »

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…

On one hand I agree with you, but on the other... I don't really want to live in a world where being oneself (a perfectly fine, good self) is a liability.

I know I have privilege in being able to say this, but I'd rather get rejected by potential employers who don't get me, than have to pretend to be someone I'm not.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#172

Post by huhkerrf »

matusp wrote: post #107
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…

Especially true in today's hiring environment. They probably have hundreds of qualified people lined up for that position. One company recently reached out to me asking me to submit a CV, considering me a good fit for their position. In the end, they rejected me, but they mentioned that they got 1400 applications. If you don't have a personal connection to get you in, it's basically a lottery.

Even sometimes if you do have a personal connection. I've had twice now where I've had a warm intro to the hiring manager, jobs where I had done the kind of work before, and the hiring manager didn't even reply to my emails.

Won't lie, both of those hurt, but I also reasoned it that if that's who I would have been working for, I wouldn't have enjoyed the work anyway.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#174

Post by dasil003 »

busterarm wrote: post #162
dasil003 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, can't agree with this. The hiring manager's decision carries the most weight yes, but saying it's biased towards the screen is over-generalizing. I'm sure sometimes it is, but as someone who interviewed thousands and hired hundreds over a quarter century career at many organizations large and small, I can tell you unequivocally that technical feedback can and does regularly override my screening signal.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#175

Post by jp57 »

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]

LOL. People who think "try-hard" is bad need not apply. Nobody owes you anything, least of all a job, man.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#176

Post by kjkjadksj »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #153
jama211 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My career long experience with these types of interviews is you get hired by the company that, when they interview you, you get lucky and they happen to ask the questions you’ve just brushed up on or you get lucky and see the answer quickly for some reason. The content of the actual work I’ve done at these companies and how the work is done, is completely different to these interviews and I’d have done equally well a…

And unfortunately, from the point of view of the company, this is a feature not a bug: * to the company the cost of a false positive (bad hire) is very very much higher than the cost of a false negative (passing on a good candidate). * AI companies have a large pool of strong candidates to interview * Therefore they are incentivized to make their interview process hard enough that a poor candidate almost never passes…

Why is it that most other jobs especially low skill take the opposite approach? You screw up or demonstrate your incompetence on your first day on a construction job site you are let go right then.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#177

Post by pm90 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #155

Dear Author, the internet is not your friend, but a kind of alien intelligence - vast, cool, and unsympathetic, in HG Wells' formulation. Publicly melting down (even anonymously) is not going to help you; if anything, you'll just end up feeling more isolated. You need to work out your self-image issues with a person instead of projecting them onto your environment. That person might be a friend of therapist, or sever…

This is the best advice. There was a moment in time where being vulnerable on the net was okayish. I don’t think it is anymore. Its best to work on personal issues with your professional therapist and/or with your trusted group of friends.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#178

Post by koliber »

Here's why it's wrong to think you did something wrong when you get rejected from a job:

Sometimes, a company has multiple candidates that pass the interview with flying colors for a single role. They need to pick someone, and reject the remaining great candidates. If luck or timing was different and you were the only great candidate, they would have just picked you. But now they have a few, and have a hard time deciding who is "better". Often, they kind of punt on hunches, gut feelings, or things that don't really say anything about you at all.

You end up with the "Unfortunately..." email anyway.

If you do happen to get some feedback, well that's actionable. It's something you can improve and the next time at bat you'll be in a better position to do well.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#179

Post by nabbed »

jama211 wrote: post #141
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…

My career long experience with these types of interviews is you get hired by the company that, when they interview you, you get lucky and they happen to ask the questions you’ve just brushed up on or you get lucky and see the answer quickly for some reason. The content of the actual work I’ve done at these companies and how the work is done, is completely different to these interviews and I’d have done equally well a…

>you get lucky and they happen to ask the questions you’ve just brushed up on or you get lucky and see the answer quickly for some reason

My experience exactly! I've been lucky in most of my interviews that I was asked about things I just happened to brush up on or had thought about deeply in some past project, so I was offered the job.

And like you say, the job rarely demanded any of the things I was asked about... which worked against me once, where I sailed through the interview process but struggled for the first year to get up to speed in my actual day-to-day job, although I did manage to get my act together before it became a big problem.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#180

Post by andoma »

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.

Hear hear. I joined a company which made a prosumer product I truly loved using. However, shortly after jointing i realized the company was nothing that I hoped for (Ancient tech, toxic culture, micro-management. All red-flags you can imagine). Fortunately a small startup made a blipp on my radar and after interviewing with them, as I apparently made a good impression, I got an offer so I immediately switched. I didn't realize it at the time but this happened to be a major inflection point in my career (technologically, socially and economically) for which I will be ever thankful. Not exactly OP's experience but my takeaway is that sometimes, even if you think you want to work at a place, it might not be the best option for you. There are so many more opportunities out there.
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