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Flunking my Anthropic interview again

taylor.town

181–190 of 374 posts

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#181

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 advice that I hope the author takes heed of the most.

I'll add that what qualifies as “weird” or “quirky” on the web is probably a world’s different than what did in the past. And the weird and quirky things that people are willing to indulge or entertain in certain online communities does not represent what the rest of the world is aware of or even finds appreciable.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#182
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…

> ...the only reason is that the hiring team liked someone else better...

Or they liked you just as much as the one they hired, but you lost the coin toss. Or, they hated you because they misunderstood something you said. Or...?

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#183
Somewhat OT but I just don’t like the current iteration of DevRel.

Initially I saw the folks in this field as hype-persons, but their concrete output was tools that were useful for developers. The author did create this! But it was in service of landing a role at the company.

The people that work in this field now seem to mostly just get into beefs on the internet, create funny posts on Linkedin. Which… doesn’t seem very useful for developers.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#184
post #115
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…

This. I've hired in a number of roles, in several industries, and what they've all had in common is that rejection is never personal. My first career was in theatre, which a) is (or at least was, back in the day?) much more competitive than tech - par was one callback (ie, second screening) per 100 auditions, and one casting per 10 callbacks; and b) is genuinely, deeply vulnerable - you have to bring your whole self…

[deleted]

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#185

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…

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…

I would actively avoid hiring someone with a major social media presence. Too risky.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#186
post #171

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.

Being oneself is fine. Being too online may not be.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#187
> My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.

This is a really bad way of thinking. Apart from the fact that he doesn’t know the reason behind the decision (and this already heroically assumes that there was any reasoning to begin with), why would you make yourself so dependent on total strangers?

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#188
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If the past 25 years of tech companies is any indication of the future of these new AI endeavors, working there will be directly contributing to the enslavement of mankind in ways we can't even begin to imagine yet.

The greenfield projects arising from this leap look benign now, but I can almost guarantee that won't be the case in the next decade once these technologies optimize their revenue generation engines and enshittification takes hold. Humanity will be at the whim of the AI compute overlords much more so than we are now, and that's an inevitable nightmare dystopia that I'm not looking forward to. The gilded age will look like child's play by the time we figure this out as a society.

I suppose that if your ambition is to be on the winning end of that hellscape, then by all means, go for it.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#189
post #147
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I've hired in a number of roles, in several industries, and what they've all had in common is that rejection is never personal. My first career was in theatre, which a) is (or at least was, back in the day?) much more competitive than tech - par was one callback (ie, second screening) per 100 auditions, and one casting per 10 callbacks; and b) is genuinely, deeply vulnerable - you have to bring your whole self…

Hey, my first "career" was also in theater! Strong agreement. I can confirm for other readers that the day I realized this --- "Oh, rejection means nothing!" --- was a weird day. It takes a weight off. And it is true across every other field. There are way more factors external to the "you" of the decision, and they're given more weight than the "you" of the decision. This is one of those cases where you only need to…

Hey! Good to meet a fellow artist. I made it to 40 before I sold out. You?

One thing outsiders don't understand is that, for actors, auditioning IS the job. Getting cast, and working on a show, is a joy (some more than others, of course!), but the rest of your life is nothing, nothing but looking for work.

The were two things that made that "it's all cool" shift happen for me. The first is that once I'd been in the industry long enough I could pretty much guarantee that when I went in for an audition I'd see someone I knew, or at least with whom I had an immediate second-degree connection. Auditions stopped being a grind, or mainly about courting rejection - instead, they became an opportunity to hang out with some cool people for a while. I started looking forward to them!

The second was realizing that choosing and performing my audition pieces was the only time that I was in complete control. No one was telling me what to do or how to do it: I could make my own choices, and take whatever creative risks I wanted.

I think both of those approaches made me a much better auditionee than most. My batting average was a lot higher than most of my peers - even some that I thought were better actors.

I don't know how well those insights generalize. I've never (thank god!) had to do leet-code, but I'd hope that (though maybe only in a second screening?) taking a creative approach - if you can talk about it sensibly, and pivot if it doesn't ultimately work - would impress fellow engineers. I strongly believe that adopting a "what can I learn from this experience, and these people?" mindset is a good way to reduce the pressure you'd otherwise put on yourself.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#190

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…

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

This field, and especially AI, are so full of autism. I unironically buy the extreme male brain hypothesis for autism because of my experiences in SV.
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