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Flunking my Anthropic interview again

taylor.town

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Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#261

Post by spauldo »

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 totally agree. My work is a major part of my life. I do my job well and that's important to me.

But I don't care about any particular company. I'm just as happy automating refineries as I am factories or chemical plants. I just want to be a valuable member of a team that gets stuff done.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#262

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

swat535 wrote: post #253
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say that in some of the rejections that I got, it was quite personal. I was old (55, at the time), and that seemed to actually upset the interviewers. I had all the right buzzwords, but as soon as they saw my grey coiffure, the process started going sideways. Somehow, they seemed to think that a 30-year-old could have 30 years of experience. I was treated pretty shabbily, a couple of times. It was clear that I…

I don't know about you but the older I get, the less I take anything in life personal. I've come to realize that there are so many aspects of life that are not under one's control and shaking your fist gravity doesn't accomplish anything; even more so when it comes to business and professional relationships. One of my favorite quotes is from "Deuteronomy 18:13", or as the The Coen Brothers aptly put it: - "Receive wi…

I admit to getting quite pissed off, but I eventually decided that it wasn't worth it, and just retired.

I'm grateful that I had the means. Because of that, I would have been happy to take a lot less than many, if the work interested me, but it never got that far.

NBD. I've found that learning on my own is better, anyway. LLMs have been a Godsend, there.

These days, I get quite a bit done, but I do it on my own terms, and that makes all the difference.

This is what I’m working on, now[0]. Still has a ways to go, though. I should publish it next week.

My heroes are guys like Stu Nicholls and Howard Oakley. I've learned so much, since I decided to retire, and it's accelerating.

[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/series/passkeys/

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#263

Post by xpe »

tayo42 wrote: post #254
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…

> One of the biggest misconceptions I see from job seekers, especially younger ones, is to equate a job interview to a test at school, assuming that there is some objective bar and if you pass it then you must be hired. It's simply not true. Frequently more than one good applicant applies for a single open role, and the hiring team has to choose among them. In that case, you could "pass" and still not get the job and…

> Unless they did something truly bizarre there wasn't room for being subjective

Without having been there, I have a sense of what you mean, but I do want to add:

1. Statistically speaking, there will misinterpretation and even outright errors on the part of interviewers.

2. As feedback gets passed up the chain, most processes I know about are not formulaic. People make judgment calls. They might be more or less consistent w.r.t. following some ideal, sure. A company might pride itself on consistency and that might be good. Another company might pride itself on adaptability -- changing a process to suit the current need, because maybe the old process wasn't that great.

3. There _will_ be differential treatment, as perceived by the interviewer, even if you behave _identically_!. Cultures are different, comfort levels are different, styles are different! Saying the same thing, with the same tone of voice, with the same timing might have different effects on different people.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#264

Post by xpe »

mgh2 wrote: post #243
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…

Hiring is all subjective (i.e. bs): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41049365

This claim is exaggerated too far in the other direction. I try to spiral in towards the gravity well of truth rather than slingshot out of the solar system.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#265

Post by [deleted] »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #16
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…

https://xkcd.com/137/

[deleted]

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#266

Post by suriya-ganesh »

eszed wrote: post #115
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…

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!! Thanks for sharing this.

Your message and the child comment really has given me a perspective that I didn't have before.

Something Very practically stoic about it.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#268

Post by xpe »

dasil003 wrote: post #145
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…

Yeah I think this is a great mental framework. Getting rejected hurts, it's natural to want to find a reason, and with some self-reflection it definitely can help one grow. But you gotta be very careful about over-indexing on any one interview where the reasons for rejection may or may not have anything to do with what you did and said during the interview (let alone your personhood). Frankly, if you want to get bett…

> While this post doesn't directly demonstrate a victim mentality, it suggests internalizing the rejection ("My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.")...

Well said. While it might have only been the recognition of that feeling, I do think it might reflect a deeper internalization. Though I'm no psychologist; I only have an intuitive, common-sense understanding of the concept of "internalization".

> ... in a way that is adjacent and something that would give me significant pause if I was a hiring manager evaluating for a role in a chaotic company.

Yes, I can see why some people would have this take. But there are other takes, such as "this person cares and feels things deeply, and as long as they process these emotions, they'll probably come back stronger."

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#269

Post by sitkack »

WalterBright wrote: post #101
jimmar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no information in a rejection. The most helpful job interview I had was when the interviewer broke script and just leveled with me about how I wasn't presenting myself well. There was a shared connection (our alma mater) that must have convinced him to be straight with me instead of hiding how poorly I was doing behind a mask. The HR handbooks say that you should never let a candidate know why they were no…

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.

I have done about 75 coding interviews for big tech companies. I have told a fair number of people (around 10) that I would be submitting a no-hire, but then I went on to coach them for another 15 minutes on how they could improve. I never once heard from anyone on the subject and all the people I told were actually grateful 1) that they wouldn't be left wondering and 2) how they could pass the next one.

I'd want someone to do the same.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#270

Post by huem0n »

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…

I believe part of the post is referring to that idea (self disclosure and weirdness) itself, and the idea that the author usually does try to limit it. Even without this specific post, the "weirdness" can come across in an in-person interview and other ways. Some people are normal, some can pretend to be, and others either can't manage to pretend or its too difficult/painful to do for long periods of time.

Its not always bad to expose it and not always bad to get rejected because of it. Personality mismatch can make any job miserable.

Regardless, it feels bad to get rejected and that, I think, is what the article is making a point about.

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