Flunking my Anthropic interview again • Hacker News Board

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#271

Post by xpe » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 2:09 AM UTC

I would expect most of us here have faced many rejections, some of which were deeply painful. When you care about something, some say, losing it hurts. (But was there ever a guarantee? Or was it only an expectation?)

Some people find ways to focus on the process itself and don't couple their well-being to the "end result" (whether success or failure).* This is a practice. You can learn it from others and from experience.

It is one thing to be honest with oneself and say "Yes, this thought is coming into my mind". You don't have to deny that feeling. That is one thought in your head. Acknowledge it and move on. You don't have to repeat it. You don't have to try to 'analyze' it. You can think about something else, and changing your brain patterns is probably a good idea. If the same idea pops up again, fine. Remember to be patient with yourself.

Some ideas that might work for you include: Find emotional support where you can. / Learn cognitive techniques to remind yourself to not fall into ruts. / Put sticky notes on walls. / Do something totally different. / Sunshine and fresh air can do a lot of good.

If one of these things doesn't seem to help, thank yourself for trying it, don't worry, try something else. If you need more support (mental health for example), seek it out.

* And how do you define the end-result? How much you helped people you care about? Maybe a time-averaged well-being metric? Something else? This is deeply personal, and I think it is worth reflecting on.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#272

Post by pmarreck » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 2:10 AM UTC

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's information there, though, you're just not privy to it (short of radical candor, which I would prefer), so what you're really saying is that there's no information in a rejection for you.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#273

Post by htrp » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 2:19 AM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #269

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.

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 som…

All it takes is 1 candidate with an axe to grind and I guarantee you'll never give feedback again.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#274

Post by htrp » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 2:22 AM UTC

commandersaki wrote: post #216

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…

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 the interview or application process. Best to ask for feedback but of course they won't give it to you. I thought…

You are my new hero.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#275

Post by htrp » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 2:24 AM UTC

roadside_picnic wrote: post #206

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…

> the coding assistant interview focused on writing (what I felt was) an insane volume of code in a short period of time. I had a bunch of these my last round of interviews, and am not convinced most companies even know what they want from these or how to assess. In the majority of cases it was clear to me the interviewers never even read the code I had submitted. As an example, one company wanted a full AI Question/…

Are you looking? Can I hire you?

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#276

Post by xpe » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 2:24 AM UTC

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…

I did a LOT of road bike racing a while back. Out of a large starting group (often 60+), one person wins.* Being prepared helps -- you want your fitness dialed and your equipment in good shape. But then Shih Tzu happens, even if you have the equanimity of Lao Tzu. If you conserve energy at the right times and expend energy at the right times -- and luck goes your way -- and the right combination of people work collaboratively -- then you might win. Or flat. Or crash. (Or die, but that's pretty rare.)

In bike racing, winning feels really good, but I don't think people really do it for the winning, because if you dominate one category, _congratulations!_ now you get to compete against the next level, replete with additional helpings of pain, exertion, and whatever the opposite of mental acuity is.

* In contrast to many sports where one of the two participants is guaranteed to win.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#277

Post by mac-mc » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 3:05 AM UTC

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 isn't, but you can also sometimes deduce things you didn't do as well if they were apparent. Like, if you couldn't answer a bunch of questions or finish the task on time, and all the other interviews were good, there is a good chance it was that thing, and you should brush up on it.

Sometimes interviews are designed to be a hard grind that everyone fails and it's based on 'did you fail the least', but those are rare and once you've done a bunch of interviews, you can tell the difference.

If your half way through a process, recruiters are often ok to tell you what you didn't do as well on and offer that as feedback and tips. At the end they tend to be quiet so you can't figure out the final reason for a rejection unless you somehow have a friend on the inside that can find out informally for you. If your lucky to get a rejection call, you can even get vague hints as to why it wasn't a go from the recruiter if you have the social skills and the right recruiter. I often play guessing games based on my deductions.

But these are more obvious parts.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#278

Post by tracerbulletx » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 3:06 AM UTC

Does anyone value coming off as psychologically stable any more?

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#279

Post by mac-mc » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 3:12 AM UTC

vjerancrnjak wrote: post #158

libraryofbabel wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They just have a pool that’s filled with bad candidates. They want to disable luck for them.

Ironically, they turn on luck even more.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#280

Post by user214412412 » Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 3:15 AM UTC

roadside_picnic wrote: post #206

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…

> the coding assistant interview focused on writing (what I felt was) an insane volume of code in a short period of time. I had a bunch of these my last round of interviews, and am not convinced most companies even know what they want from these or how to assess. In the majority of cases it was clear to me the interviewers never even read the code I had submitted. As an example, one company wanted a full AI Question/…

> Got it all done in time, met all acceptance criteria, had it so the entire thing could be run with one line of code (including building the RAG system, running evaluations, starting the webserver for the running API endpoint)... and rejected with no feedback a week later.

that is absolutely insane.