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Flunking my Anthropic interview again

taylor.town

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Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#291

Post by commandersaki »

iamcreasy wrote: post #285
commandersaki wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much to it really; took about a month round trip time to get the data; I had to authenticate myself but that was relatively straightforward since I could use my account with the organisation which I used to submit the job application to also perform the authentication (though the actual process is a bit bizarre). Take Amazon for example that has a privacy query page: https://www.amazon.com/hz/contact-us/request-d…

Thanks for sharing. I wonder if it is possible to do in the US. Also, can you kindly elaborate on what you meant by 'bad read of the situation'?

I had thought I did well in all the interviews but was just bested by another candidate.

But the role continued to be advertised as they were hiring multiple headcount, so it seems the recruiter straight up lied and was trying to let me down gently. Reality settled when I saw all the hire/maybe hire/no hire positions of the interviewers.

I don’t disagree with any of the feedback or angry; I’m using all the data gathered to improve myself.

As for the privacy request, usually you agree to a privacy policy with most firms that say you can request a copy of the data anyway, don’t always need to use legislation to order it.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#292

Post by huhkerrf »

Bjartr wrote: post #236
gwbas1c wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no information in a rejection Building on that: There's a few reasons why a company won't explain why they reject a candidate. One of the reasons is that they don't want candidates to "game" the system, because it makes it hard to screen for the people they want to hire. Another reason is that often rejections are highly subjective, and telling a candidate that "we didn't hire you because of X" could be hi…

These are all likely enough to contribute, but there's one big one. If you don't say anything at all, the applicant has nothing to go on for a lawsuit against you. If you say anything, and the applicant is a malicious litigant, you just became a potential paycheck via settlement. If you're hiring a dozen people a year, you can probably ignore this. If you're hiring hundreds or thousands, and thus many times that numb…

I hear this about lawsuits a lot, but it doesn't really track for me. If a hiring manager says, "we decided to pass on you because you didn't go in depth as much as we hoped on how you would handle latency," why does that open the company up to a lawsuit anymore than no answer?

I could see if the feedback was "we wanted someone who better fit the culture," but giving a specific answer on a core hiring criteria doesn't seem like it would cause a problem.

In reality, I think the most likely reason is what others have mentioned, that candidates would argue the point.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#293

Post by com2kid »

almostgotcaught wrote: post #29

The post reads to me like all those movies about the nerd with a heart of gold that the hot girl will recognize and eventually marry.... which only happens in those movies. Do people really not understand that companies don't care one whit about your personality? They only care about whether you can make them more money. And that extends to interviewers; the number one thing interviewers care about is can you meaning…

> Do people really not understand that companies don't care one whit about your personality?

When I worked at the original incarnation of HBO Max our #1 hiring criteria was "not an asshole".

When I joined MSFT out of college, they were big on hiring for future potential.

In any large company you're going to be reorged to a brand new project within a couple years of joining, so being flexible and capable of learning quickly is of paramount importance.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#294

Post by jdlshore »

tayo42 wrote: post #255
dakiol wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think too much of HN.

I had a post here sit at #1 once for a day, I had 200k views from it. I think an ad would have been $2k? Not to bad I think

I’ve hit #1 multiple times. HN views are low-value and non-sticky, IME.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#295

Post by iamcreasy »

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…

Hi, can you share more about the coding assistant interview? Was it a task you had to solve and you were allowed to LLM to speed things up?

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#296

Post by tayo42 »

jdlshore wrote: post #294
tayo42 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a post here sit at #1 once for a day, I had 200k views from it. I think an ad would have been $2k? Not to bad I think

I’ve hit #1 multiple times. HN views are low-value and non-sticky, IME.

Sure I don't think you'll build a following just here if that's what you mean, but there is an audience. If you have the skill and technical knowledge to have articles hit the front page you will get a decent amount of views. Which is what i think this comment chain is talking about

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#298

Post by eszed »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #246
eszed wrote: 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…

I'm a computer engineer, EMT, and firefighter. I have scooped up brain matter from hot asphalt and run into burning buildings (without even getting paid for it). People ask me how I can do this. I dunno. Training and experience I guess. Doesn't bother me. But the idea of standing on a stage pretending to be someone else fills me with sheer terror. Even worse would be trying out for that job 100 times and getting reje…

It's all a matter of perspective. My uncle once brought his kids to see a big show I was in, and afterwards said just what you did. I looked at him, genuinely surprised, and said something like "dude, you're a surgeon. If I screw up at work 2,000 people laugh at me, and forget about it five minutes later; if you screw up at work, someone dies. You really think I should be the one feeling nervous?"

You're right about training and experience, though. I screwed up on stage (in loads of tiny ways, not usually perceptible to anyone but me) every time I ever stepped onto one, and in big ways lots and lots of times as well. But, you know, I always knew that I (with my castmates' help) would get out of it. Failure is inevitable, and it doesn't matter. In fact, if you haven't failed somehow, in at least some small way, then you either don't know what you're doing, or you aren't trying hard enough to succeed.

Also, when I was training young actors I always told them that they will never experience such unconditional love as when they first step in front of an audience. Those people have given at least their time and maybe their money to see you - don't you think they want you to succeed? They're rooting for you, none more so.

To bring this back to the larger subject of the thread, I think all of that's also true of every job interview any of us will ever attend, or conference paper we'll ever deliver. It'll never be perfect, and that's just fine.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#300

Post by josh2600 »

Every single time in my life that I’ve failed, there was a silver lining.

The only way to lose at the game of life is to give up.

There’s an old Soviet saying “even when you’re eaten by a bear , there’s still at least two ways out.”

You’re never out of options, there’s always new angles of imagination.

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