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Flunking my Anthropic interview again

taylor.town

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Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#351

Post by corimaith »

jp57 wrote: post #345
corimaith wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you know, this kind of information burden is one of the factors radicalizing the youth right now. These people don't just dissappear into a void if they are unwilling to accept that, they're organizing and being drawn to more radical movements to crush you. So is this way of dealing with workers here really that sustainable?

I wasn't advocating for any particular system, just stating the way things are, now, on the ground. That said, I have my doubts about the true extent of the radicalization of "the youth", at least in the USA, given that the DSA/Mamdani voter base is squarely bougie upper middle class college grads freaked out that elite overproduction has killed their job prospects. Whatever radical things they may do, the result won…

>Whatever radical things they may do, the result won't be to create more jobs for college grads.

They probably won't. But whatever damage is caused likely won't be good for us all anyways. Not everyone is going to have the luxury of being detached from crisis once radicals make sure they feel it too.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#352

Post by tibbar »

iamcreasy wrote: post #295
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?

Oh, what I meant was, this was an interview with a company that produces a coding assistant. Ironically, you really weren't supposed to use an LLM much for the interview, although I think you could use the company's product if you wanted. The restrictions were a bit unclear to me and I chose to try to code everything by hand, but in retrospect, that was probably not feasible.

The assignment was hard for me for a few reasons: There were many requirements; the requirements as stated were quite unclear to me; and it turned out that they were really referencing a certain standard solution to a standard problem that I was unfamiliar with. So we spent half the interview explaining the idea to me (bad!), and then the other half was me trying to code it up, and I just didn't get nearly far enough.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#353

Post by simoncion »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #342
simoncion wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perspective is earned, and cannot be given freely. Perspective is developed rather than earned . Having said that, a numbered list of rules can be given freely. That's, like, one of the points of writing things down or otherwise committing them to long-term storage.

>"Perspective is developed" That is often academic institutional marketing rhetoric. What seems reasonable or lucrative to the naive is not necessarily worth the legal encumbrances or investment risks. Rule #16: "One should listen to the person that signs the Checks, as the bank has already validated who is currently in charge of the account". Everyone has an opinion, but some opinions are more profitable than others…

> One should listen to the person that signs the Checks...

kek. keknado, even.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#354

Post by leoff »

mock-possum wrote: post #55
almostgotcaught wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's cringe. I'll never understand why people publish essentially personal diary entries in public spaces. It must be some kind of shame kink.

100% agree— > The first time I flunked an Anthropic interview (ca. 2022), I accidentally clicked a wrong button during their automated coding challenge. It was easy to swallow that failure. I made an honest mistake; I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews. > This is different. I didn't misclick any buttons. My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough. That’s a physically…

>>My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough. >what an awful way to talk about yourself

He's is not completely wrong with his line of thought, but I agree it's awful.

It took me long to figure this out for myself, the truth is that OP needs to grow up, and this is the perfect opportunity to do it.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#355

Post by InsideOutSanta »

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…

"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"

This is excellent advice in general.

When you're on Reddit long enough, you'll see posts from men about how they were kind and considerate to a woman, and she still didn't want to date them. But that's not how life works. It's not about putting kindness, skills, effort, and good intentions into the machine and receiving success in return.

You should do these things because you want to. For yourself. Not because you will definitely get any reward in return.

Aim to excel in a job interview because you are good at what you do. Aim for being kind to others because you're a good person. Aim to learn a new skill because you're curious and love learning. Help a friend because you value your relationships.

And be happy because of what you do, because of who you are, because you can be proud of yourself.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#356

Post by saagarjha »

anon35 wrote: post #311
saagarjha wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine to build a better world until then.

"Until then" means others will pay for your decision to ignore policy when it happens. It's never on the person who -- with every good intention, full of an instinct to "build a better world" -- willfully ignores the stuffy rules in handbooks and HR guidelines. Instead, when it backfires and someone does threaten to sue, it's precisely execs, HRs, legal who have to deal with it. The rules are there for good reason.

I run our hiring process and my employer is small enough that I would be personally responsible for this

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#358

Post by forducks »

kelnos wrote: post #163
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…

> you cannot draw any conclusions about yourself or your interviewing technique or your skills or anything from the single accept==0 bit And every role usually only gets one person accepted into it, or at most, a small number. Ideally they want the "best" person for the role (where "best" is highly subjective and context-dependent). Say 200 people applied for the role. Are you really going to feel bad about yourself…

Unsure about the author's financial situation but the calculus tends to change depending on it. I wasn't applying to Anthropic mind you but $50k-80k tech positions with 4 YoE in industry already. I had already burned through nearly all my savings before hitting another interview and rejection (for far less than what I used to make) and then realizing the job search had burnt me out and I was in danger of losing my lease and everything on top of that. I haven't gotten past a phone screen for half a year by now.

When America prescribes that you only deserve health insurance and shelter if you have a good enough job, and you're at the end of your rope financially, it is in my experience very difficult not to take things personally. I was actually pretty good at this earlier on, when I still had savings! But contrary to what some people say, it became harder and harder to stay positive as time went on until it became all but impossible. The last straw was when 13/hr jobs started rejecting me for not having "moving things around in a warehouse" experience.

I'm now having to work an eye-wateringly menial job with no experience requirement just to make ends meet, and even that still isn't enough for my poverty-level expenses. It's not the prestige of the job that bothers me but the fact that it isn't livable. It does feel sometimes that my life could have diverged significantly if I had just passed that interview all those months ago. So much was riding on that final interview and yet I didn't perform to some arbitrary unknowable standard to deserve a livable salary, and this is the end result of my rejection.

I'm hoping that if I get an HVAC certification or something I can just... survive comfortably. I don't think I'd be happy changing careers and I wanted to work in tech until I died or retired, but seems like it's not going to happen at this rate.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#359

Post by incone123 »

eszed wrote: post #333
incone123 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once got an emergency call to a theatre where a fight scene mishap left an actress punched out cold. There's less opportunity for harm in entertainment relative to medicine but it does happen sometimes.

You're right, and oh my god: don't get me started on the abysmal safety record of theatres, particularly towards the non-union end of the scale. I never got a fight director credential, but I was competent, and served as fight captain on any number of shows. 1.) Unarmed fights are the most dangerous type of scene, but also the most likely to be treated cavalierly by people who don't know any better. 2.) There are saf…

She was alert when we got there. We took her in as a precaution/for observation. Don't know what happened after that but the loss of consciousness was brief so she was probably fine.

Re: Flunking my Anthropic interview again

#360

Post by iamcreasy »

tibbar wrote: post #352
iamcreasy wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Oh, what I meant was, this was an interview with a company that produces a coding assistant. Ironically, you really weren't supposed to use an LLM much for the interview, although I think you could use the company's product if you wanted. The restrictions were a bit unclear to me and I chose to try to code everything by hand, but in retrospect, that was probably not feasible. The assignment was hard for me for a few…

Thank you. Interesting. Can you share a mock example of the problem you had to solve?
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