231–240 of 394 posts
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I'm 30 years in, and literally don't understand the question.
The question isn't clearly written down anywhere, that's why. Presumably actual candidates would have been given more info over the phone or email. Part of the "challenge" is reverse engineering their Python; unclear if that's intentional. If you look at the top of perf_takehome.py then there is a brief comment saying the challenge is to optimize a kernel. Kernel in GPU land means a program that computes on data in p…
Since the focus of the challenge appears(?) intended to be optimization, not reverse engineering, it's a bit odd that they don't give a clear statement of what the kernel is meant to be computing. Perhaps the challenge is intended to be a combination of the two, but then the correct reverse engineering part of it becomes a gate for the optimization part, else you'll be solving the wrong problem.
Given the focus on results achieved by Opus 4.5, maybe that's the main point - to show how well Opus can reverse engineer something like this. If they gave the actual clear problem statement, then maybe you could brute force an optimal solution using tree search.
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It's because the higher up the stack you go, tools become more declarative and literate. Calling sort is far easier than understanding the algorithm for example.
> Calling sort is far easier than understanding the algorithm for example. This was one of my gripes in college, why am I implementing something if I just need to understand what it does? I'm going to use the built-in version anyway.
So you can pass job interviews, of course!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's because the higher up the stack you go, tools become more declarative and literate. Calling sort is far easier than understanding the algorithm for example.
> Calling sort is far easier than understanding the algorithm for example. This was one of my gripes in college, why am I implementing something if I just need to understand what it does? I'm going to use the built-in version anyway.
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Which Gemini model did you use? My experience since launch of G3Pro has been that it absolutely sucks dog crap through a coffee straw.
> sucks dog crap through a coffee straw. That would be impressive.
The writing was on the wall for about half a year (publicly) now. The oAI 2nd place at the atcoder world championship competition was the first one, and I remember it being dismissed at the time. Sakana also got 1st place in another atcoder competition a few weeks ago. Google also released a blog a few months back on gemini 2.5 netting them 1% reduction in training time on real-world tasks by optimising kernels. If t…
It shocks me that anyone supposedly good enough for anthropic would subject themselves to such a one sided waste of time.
I generally have a policy of "over 4 hours and I charge for my time." I did this in the 4-hour window, and it was a lot of fun. Much better than many other take-home assignments.
Worth mentioning that demanding to be paid to apply for a company is usually equivalent to rejecting the job. Most companies are going to end the interview there. Few HR departments would allow one applicant to be paid for the same interview loop as other candidates.
I was helping out in a mentoring program during the ZIRP period when the idea of charging companies for take-home interviews started to become popular. I can’t think of anyone it actually worked for in that group. I’ve heard anecdotes online of some people doing it with success, but any company like Anthropic is just going to close your application and move on if you request to be paid for applying. They have a zillion other qualified candidates in line.
If someone is giving a take-home problem that looks like you’re actually doing work for the company, that’s a different story. This problem is not actually work, obviously.
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"1) Python is unreadable." Would you prefer C or C++? "2) AI companies are content with slop and do not even bother with clear problem statements." It's a filter. If you don't get the problem, you'll waste their time. "3) LOC and appearance matter, not goals or correctness." The task was goal+correctness. "4) Anthropic must be a horrible place to work at." Depends on what you do. For this position it's probably one o…
I think they also have open positions for stealing other people's code and DDoS-ing other people's websites.