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I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

grell.dev

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Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't they an AI company? Couldn't they sort it out? If Anthropic, of all companies, can't sort out incoming job applications, what exactly are their tools for?

Compute is a precious resource. The world is also full of totally delusional people who dreamed up the idea of using winzip to compress VRAM on the GPU, and now Anthropic will definitely hire them for $1M year for this genius solution, so better write up a glammed up resume and auto-send it once a day for any open position.

Is it? What I've been marketed is that AI is widely available for every task I could conceptually think of, and that I should be using it for everything.

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the spirit of this comment, but I worry about the implementation. See the comment of Manly read in this section. Once the threat of payment approaches, you can just switch to a free fork. A single person can't really win a trial against a big, well-funded company.

I don't really see how this is an issue, depending on the license text it's trivial to make the license apply in the same manner. As for winning, I think that's more of a US-centric view, if you sue elsewhere in the world there's plenty of courts that are happy to slap big tech.

Suing a major corporation still seems like quite a bit of work, and what's the end goal? Is it to humble a major company, or to get paid? Because if it's the latter, it feels like there are easier ways to do so.

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#293
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm disappointed about your resigned, almost subservient tone. This company is profiting immensely off of your work, and they don't even give you the courtesy of a job interview? ~~Have you considered a copyleft licence like LGPL?~~ Answered in a sibling comment

> This company is profiting immensely off of your work I wouldn’t say that’s exactly the case. Not to denigrate the author or anything, but this library is a relatively minor part of what Anthropic is doing. It’s a UI manipulation library, specifically one that simulates keyboard and mouse inputs. While something like that is certainly necessary for the project in question, it’s not anything that couldn’t be rewritte…

Also worth noting that NONE of the AI companies are profiting at all, let alone “immensely”.

Google is, but not from AI.

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#294

Hey, I'm the author of the blog post. Thank you for submitting this. If you have any questions feel free to ask and please let me know how the writing was. It's one of my first posts so I'd like to improve

Can you please send me your resume:

Andrew@gambit.us

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#295
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This lands. I discovered an emergent feature in GTP40 and when I tried to post about it on the developer forum, the spam filter removed my post. I asked GPT40 to rewrite it for me. I posted the update, and got banned. There's too much 'noise'. People like Einstein and Tesla would've gone unnoticed today, as I doubt they would've become "social media influencers" just to promote their ideas.

edison was pretty good at self promo

Absolutely. He had a rare combination of skills and personality traits. He was good at sourcing unorthodox talent too -- he employed immigrant Tesla!

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#296

Unfortunately, this seems on par with recruitment practices in the summer of 2025. I can almost guarantee that they didn't even read that application / cover letter and auto-magically rejected it. "the team doesn't have the capacity to review additional applications" Zero effort. They probably didn't even realize the relevance of that specific application for that role. Unbelievable, I swear!

Tbf, I'd rather get a "we didn't review your CV" response than a template "we are continuing with other candidates :)" response. It softens the blow considerably and helps me as an applicant better keep track on which variation of the CV is working best because I can just remove this datapoint.

Unfortunately, "we didn't review your CV" is a great way to get sued in the US if the name of the applicant is in any way potentially indicative of the applicant's gender, race, religion, or any other protected status.

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't they an AI company? Couldn't they sort it out? If Anthropic, of all companies, can't sort out incoming job applications, what exactly are their tools for?

Compute is a precious resource. The world is also full of totally delusional people who dreamed up the idea of using winzip to compress VRAM on the GPU, and now Anthropic will definitely hire them for $1M year for this genius solution, so better write up a glammed up resume and auto-send it once a day for any open position.

IDK, compute isn't really that precious. If $20/mo can get you many (?) invocations of their research agent, I feel like it could pretty easily be worth it to screen applications for jobs that pay $350K/year -- and that's just "entry-level"![1]

That said, their career page puts this at the very top of the details section:

  We value direct evidence of ability: If you’ve done interesting independent research, written an insightful blog post, or made substantial contributions to open-source software, put that at the top of your resume!
This guy seems rad, but his GitHub[2] and this blog are both light details or links, which is odd considering that his LinkedIn[3] is detailed+professional. Perhaps Anthropic does have Claude screening resumes, but he didn't express the nature of the situation clearly enough for it to catch it?

Otherwise, the only other explanation I see that doesn't look terrible for Anthropic is they didn't see a need for more Rust expertise...?

[1] https://www.levels.fyi/companies/anthropic/salaries/software...

[2] https://github.com/pentamassiv

[3] https://www.linkedin.com/in/robingrell/

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbf, I'd rather get a "we didn't review your CV" response than a template "we are continuing with other candidates :)" response. It softens the blow considerably and helps me as an applicant better keep track on which variation of the CV is working best because I can just remove this datapoint.

> Tbf, I'd rather get a "we didn't review your CV" response than a template "we are continuing with other candidates :)" response. Idk it sounds plausible that OP might just have been late to the party, and applied when the recruitment process was at the final stages.

Its a perpetum mobile. Hiring managers use automation to filter candidates, coz its too many. Candidates see they dont even pass automatic filtering, so they apply with tailored CVs x10. This means even more CVs and more filtering and more CVs and more filtering and more CVs etc etc etc

Im curious at which point ppl will understand its counter productive.

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should change the license to AGPL and 'custom, contact for payment details', and provide a link to this as why you did so. Simply put, anything not a viral license like GPL allows parasitization by companies effectively living off FLOSS devs, with absolutely nothing to gain. Human rights under GPL were meant to apply to humans, not '3 lawyers in a trench coat' (corporations). They can make their decisions (snubbi…

Some people want others to freely use their software and choose MIT precisely because it's more free than GPL. There's nothing wrong with just making something for free and giving it away if that's what you want. Not everybody has to be chasing money in all their activities. The author said he was proud of this outcome and nervous at how widely his hobby project will be deployed. That sounds like the ambition of many…

> Some people want others to freely use their software and choose MIT precisely because it's more free than GPL.

MIT license is absolutely not 'more free' than the GPL.

In fact, MIT means you give up effective ownership and control. You lose control and contributions.

And what do you get for that loss of control? Exposure. Or, in this and many other cases similar, you get diddly shit. Some company paracitizes your code, sometimes even demands SOC questionnaires and 'do this bug NOW', and other abuse.

> Not everybody has to be chasing money in all their activities.

Talk about missing the point! This was all about money. It was about a job at the company where the code is being used in a production manner. And they didn't even bother to give an interview.

And not many of us are independently wealthy, and can do things that we want with no monetary care. And, most FLOSS devs aren't that. Instead, they're being used as unpaid stepping stones so some overvalued AI hypesquad can vibecode (or slotmachine programming) faster.

> The author said he was proud of this outcome and nervous at how widely his hobby project will be deployed. That sounds like the ambition of many open source authors and a win. Might never have happened with GPL.

That's where I hope the author relicenses as LGPL and proprietary, and doesn't give Anthropic any more free professional work.

And if it never would have happened with the GPL, gasp, they would have had to pay developers to create it.

And until I'm independently wealthy, I too will license AGPL. If you're making money on my stuff, I want a cut. Simple as that.

Re: I gave the AI arms and legs then it rejected me

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. Thanks for the link, but I wasn't actually trying to steal anyone's thunder, and ... I did read the article. Just felt that it wouldn't hurt to link to it. Also, that discussion gets pretty mean. Didn't feel like I wanted to send people there. I just wanted to give the guy a pat on the back, and bring some humor into it. Been there. Sucks.

I don't know--As a non-celebrity tech worker, it's actually kind of comforting to see a company that doesn't just automatically roll out the red carpet and grease internal wheels, just because a candidate once wrote some very popular software. It sounds like there are still companies that make you go through the same whiteboard hazing and non-deterministic hiring process as the rest of us mere mortals, regardless of…

Actually, I don't disagree with some of the people that had issues with him, but I do have issues with folks that refuse to look at past performance, in general (I'm biased. I have a great deal of past performance, and can prove it).

It was just a kind of nasty conversation, and I didn't feel that it was appropriate to deliberately send folks there. I'm not really into the whole "Make the Internet Darker for Everyone" schtick.

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