I totally get the author’s frustration. I think such motivation and talent is a sign that there would be plenty of other groups happy to have the applicant. The trick to is connect with them, and not get so hung up on Anthropic specifically. Easier said than done though.
The reasons why companies hire or don't hire someone usually have very little with the candidate themselves. From my experience, whenever this machine needs another cog, almost any will do - usually the first one within reach. And when it doesn't, not even the shiniest one will be of interest. So it's probably nothing personal OP
As someone that recently failed a tech interview at the last stage after a long search, the only way to move forward is to just keep moving. Given your motivation and passion, there's definitely another place for you.
Also important to note, just because you like the product doesn't mean you'll love the team, anthropic is a well paying job but it's also just a job.
I have no idea to what extent Anthropic or other employers delve into prospective candidates’ blogs; but this strikes me as too much self-disclosure for one’s own good. We all have idiosyncrasies; but calling oneself weird on a now widely published blog article seems like it risks defeating the goal of making oneself an ideal candidate for many job opportunities.
Look, many of my own eccentricities have been (net) valuable to be professionally and personally, but it was probably better they be revealed “organically” rather than through a public act of self-disclosure.
I believe part of the post is referring to that idea (self disclosure and weirdness) itself, and the idea that the author usually does try to limit it. Even without this specific post, the "weirdness" can come across in an in-person interview and other ways. Some people are normal, some can pretend to be, and others either can't manage to pretend or its too difficult/painful to do for long periods of time.
Its not always bad to expose it and not always bad to get rejected because of it. Personality mismatch can make any job miserable.
Regardless, it feels bad to get rejected and that, I think, is what the article is making a point about.
> Over the past decade, I've been striving to spread joy, to do good, to be better. I'm trying so hard.
To give some advice that is loving but entirely unkind: knock it off.
No amount of spreading joy or do gooding is going to make you feel better. It can not, anymore than doing math homework will convince yourself that you are smart.
The problem is not what you want, it's how you want it. Or to put it another way, be the ocean not the wave.
You be you. You will find your people and your place.
It may just be that Anthropic isn't it.
I had a company that was like a white elephant for me for a long time. Got in there, and I will say: It was one of the worst experiences I had in my career.
Not all that glitters is gold, and happiness is often only discovered when it is gone. If you can avoid those two pitfalls in life. You'll do well better than me.
The disappointment of not getting a job offer seems reasonable. The disappointment about things that are core to who you are seems overboard to me. I feel the author could learn to be more comfortable in their own skin.
Also re this:
> “He’s cute, but he’s too weird”
If someone’s thinking this about you, you’re just not a good fit for each other. It isn’t that you’ve failed somehow. Maybe they’re cute but too “normal”.
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 meaningfully contribute to the existing roadmap, not whether you can bring your own unique perspective. This is especially true at mega huge corporate places like anthropic.
> 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.
I truly do not understand the use of this public self castigation; it does not strike me as healthy, if anything it’s a cry for help, and I’m uncomfortable being exposed to it.
> I can't turn my weird off, so I think I defensively dial it up sometimes
Hits close to home! For what it's worth, it sounds like you have an admirable level of self-reflection and - despite being painful at times - I expect that this will pay for itself over the course of your life.
> On top of their secret take-home assignment, I independently published diggit.dev and a companion blogpost about my [sincerely] positive experiences with Claude. I was hoping that some unsolicited "extra credit" would make me look like an exceptional/ambitious candidate.
As an employer, such brown-nosing would put me off. Being exceptionally eager to please can be a red flag.
> My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.
This is not how to understand this. They may have been hiring for say 50 positions.
They will just fill up those 50 positions with the people who reach a threshold, not stack-rank _everyone_ who reaches the threshold and pick the top 50.
There's little ROI in doing that, and potentially it reduces their list of candidates by taking longer.
You might have been mid way through the test just as person 50 was offered their role.
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 the interview or application process.
Having been on the hiring side of the interview table now many more times than on the seeking side, I can say that this is totally true.
One of the biggest misconceptions I see from job seekers, especially younger ones, is 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. It's simply not true. Frequently more than one good applicant applies for a single open role, and the hiring team has to choose among them. In that case, you could "pass" and still not get the job and the only reason is that the hiring team liked someone else better.
I can only think of one instance where we had two great candidates for one role and management found a way to open another role so we could hire both. In a few other cases, we had people whom we liked but didn't choose and we forwarded their resumes to other teams who had open roles we thought would fit, but most of the time it's just, "sorry."
Hell, I've interviewed people who were perfect for the job and whom I wanted to hire, only to be told that the financials of the business changed and we can't hire for that position any more.
I'd hope HR told the candidate that the position has been retracted, but maybe the HR system just sent an "unfortunately" email, I have no idea.
> One of the biggest misconceptions I see from job seekers, especially younger ones, is 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. It's simply not true. Frequently more than one good applicant applies for a single open role, and the hiring team has to choose among them. In that case, you could "pass" and still not get the job and the only reason is that the hiring team liked someone else better.
This hasn't been true for the interviews I've given. For technical interviews I was given a question and rubrik of what they should say and a clear guide on how to grade them and give feed back about performance. Unless they did something truly bizarre there wasn't room for being subjective
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.
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.
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 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?
The opposite can also be true. The worst job I ever had was where I was hired by a company, and placed on the team of, a hiring manager that had recommended I not be hired. He offered me no support at all. They just couldn't find many people willing to work at the company, and I was naive enough to just be excited that someone wanted me. I left after about 5 months.
"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.
Putting so much self worth into a single job application strikes me as unhealthy. Hiring decisions are have absurdly high variance. Everyone I know has been rejected from a job that seemed like a perfect, usually many times over. I'd say that's far more common than actually getting a given job.
Steve Yegge has a great story about Google HR doing an exercise with the eng hiring committee where they reviewed their own anonymized interview packets and they decided not to hire 40% of themselves.
what was the position? what are your credentials to fulfill that position? I feel like cover letters, and recommendations are just icing on the cake of core skills and experiences, not the entire cake.
If you are this emotionally invested in a job without having done it for some time, this is an accidental or insightful act of compassion from an amorphous over-funded company.
106 comments
[ 664 ms ] story [ 908 ms ] threadThat's the point at which I would have stopped the process personally.
Also important to note, just because you like the product doesn't mean you'll love the team, anthropic is a well paying job but it's also just a job.
Does this really belong on HN? Someone didn’t get a job they wanted. The end.
Its not always bad to expose it and not always bad to get rejected because of it. Personality mismatch can make any job miserable.
Regardless, it feels bad to get rejected and that, I think, is what the article is making a point about.
To give some advice that is loving but entirely unkind: knock it off.
No amount of spreading joy or do gooding is going to make you feel better. It can not, anymore than doing math homework will convince yourself that you are smart.
The problem is not what you want, it's how you want it. Or to put it another way, be the ocean not the wave.
It may just be that Anthropic isn't it.
I had a company that was like a white elephant for me for a long time. Got in there, and I will say: It was one of the worst experiences I had in my career.
Not all that glitters is gold, and happiness is often only discovered when it is gone. If you can avoid those two pitfalls in life. You'll do well better than me.
Also re this:
> “He’s cute, but he’s too weird”
If someone’s thinking this about you, you’re just not a good fit for each other. It isn’t that you’ve failed somehow. Maybe they’re cute but too “normal”.
So the only ones who make it are 100% flawless?
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 meaningfully contribute to the existing roadmap, not whether you can bring your own unique perspective. This is especially true at mega huge corporate places like anthropic.
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.
Hits close to home! For what it's worth, it sounds like you have an admirable level of self-reflection and - despite being painful at times - I expect that this will pay for itself over the course of your life.
As an employer, such brown-nosing would put me off. Being exceptionally eager to please can be a red flag.
Fuck some companies and their opaque, convoluted and too-precious hiring processes.
This is not how to understand this. They may have been hiring for say 50 positions.
They will just fill up those 50 positions with the people who reach a threshold, not stack-rank _everyone_ who reaches the threshold and pick the top 50.
There's little ROI in doing that, and potentially it reduces their list of candidates by taking longer.
You might have been mid way through the test just as person 50 was offered their role.
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.
Having been on the hiring side of the interview table now many more times than on the seeking side, I can say that this is totally true.
One of the biggest misconceptions I see from job seekers, especially younger ones, is 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. It's simply not true. Frequently more than one good applicant applies for a single open role, and the hiring team has to choose among them. In that case, you could "pass" and still not get the job and the only reason is that the hiring team liked someone else better.
I can only think of one instance where we had two great candidates for one role and management found a way to open another role so we could hire both. In a few other cases, we had people whom we liked but didn't choose and we forwarded their resumes to other teams who had open roles we thought would fit, but most of the time it's just, "sorry."
I'd hope HR told the candidate that the position has been retracted, but maybe the HR system just sent an "unfortunately" email, I have no idea.
This hasn't been true for the interviews I've given. For technical interviews I was given a question and rubrik of what they should say and a clear guide on how to grade them and give feed back about performance. Unless they did something truly bizarre there wasn't room for being subjective
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.
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.
There's a real reason. Maybe my perception is bad, maybe they misspoke, maybe they can explain something...
I don't want to be a fool and let a his candidate go.
I'm really picky but I'm also extremely forgiving and believe in improving the person and making it a beneficial experience regardless of the outcome.
Other people don't do this because I dunno, my pet theory is most people forget to be adults
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.