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Flunking my Anthropic interview again

(taylor.town)
369 points surprisetalk | 4 comments | 29 Aug 25 14:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.743s | source
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iLoveOncall ◴[29 Aug 25 14:33 UTC] No.45064655[source]▶
> take-home assignment

That's the point at which I would have stopped the process personally.

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whatamidoingyo ◴[29 Aug 25 14:43 UTC] No.45064790[source]▶
> That's the point at which I would have stopped the process personally.

Why is that? I love take-home assignments. At least, if it's just an initial get-to-know-you interview, and then the assignment. What I utterly despise is the get-to-know-you interview, then a tech interview with the entire dev team, then a take-home, then a meeting with the CTO.

I will never, ever, ever go through with any job that has an interview process like this again. I always ask up-front what their interview process is like.

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iLoveOncall ◴[29 Aug 25 14:57 UTC] No.45064993[source]▶
Because it's time theft?

Why would I spend 4 hours (in the best case scenario, otherwise days) on the very first step of the application process, where, regardless of my resume, I have an extremely high chance to be rejected, while the company puts literally no time in?

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1. whatamidoingyo ◴[29 Aug 25 15:03 UTC] No.45065081[source]▶
Well, that's different. If it's a super challenging take-home, with requirements that exceed 1 page, then yeah, I'd agree. Most take-homes that I've received have been super simple, though. And they're usually not the first step, but the final step, in my experience.
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2. iLoveOncall ◴[29 Aug 25 15:06 UTC] No.45065116[source]▶
Simple does not mean short. I can give you a one line take-home assignment that will take a lifetime to build.

In any case, if it exceeds one or two HOURS, it's too long. And I have never seen a take-home assignment that did not.

(some companies pay for your time for take-home assignments, obviously that changes everything)

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3. crooked-v ◴[29 Aug 25 17:14 UTC] No.45066784[source]▶
I've been at a past company where we (well, mostly I) set up a take-home that would take a mid-level web dev familiar with the material maybe 15-30 minutes to knock out, basically just to test if candidates could produce responsive CSS layouts and knew how to make a proper web form work. It was wild how many we got back that still didn't account for basic (explicitly outlined) use cases like 'works on a phone screen'.
4. stackbutterflow ◴[29 Aug 25 20:48 UTC] No.45069222[source]▶
A take home should come with a project already set up that you're asked to modify.

Most don't and they waste your time setting up all the boilerplate.