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."

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 a short period of time. I did not do well. By contrast, another company asked me to spend a day working on a particular niche optimization problem; that was the entire interview loop. I happened to stumble on some neat idea, and therefore did well, but I don't think I could reliably repeat that performance.

To reiterate - wow! the interviews are hard, every company is selecting for the top of a different metric, and there's really no shame in not passing one of these loops. Also, none of these companies will actually give you your purpose in life, your dream job will not make you whole:-)

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.

Dear Author,

the internet is not your friend, but a kind of alien intelligence - vast, cool, and unsympathetic, in HG Wells' formulation. Publicly melting down (even anonymously) is not going to help you; if anything, you'll just end up feeling more isolated.

You need to work out your self-image issues with a person instead of projecting them onto your environment. That person might be a friend of therapist, or several people helping you with different things, and finding the right person(s) is likely to involve several false starts and blind alleys. You should pursue this work in person. Parasocial relationships are a necessity in this day and age, but over-reliance on them is ver bad for your mental health.

Overall, I enjoyed the essay and agree with the messaging. However, there were a few sentences that threw me off. I personally struggle with self-esteem issues, and I found these words extremely triggering, despite being sandwiched between words of self-affirmation.

> My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.

> I don't mind feeling ugly or low-status or whatever -- I know my place.

> I don't need (or deserve) your sympathy.

It's difficult to tell if this is just rhetoric / sarcasm, or if the writer successfully processed through these initial feelings. Either way, I take these moments seriously because it's not healthy to let these feelings grow.

If you feel like you're struggling, I encourage you to talk to someone -- preferably a therapist, but anyone supportive works like a friend or family.

If you're adamant about not talking to someone, consider reading The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown.

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.

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.

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

I recently interviewed for Anthropic, 6 rounds, recruiter was great, said they were putting together an offer letter. I met one of the managers, then another came back from vacation... and then they decided not to give me an offer.

I asked for feedback, and the recruiter sounded frustrated (about the internal process), because they had a moving bar on what was wanted from the hiring managers. I know I hadn't completely aced one of the interviews (they had me do a second one), and apparently they thought it was good enough on initial review, but when coming back to review it again it was not good enough.

It seems like they are going through growing pains as a company.

Here's why it's wrong to think you did something wrong when you get rejected from a job:

Sometimes, a company has multiple candidates that pass the interview with flying colors for a single role. They need to pick someone, and reject the remaining great candidates. If luck or timing was different and you were the only great candidate, they would have just picked you. But now they have a few, and have a hard time deciding who is "better". Often, they kind of punt on hunches, gut feelings, or things that don't really say anything about you at all.

You end up with the "Unfortunately..." email anyway.

If you do happen to get some feedback, well that's actionable. It's something you can improve and the next time at bat you'll be in a better position to do well.

Yeah, I recently had an offer letter in hand, the company flew me out to do a final security review since it was a sensitive cyber sec role, did a 2-hour long polygraph test which went quite well honestly, but then 3 weeks later they told me they have decided to move ahead with another candidate? Made no sense and broke me down for weeks. Totally defeated. I still don't understand how they could move ahead with another candidate if they had already given me an official offer letter, but eh life goes on I suppose.

> 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.

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.

Every single time in my life that I’ve failed, there was a silver lining.

The only way to lose at the game of life is to give up.

There’s an old Soviet saying “even when you’re eaten by a bear , there’s still at least two ways out.”

You’re never out of options, there’s always new angles of imagination.

Somewhat OT but I just don’t like the current iteration of DevRel.

Initially I saw the folks in this field as hype-persons, but their concrete output was tools that were useful for developers. The author did create this! But it was in service of landing a role at the company.

The people that work in this field now seem to mostly just get into beefs on the internet, create funny posts on Linkedin. Which… doesn’t seem very useful for developers.

Dear OP, start a high quality AI code YouTube/Twitch/Substack and you’ll do more “devrel” than they ever could.

If it’s really your favorite thing, your content will be world class.

If you do this, I’ll be your first paid sub. Get in the arena, OP (and maybe don’t quit your day job until you’ve gained much more steam! :)

Why is Anthropic hiring developers? Amodei said that AI will be generating all the code by the end of the year.

The author writes "I respect [Anthropic's] approach to responsible AI adoption," Anthropic of course being the asswipes who published this turd[0] on university students' use of LLMs. It starts with the absolute gem:

> AI systems are no longer just specialized research tools: they’re everyday academic companions.

The article basically shrugs its shoulders at the problem of LLM-driven cheating and, to the best of my recollection, shows not a shred of honesty or willingness to face any of the real issues. Fuck Anthropic.

[0] https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-education-report-ho...

I know there are comments here ridiculing the OP about posting this. Some asking OP to be stronger. All I want to say is posting something like this takes way more strength than what those commenters will ever allow themselves to experience. Expressing is a way of healing and no the internet is not a cold dry space. It is a place of feeling humans who could all use encouragement to show vulnerability like this. I don’t know if OP got some healing from this but a lot of similarly lost readers felt a little less alone.

> 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.

> My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.

This is a really bad way of thinking. Apart from the fact that he doesn’t know the reason behind the decision (and this already heroically assumes that there was any reasoning to begin with), why would you make yourself so dependent on total strangers?

I would expect most of us here have faced many rejections, some of which were deeply painful. When you care about something, some say, losing it hurts. (But was there ever a guarantee? Or was it only an expectation?)

Some people find ways to focus on the process itself and don't couple their well-being to the "end result" (whether success or failure).* This is a practice. You can learn it from others and from experience.

It is one thing to be honest with oneself and say "Yes, this thought is coming into my mind". You don't have to deny that feeling. That is one thought in your head. Acknowledge it and move on. You don't have to repeat it. You don't have to try to 'analyze' it. You can think about something else, and changing your brain patterns is probably a good idea. If the same idea pops up again, fine. Remember to be patient with yourself.

Some ideas that might work for you include: Find emotional support where you can. / Learn cognitive techniques to remind yourself to not fall into ruts. / Put sticky notes on walls. / Do something totally different. / Sunshine and fresh air can do a lot of good.

If one of these things doesn't seem to help, thank yourself for trying it, don't worry, try something else. If you need more support (mental health for example), seek it out.

* And how do you define the end-result? How much you helped people you care about? Maybe a time-averaged well-being metric? Something else? This is deeply personal, and I think it is worth reflecting on.

I wish I had the courage to post and talk like this more. I really resonated with the authors words as these kinds of feelings make up a lot of my internal monologuing some days.

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.

> I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews.

So the only ones who make it are 100% flawless?

Hiring is always a sh*tshow. The only thing that matters is survival: keep applying, keep grinding, keep growing.

And if there's any opportunity to show off, don't be shy :)

I was selected to represent my high school as a candidate for computer science at a state-level competition. The teacher in charge of selection made it clear that he very much didn't want to pick me -- there just weren't any better options. He explained that my portfolio was all based on user skills. Nothing showed a deeper understanding of the underlying principles of computing. I didn't incorporate any of this feedback and was thoroughly humbled later on. It was a well-deserved loss.

Twenty plus years later and I've still never had more useful interview-related feedback and I'm still grateful he was willing to share that criticism. Now, having been on the flip side of the process quite a bit, I especially appreciate how hard it is to provide meaningful "negative" feedback.

Hey! In my opinion the rejection doesn't really matter.

I really like diggit.dev, your approach, and I appreciate that you use Elm!

Keep pushing forward!

What did you flunk? There was no interview in both cases..

> I can't turn my weird off

Why not?

If you have conscious insight into what behaviour is or isn't "weird" in a specific situation or environment, you absolutely can choose to turn it off, or at least damp it down. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't, and there's no judgement. But if you can identify it, you can choose.

Too much emphasis on this position and this company.

> I posted diggit.dev to HackerNews and it hit the frontpage!

Again, too much emphasis on HackerNews and the position of a post

What do you want from them? Are you confused or distracted by all this?

This isn't a big deal, just a small thing. Be stronger.

Focus on what will bring long-term peace and benefit. Experience every process and enjoy everything, rather than frustration, self-blame, pain, or other negative emotions. It's always better to find solutions and enjoy the present moment.

I don't want to teach or instruct anyone, just a little of my thoughts. If you feel offended, sorry for that.

> 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.

To you and anyone else who's struggled with the roller coaster of rejection and not feeling good enough I highly recommend stopping what you're doing right now and watching Jonah Hill's incredible movie, "Stutz" https://www.netflix.com/title/81387962 . As someone who recently went through a barrage of rejections and self doubt this movie blew me away and offers practical "tools" that may help.

Great post.

My gut reaction is something like: "don't wait around to be picked, get out there and do great stuff"

Want to help the world get the most out of claude? Go out there and do it at an ability and velocity beyond what others think is possible. Go so hard friends think you're mad. That devs consuming your stuff think you're mad.

Create so much amazingly useful/helpful content and help so many people in so many ways that looking back in 1-2 years at the idea of working for anthropic would seem insane to you.

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.

I wish I could unread this, gonna wash my eyes now

You’re incredibly talented, Taylor. Their loss, sincerely. If they didn’t hire you, know that it wasn’t the right fit and you shouldn’t be there. Your talents are needed elsewhere.

I also got rejected by Anthropic, and now I’m working at an amazing startup instead. Anthropic’s hiring process is dumb, you shouldn’t take it personally.

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”.

Does anyone value coming off as psychologically stable any more?

I think a lot of these organizations are just really immature in their hiring because of growth. That’s my experience with Sweden’s Loveable at least.

That coupled with a high amount of candidates I wouldn’t think much of failing one (biased, I ”failed” one this summer :) )

Hey, I feel you on rejection - it stings. Just remember that, like any company, that place is just a collection of humans making imperfect decisions with limited information. Trust me. Your worth isn't defined by one hiring decision.

> I made an honest mistake; I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews.

Follow-up: do you expect companies to fire employees who make mistakes?

DevRel is basically marketing to devs. So it helps to be more marketer than dev. And these are like two opposite poles.

Not sure how I feel about “front-paging hackernews” as part of a devrel take home test. Obviously, I understand how important it is—I want my devrels to write content that drives front page traffic. But as a HN user…

I wish I could right like this. The flow is crazy and the words are honest and beautiful.

> It was easy to swallow that failure. I made an honest mistake; I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews.

what a ridiculous statement

> I can't turn my weird off

That might be your problem right there. Deciding you can't do something is always a self-fulfilling prophecy. How hard have you tried?

I learned to turn my weird off a long time ago. It wasn't easy. It took many years. It was painful at times. But I did it. If I can do it, you probably can too.

P.S. You might want to think about whether or not turning your weird off is something you actually want. Being normal comes with its own set of trade-offs. But if you are going to keep your weird you should do it because it's something you decide you want, not because it's something you decide you are powerless to change.

Having been from the other side of the table. You did not flunk anything again.

A job process is not an exam where if you do well you succeed.

Your "performance" plays a small role in whether you are accepted (maybe less than 30%). The rest is:

- The pipeline: that is who are your competitors, is there someone late in the process, is there someone a manager worked with / knows

- Your CV: obviously at the point of the interview, you can't change your history

- The position fit: basically who they're looking for. They might have a profile in mind (let's say someone extrovert to do lots of talks, or someone to devrel to enterprise) where you simply don't fit.

- The biases: And there is looot of these. For instance, some would open your blog and say it's unprofessional because of the UI. Not saying that is the case, it's simply their biases.

So, my advice, you reached hn front page twice in a couple of months. Most people, me included, never did. You clearly have something. Find work with people that see that.

heh i got rejected from google about 15 years ago. I remember exactly where i was standing (outside on the sidewalk), color and placement of leaves on the grass, even the specific joints and cracks on the sidewalk i was standing on when i got the news. I don't hold a grudge or have any regrets but i remember that moment vividly.

I sent my application in a week ago. So what you’re saying is I still have a chance?

But were you non threatening and likable? In many cases that will be a greater factor than your technical competence.

The best sales people don't get crushed by rejection. They are clear eyed about what is in their control, what can be learned, and what must be improved in the future.

Then they do this magical thing called — moving on. It's an incredible skill to cultivate.

You're amongst many of us who have also faced rejection.

On the bright side, do you think that Claude would pass any coding interview without problems?

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.

Your site makes me think I have to wipe off my screen

Probably auto rejected by Claude screening agent. Nothing PERSONAL.

This is so sad. Can’t imagine weighing my self worth on whether I get a job at a company that’s clearly partly to blame for the economic bubble. So what you didn’t get access to a get rich quick scheme opportunity - move on.

Try again in six months. Don't give up.

Rejection is just another word for redirection, looking back far enough you will understand why it wasn't a good idea.

Last year I applied to Anthropic. I did one of those HackerRank assessments and scored 49/50 on my implementation of a K/V store with TTL, get/put/append, and some other operations I can't remember.

Right after that, they said there were no positions available. It was pretty disappointing.

Lately I’ve been thinking I might have better odds making a straight shot for ASI on my own over practicing and rehearsing the material that needs to be presented almost perfectly in the AI interviews. I’ve worked at FANG in ML / applied research for almost a decade but still can’t even get a screening interview at the top places without asking someone I know for a referral. And I really hate bugging former coworkers for referrals. Normally end up procrastinating on reaching out until the job postings just disappear haha.

51 game number hack

You sound like you'd be a great teammate. Hang in there and best of luck next time.

> I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews.

I mean--maybe their interview process is overly harsh? They could miss out some good candidates that way.

> I don't need (or deserve) your sympathy.

Hey person, don't be so hard on yourself. The world is already hard enough to just live in. Hoping you find an alternate and maybe more enjoyable career path :)

wow.

there's only info in a rejection if the company that is rejecting cares about their field ..., meaning so rare almost no professional has ever witnessed anything like it ... ever ...

anyway, ... dude ... if any of the shit you write is true, you are applying at a submissive company while having zero submissive traits except those you fake ...

And here's my dating advice: you want someone you can fight with all the time and chill the next second and then fight again, while knowing you don't want anyone else ... and vice versa ... it's quite likely something along the unwritten but equally sarcastic, cynic, ironic reversed (inversed?) lines of Tim 'The Wannabe-Leprechaun' Munchkins (Minchin) "If I didn't have you" ... good luck

This is what blogging was, should be, and maybe will be again some day.

Fuck some companies and their opaque, convoluted and too-precious hiring processes.

typo: post-scarity

I enjoyed reading, thank you

This whole essay is cringe. They're not your girlfriend. They're not "guiding humanity toward post-scarity AI abundance" whatever the hell that means.

Getting rejected from a job always stings, but it's worse if you build it up to be more than it is. There's a dozen other AI companies out there shoveling the same shit, go apply to them. It's a job, not a vocation. Try to keep it all in perspective.

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.

oof

> 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.

> take-home assignment

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

Anthropic from a technology perspective does interesting work, but from a business perspective its long-term viability is unclear. LLM generated slop will unlikely make it through the valley of despair in the Gartner hype cycle.

Rule #3: popularity is not an indication of utility.

Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win.

The fact is all employees that produce intangible assets look like a fiscal liability on paper. If you don't have project history in a given area, than managers quietly add training costs and retention issue forecasts on that hiring decision.

I found the dynamic range anecdote by Steve Jobs (a controversial figure) was rather accurate across many business contexts =3

https://youtu.be/TRZAJY23xio?feature=shared&t=2360

I will add to some of the other excellent comments here: my time as a hiring manager at Apple and other Silicon Valley companies convinced me that I can never know the real reason I do not get a gig.

I saw good people rejected for stupid reasons, illegal reasons, and borderline reasons. It’s just a decision that is personal and largely irrational to the people who control the process.

Many people in a position to hire want someone they believe they can control. Do you come off as a doormat? Congratulations, you are more employable.

Many hiring managers want to be with attractive people. Are you attractive?

Written like AI slop for an AI slop generating company. Great.

Does this really belong on HN? Someone didn’t get a job they wanted. The end.

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.

Do I need to clean my screen or is it just your site