Software Engineer, Safeguards Interview Experience
The weirdest Anthropic round was the company values interview. It was almost like a therapy session, and honestly if you went to a therapist at some point, you will pass that round much more easily.
Interview process
I did a hard pre-assessment first, then the recruiter fast-tracked me because I already had other offers and got me through the rest of the loop in about a week. The onsite was five rounds for me: hiring manager, coding, company values, system design, and then another coding round. The most unusual part was the company values interview, which was run by nontechnical people and felt almost like a therapy session because they kept probing how I felt, not just what I did. The technical rounds were more practical than I expected, while the behavioral side was where I felt the real pressure. I finished the loop, but at the time of this conversation, I was still waiting on the outcome.
- Online assessment
- Recruiter screen
- Phone interview
- Technical interview
- Other
Interview tips
I would prep the behaviorals way harder than the technicals for this one. The technical rounds were not easy, especially the LRU cache, because they keep layering complexity, but the real trap is the values round. I would have real stories ready about conflict, morally gray situations, tough feedback, and times I was wrong, and I would practice actually talking about how I felt instead of only explaining the logic. I also think it helps to be a little skeptical rather than giving them the generic 'I love your mission' answer.
Company culture
I got the sense they take interviewing really seriously. I had shadow interviewers three different times, which I almost never see, and that usually means they care a lot about calibrating interviewers. They also seemed unusually rigorous about references early in the process. Once they knew I had competing offers, they wanted references from day one, specifically a former boss at a pretty senior level and a coworker. Compared with OpenAI, which felt much more internal-referral heavy to me, Anthropic felt more focused on external references and actual background on how I work. They can move very fast when they want to, and the recruiter was unusually transparent about what I should prep.
Questions asked
Overview
I had to do a CodeSignal-style pre-assessment over email before I even really got into the process. I remember it being pretty hard. After the recruiter call, they were going to add another assessment, but because I had other offers they skipped that part and moved me forward fast.
Question types asked
