- Anthropic hiring manager Felix Rieseberg reveals that coding interviews are over
- In a blog post, the engineering manager explains that Claude codes better, making coding tasks obsolete
- Rieseberg encourages junior engineers to approach their work with a new attitude, while he examines a way to interview people who are good at AI coding
The end is nigh for coding tasks in interviews, certainly as far as Anthropic is concerned.
The AI company’s engineering manager Felix Rieseberg has published a blog post explaining how junior engineers should approach jobs and their current roles, after announcing the abandonment of coding interviews.
His rationale for the decision is straightforward: AI codes better than humans, making the assessment pretty pointless. At a time when Claude can demonstrate a superior grasp of coding, putting job candidates through the process no longer reveals anything “meaningful about the candidates,” according to Rieseberg.
Instead, he advises that junior engineers should focus instead on making an impact, while taking the time to understand the company and the people working within it.
No code candidates
Rieseberg is quick to the point: “This month, I laid the traditional coding interview to rest. As a hiring manager at Anthropic, I stopped asking candidates to do them.”
He explains that while coding challenges in interviews were once useful, that is no longer the past. “There’s no more point in giving you a little React challenge than there is in quizzing people about assembly; Claude is now better at both.”
Instead, Rieseberg offers some anecdotes of people who were active agents of change when joining new companies, and suggests making an impact is the answer. Radical ideas and a weekend coding a prototype with AI are the new coding interview, essentially, approaching being hired with a demonstration of the project they prompted and finessed, and its outcome.
“Sheer ignorance”
Rieseberg’s decision may have come out of the blue, but his rationale seems to make some sort of sense. He quotes actor and director Orson Welles, who responded to a question about his confidence to try new things with “Ignorance, sheer ignorance — you know there’s no confidence to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession, I think, that you’re timid or careful.”
With that as context, Rieseberg’s conclusion that coding interviews are not the answer when the company product already codes better than anyone it can hire has legs. Perhaps it was inevitable that the day would come, but crucially, Rieseberg isn’t giving up on hiring. Instead, he’s looking for a new way to do it, a route to finding new junior engineers without them needing a coding assessment.
“I’m probably not the only manager trying to figure out how to interview for people who build well with AI. I haven’t quite gotten there yet — but I’m scanning resumes and portfolios for little prototypes that exhibit taste, empathy, and principled thinking.”
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