Anthropic Software Engineer interview experience

I stayed engaged through the loop, including a references check, and near the end I still had momentum.

Then I got the rejection at the last minute. The feedback was tied to leadership putting extra pressure on a “culture bar,” and the main reason given was that I didn’t seem sufficiently connected to the mission. I did get an additional follow-up interview, but even that got rescheduled because the interviewer didn’t know what questions to ask, which made the whole final stretch feel shaky.

What was hardest wasn’t just the no—it was how late it came and how much effort I had invested