Anthropic Software Engineer interview experience

The recruiter request was explicit enough that it turned into a time sink—over 20 hours—before I even reached anything that felt like an interview.

It was frustrating because it didn’t feel connected to assessing how I’d perform in role-focused technical work. My time felt better spent elsewhere, especially given that system design interviews and practical engineering assessments would usually be the kind of prep that maps to the job.

By the time I heard the decision, it was clear that the podcast step hadn’t turned into an opportunity for real progress. The whole experience left me with a