The Curious Case of Flunking My Anthropic Interview (Again)

Here's a vague overview of what just happened:

1. I recently applied for Anthropic's Developer Relations role.
2. My friend who works there gave me a glowing recommendation (thanks again, dude!).
3. I completed their secret take-home assignment.
4. 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.
5. I posted diggit.dev to HackerNews and it hit the frontpage!
6. I submitted my take-home assignment and my unsolicited extra credit.
7. They sent me the "unfortunately" email.

Anthropic obviously didn't do anything wrong. I'm just bummed.

Claude Code truly is one of my favorite dev tools ever, and if you've suffered through my talks/interviews, you're probably sick of my enthusiasm for software. I was particularly excited to interview with Anthropic because I respect their approach to responsible AI adoption. This very blog is too often a crazed celebration of humans, of software, of AI, of progress, of sincerity -- I, I felt like I was a perfect fit.

The first time I flunked an Anthropic interview (ca. 2022), I accidentally clicked a wrong button during their automated coding challenge. It was easy to swallow that failure. I made an honest mistake; I expect companies to reject candidates who make honest mistakes during interviews.

This is different. I didn't misclick any buttons. My best wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough.

This essay started as a fantasy: some hero at Anthropic reads this on HackerNews and vouches for me and I get the job and I help them guide humanity toward post-scarity AI abundance, forever and ever, amen. I'm ashamed of these thoughts. It's the same folly of explaining to an ex-girlfriend why she's wrong about her own experience.

Dating was difficult for me. I don't mind feeling ugly or low-status or whatever -- I know my place. But it hurts to feel seen, feel considered, but ultimately rejected due to mysterious forces: "He's cute, but he's too weird."

Yes, I'm weird. My eccentric habits have been an overall boon for my career, for my relationships, for my well-being. But it's moments like these when I just want to turn all my weird off. I want to be a square peg for this square hole and do honest work and feed my family and help humanity thrive.

I can't turn my weird off, so I think I defensively dial it up sometimes. I exaggerate my eccentricities. It's easy to swallow criticism when it isn't the real me, when it isn't my best, when it's honest mistakes -- what a load of crap. This is me. This is my best. Hello, world.

Now it's all coming back in waves, in gasps -- I spent so much of my life being an unlikable jerk. Becoming somebody else has been slow/painful and I'm so deeply afraid of regressing. Over the past decade, I've been striving to spread joy, to do good, to be better. I'm trying so hard.

And all this keyboard vomit is a promise to myself that I'm not giving up. I hate this feeling, and I'm staring these nightmares straight in their stupid eyeballs, and they're not blinking. I am still alive, and I have so much more to do.

I'm okay. I mean it. I don't need (or deserve) your sympathy. I'm so lucky to be alive, at this time, at this place, in this body, with these people. My life is great, and it will get even better if I keep putting in this effort.

Spewing my insides like this onto The Internet is terrifying, but I suspect many strangers are facing similar feelings. It's rough out there. Whatever it is, wherever you are, I hope this helps. You've got this. You're not alone, and we're only human.