Comment by arjvik
4 months ago
Did you apply through the website/job posting?
I’d strongly recommend trying again and reaching out to the friend of a friend who informed you of the role and asking for a more direct intro to the hiring manager. Unfortunately, it’s really really easy to slip through the cracks as a resume, and one feels no remorse rejecting a pdf file. Even without the warm contact, some way of directly reaching the hiring manager (notably: not the recruiters!) would mean that “I wrote that library!@ becomes front-and-center, not buried as a line item. I’ve seen so much more success with myself and the people I know in cold or warm outreach than through job application portals. In fact, I’ve yet to get a callback from a single job I’ve ever applied to online!
As an aside, does anyone know why the AI labs have such bad recruiters? I successfully got a job at one and am currently working there, but I still have many many complaints about the process.
Anthropic has a tough alignment interview. Like I aced the coding screener but got rejected after a chat about values. I think they want intense people on the value/safety side as well as the chops.
Maybe I misinterpret but I can’t help but shiver when I read this comment.
I just laughed. You’re a better person than I.
You misinterpreted nothing.
What does being "intense" on the safety side mean? High risk taking with AI safety or low?
You need to be insanely dedicated to burning rainforests and boiling oceans so that people can have AI write emails that other people will use AI to summarise and never even read the summary.
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Probably alignment with mission. The siblings write a lot about it so read all that. I prepped but I missed the mark. I suspect because of doing too ordinary work so I didn't have examples that would make them think "damm this person gets us".
So much for diversity (at least in thought) hiring, I guess
What is an intense person on the value safety side?
Some one who reads the company website and has the communication skills to be able to convincingly regurgitate the company stances on issues. Come on guys, this isn’t some FBI lie detector test, they are going to ask you the same exact question people BS on in every interview to top companies, medical schools, etc.
That’s a fancy metaphor for a “yes man”
To remind, that's a company working on AI for the US military.
Yes, I applied through the website. Unfortunately I don't know the people good enough to do that
Don’t be naive, these companies don’t care about talent they care about prestige and credentials. <username>@standford will always beat “did actual work relevant to the project”.
Just look at the background of some of the names in this at these places. As always it’s “who you know and where you’ve been” not “what you know and what you’ve built”
edit: You can downvote if you like, but it doesn’t change the fact that high stakes tech has never been a meritocracy and AI companies are no different.
While eventually bias and inefficiency exist in every org, these companies would not be competitive if they prioritized bogus metrics.
I mean, there are three serious top level AI companies, and the only thing they're competing on right now is the quality of their frontier models. Or arguably their ability to raise cash, in an extremely "buzzy" market....
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Money is falling out of the sky and landing on any company with AI written on it. Yes they would.
_Are_ they competitive? So far they all seem to be struggling with sustainable profit.
Raising money in a gold rush is easy mode. Surviving the market correction will be the hard part.
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>As an aside, does anyone know why the AI labs have such bad recruiters?
They're using their own slop generator to handle recruitment.
Surprised anyone needs to ask.