Anthropic manager says the 'coding interview is dead' — here's his advice for junior developers

Out alongside the coding test, in alongside Claude.

That's the change Felix Rieseberg, an Anthropic engineering manager, says he has made to his team's hiring process, arguing that AI has rendered traditional coding interviews a mediocre measure of who volition win at work.

"The coding discussion is dead, at smallest for my squad at Anthropic," Rieseberg wrote in a Tuesday article on X. "I've seen adequate to cognize that it no longer provides signal."

Rieseberg elaborated in a blog post, penning that there's "no point" in giving candidates coding challenges or asking them concerning programming languages akin assembly.

"Claude is now improved at both," he stated of the company's own AI model.

Coding challenges were formerly a "weak but useful" predictor of success, Rieseberg said, but the most impactful builders on his teams are not necessarily the group who excel at specified tests.

"I'm seeing engineers who are comparatively new fly former group who are likely improved coders and have been about much longer," he wrote. "Hunger strikes tenure."

AI is penning most of the code at Anthropic, and the change tracks alongside changes underway at another Big Tech companies. Business Insider's Hugh Langley reported final week that Google is expanding pilots for software-engineering interviews that authorize candidates to use Gemini to measure their AI fluency and prompting skills.

Amazon, meanwhile, told engineers on Tuesday to prioritize client and endeavor outcomes complete raw AI usage. The business calls the instant the era of the "Renaissance Developer," in which individual judgement and device intellect merge to build products faster.

How younger engineers can remain out

The rise of AI coding tools has fueled fears that younger developer roles volition rotate into harder to get, as AI takes on activity akin debugging and construction uncomplicated features — tasks that formerly helped early-career engineers study the ropes.

In his blog, Rieseberg shared direction for younger engineers — or, additional broadly, group without organizational position or power. Rather than fair clearing backlog tickets, he stated they should acknowledge the endeavor problems their business is trying to solve.

Then, they should arrive up alongside a bold idea that could materially advancement those goals and build a operating prototype complete a weekend. The project should communicate one compelling idea, he said, fairly than inter multiple fine ones inner an overly aspiring product.

Newer engineers should additionally lean into their outsider perspective. They may be additional apt to place damaged person experiences or inquiry ingrained assumptions concerning what is possible, Rieseberg said.

He pointed to two comparatively new Anthropic engineers who built a graphical interface for Claude Code complete a weekend; the archetypal community type shipped about eight days later.

Rieseberg stated he has not yet solved the issue of how to measure candidates who build efficiently alongside AI.

For now, he stated he is scanning resumes and portfolios for small prototypes that display "taste, empathy, and ethical thinking" — qualities that AI researchers and tech leaders are increasingly putting a premium on in the age of AI.