Hi all, interviewed with Anthropic for an Account Manager sales role. Thought I'd give some feedback for those of you that are applying. They're weirdly rigid in what they're hiring for, and they came across very much like they are still figuring out how to sell their product. Their recruiter screen was laughable, but they always are.

First off - three days in the office per week. They're non negotiable on this, so you'll need to be near their NY or SF office.

It's interesting where they fixated their time in the interview process. They really wanted to know if I had sold "consumption based" tools because they're billing on API calls.

I explained to them that I've sold a SaaS product that had a credits model, billed monthly with true ups and what not - half way through they said "we're concerned that you haven't sold a consumption based tool" - so it was bit concerning that they couldn't connect API calls consumption to SaaS credits...

I was surprised, given the pedigree of the company, that they didn't understand the technical nuance.

Additionally everyone in Account Management is on a 70/30 split and a team quota, with a capped commission. Granted, you can bet everyone is making commission but they only have two bands - 210k and 280k. That's not great for such HCOL areas and so the real upside is equity - and they are lightyears from being profitable or going public.

I took the interview to learn if it was a life changing opportunity or not and from a sales attainment perspective, it's not. You'd be betting on equity which is no sure thing as we're in an AI bubble and there will be very few winners, if any. The OTE given the HCOL is pretty sub par too.

All in all it came across like sales is something they haven't quite figured out and it's very much in experiment mode.

I'm interested in sales roles at Anthropic. Can anyone who has been through the interview process share some details (ie how many interviews, assessments etc)?

Hey everyone,

I’m early in the interview process at Anthropic and was hoping to connect with anyone who’s been a BDR or AE there—or knows someone who has. I heard they don’t do commission, just a base salary—how does that play out in terms of motivation, goals, and overall comp?

Also, what’s the culture like? How does their sales motion compare to other tech companies? Any insight on expectations for a BDR and what career growth looks like would be super helpful. Thanks!

I recently interviewed for a GTM role at Anthropic and here are some things that dont make sense.

1. The job has been open for 3 months with 100s of applicants and no end date

2. Candidates had to submit a very detailed written GTM strategy document for enterprises for Anthropic

3. There was no one on the panel with past experience of enterprise sales, they were mid market sales or engineering. Some questions were related to engineering planning.

4. The job title has now been changed

Are we saying a company of caliber of Anthropic cannot find a candidate for 3 months ? Why submit a company specific strategy ? Why change the job title after 3 months ?

Based on this, it comes across as though they are not sure what they want in candidates. They dont have a clear GTM strategy and are collecting ideas from candidates. I feel uncomfortable that all my ideas from my years of experience are in a document with them and I may not even get the job :(

Does this seem normal ?

tl,dr: 10 hours of wasted effort for tossing a coin. Definitely do not recommend going through the process if you are not actively looking.

I'll start saying that I was not selected for a role, and that may bias my experience.

Overall, the interview process was long and quite opaque.

After submitting the CV, multiple times, a recruiter eventually reached out to me. We schedule a call in two weeks.

In the call we went a bit through the role, interview process and my curriculum. Rather standard.

After that, we schedule an initial coding interview.

The Code Screening

The initial coding interview was roughly 1hr. It was a fun, real life coding exercise. I solved quickly, and we discussed extra about the underline reasons of why I went for a solution or for another. We discussed the details of the language I choose and overall we complete everything.

The interviewer were pleased, and we move to the loop interview.

The loop interview is a 5 stage interview process. Each stage of roughly 1hr.

Technical Project Discussion

In this step, I was asked to prepare a presentation about a previous project I carried out.

I presented my work, and I thought it was interesting and engaging. There were few interesting questions showing quite a bit of interest from the interviewers.

I touched an interesting point of rather well known tech products and the challenging in developing those products at FAANG scale. I was careful not to reveal any NDA information, but overall it was a nice engineering discussion.

Overall, it was nice to share some of the biggest work I did over the years.

Experience and Goals

This was an interview about my own approach at work. How do I act in different situation. How do I behave under different condition, etc...

The interview was administered by a manager, with a lot of experience. Questions were on point and clear.

Overall, was quite a nice discussion, that left me positive impressed.

Coding Interview

This was the less professional interview I was ever administered.

The interviewer was quite late and joined the interview still catching his breath, not sure if he ran to take the interview.

I was under the impression, that this would cover a real case interview. It was definitely a leet code style interview, for which I was not prepared.

Nevertheless, I start working on the problem.

The interviewer was COMPLETELY absent during the interview. He was at the screen but he was neither looking nor listening to what I was saying.

I know this because it was super odd not getting any feedback for the code I was writing, especially because I often search for feedback and to discuss if I am on the right track overall, or if the interviewer is following my though process.

I even completely stop for a solid chunk of time to check on him, and he was at his desk doing stuff.

Coding interviews are about communicating how we think and how we approach problems, they should not be about solving a tricky question.

Overall, I reached a sensible solution, that was working on common inputs. But not on all input.

The interviewer was not able to tell me what I did wrong or obvious bug in my code.

I was seriously considering dropping out of the whole interview process during this interview.

System Design

The system design interview was quite standard.

The style of the interviewer was not my favorite, but we had overall a quite interesting conversation about possible tradeoffs and way to solve problems.

The interview was quite a bit too open, without many constraints. This makes the overall interview difficult because there is nothing to focus on.

I also find it difficult to communicate with the interviewer, and I ended up repeating myself many times.

This could have been an issue on my side. But at the same time, if the interview was not understanding what I was saying, I would expect them to stop me so that I can clarify.

Overall, I had a positive impression, although not stellar.

Culture

This was by far my favorite interview.

It was with an employee of the company, not an engineer, and it was so refreshing.

We overall discussed what I think about several topics, and it was quite a bit more about really catching my vibe that looking for the right answer.

I didn't feel like I was judged at all, and it was very cool to chat.

Results

Finally, I was not hire because technically not strong enough.

Not much feedback was provided.

The cool off period is of one year.

I was not particularly surprised by the result of the interview.

However, I really expected a company like Anthropic to do better.

Any company is free to hire and select employees in whichever way they prefer, however I really feel like I wasted a lot of time to do a non-professional interview.

Overall, the interview took a total of around 10 hours (5 hrs the loop + 1hr the screening + 1hr recruiters calls + 3hrs of power point preparation).

With this time commitment, I would expect the company to respect my time.

I wish them the best and I wish for them to be successful, but I also wish a better and more professional interview process.

Does anyone have any insight on what it’s like to work at Anthropic?

What is the office culture like?

SE workload?

Interview process?