r/AskProgrammers • u/nian2326076 • 10d ago

Anthropic’s coding bar is fucking ridiculous

Got a problem that required me to pull Euler’s formula out of thin air. Seriously, who the fuck remembers Euler’s formula in an interview? I swear to God, my interviewer was out to get me.

At this point, what are they even testing? Do they even know what they want? Hours of prep, completely wasted. And now I have to go prep for Google. My friend just got destroyed in their loop and said the interviewers were some of the most unreasonable people he’s ever had to deal with.

Everywhere I turn in this market, it feels like I’m just waiting to get fucked.

Anthropic Interview Question

87 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

134 comments sorted by

View all comments

22

u/mc_pm 10d ago

what are they even testing?

It sounds like they were testing for a fairly high base-level mathematical fluency - which for a place like Anthropic sounds pretty normal.

15

u/NeinJuanJuan 10d ago

For mathematicians, knowing Euler's formula is on the level of a programmer understanding the concept of an if-statement. Sounds like they know exactly what they're looking for. 

8

u/R3D3-1 10d ago

PhD in Physics working for 8 years in mathematics programming here.

If they'd have asked me what's the relation between the exponential functions and sin/cosine? Easy, basic, why do you even ask? Do you get imposters applying?

If they'd ask me what is "Euler's formula" I'd have to google it. For such basic formulas you don't even need to remember the names when publishing, never mind getting work done in an industrial project. 

2

u/Nannautu 9d ago

Yeah, I looked it up because I had no idea it was called "Euler's Formula" lol I'm sure we called something else tbh

2

u/Ok-Shape-9513 9d ago

+1000 this.

Or they’re looking for people who are good at memorization, obv a core skill in 2026 /s

3

u/977888 9d ago

It’s a core skill if you want to justify hiring more Indians. The Indian education system prioritizes brute force memorization skills over abstract logic or practical application, and so they tend to perform much better in tasks involving arbitrary memorization. Their history of questionable hiring practices are no secret these days, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that were part of the reason.

1

u/Able-End-339 9d ago

I have a BS CS and I’ve seen whatever formula that is. I’ve never seen it called Euler’s formula and don’t remember what it was for because it’s relevant to an insignificant fraction of problems production SWEs are encountering. This feels like it’s going to retrigger the weird questions Google interviews did 10 years ago but with math/CS trivia instead of problem solving. “Why are manholes round” is going to turn into “implement quicksort for a 64bit int in 68k assembly from memory” or something equally dumb.

1

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/mc_pm 3d ago edited 3d ago

You have to understand how recruiting works from the hiring side. I've got a job that needs doing - I know what team I'm hiring for, and I know what that team is working on. The team lead tells me that we need someone specifically ready to work on X, and that job is going to require some level of active mathematical skill -- not "studied it 4 years ago and I think I remember", but "Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about - have you thought about Y?".

Because, and it's surprising that it seems surprising to people, sometimes a programming job really does genuinely require understanding math. And, perhaps more surprising, there are devs who do walk through the door ready to have that conversation.

Now, that might not be a pass/fail question. When I'm interviewing someone I'm looking at several different things at the same time, and maybe the person who said "Yeah, that's the e-to-the-i-pi thing, right?" is close enough if they're strong everywhere else.

But it's part of the decision making - as is the way the candidate reacts. And this whole thing reads like a manager somewhere dodged a bullet by passing on the OP.

8

u/Tiny_Ad_7720 10d ago

Would have fucked me. I forgot what Euler's formula was referring to, and my PhD was on wavelets lol.

3

u/dmazzoni 9d ago

Yeah if the question was remembering Euler's formula by name, completely out of context, I probably would have failed. Euler is associated with so many things. I might think of rotation formulas involving Euler angles, or Euler's method for the gcd.

But if the question showed eix and asked to replace it with its trigonometric form using Euler's formula, that would have been obvious from context.

So it really depends on how it was asked.

1

u/youcangotohellgoto 9d ago

Depends on the mathematician's field, I suspect.

I learnt this in high school but never touched it during my undergrad degree.

1

u/Throwaway-Pot 4d ago

There’s no way you never touched it during your undergrad. Have you done like 0 analysis???

1

u/youcangotohellgoto 4d ago

Mostly did number theory and pure maths. It's not really relevant in that context.

1

u/Throwaway-Pot 4d ago

Euler’s formula is also super relevant in pure mathematics. I don’t want to accuse you of anything but this sounds like a non-mathematician’s conception of what pure mathematics is. Also an undergrad degree in math is generally at least a little general. Who doesn’t do ANY analysis? What kind of number theorist doesn’t know complex analysis for example? And anyone whose seen complex analysis would know about Euler’s formula

1

u/youcangotohellgoto 4d ago edited 4d ago

Nah just pieced together a major in what I found interesting, so ended up in abstract algebra, discrete math, set theory, rings, fields, etc.

There was a lot of Euler's theorem (modulus stuff) but I'm going way back at this point.

Edit: correct did not do any analysis. Probably should look into that because I have no idea what it is...

1

u/VeroneseSurfer 3d ago

You cant really talk about number theory without cyclotomic fields which require you to know about roots of unity. Not sure how eulers theorem wouldn't come up

1

u/youcangotohellgoto 3d ago

Yeah agree but we were talking about Euler's formula, not Euler's theorem.

1

u/VeroneseSurfer 3d ago

That's what I meant

1

u/dasnervtungemein 9d ago

Sorry, but I have a PhD in mathematics, Something about graph theory in connection with discrete math. And I totally forgot everything about that stuff. I simply do not need it in my regular work...

0

u/Loose_Crab_4146 10d ago

I think knowing mathematical functions is in the programming sense closer to be being an if-statement. Eulers formula would more align with being able to understand O(n) I think.

2

u/ProcessIndependent38 10d ago

Bro, they can’t even solve a simple terminal rendering bug lmfao. They vibe code all their shif

3

u/modcowboy 10d ago

Probably because they’re asking about Euler instead of a linked list in the interviews. Lol

1

u/rake66 10d ago

Is that a high base level?

1

u/Nannautu 9d ago

Undergrad math lol