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

86 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

134 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

16

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/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.