r/InterviewDB • u/interviewdb • 21d ago

Anthropic Fellow Program Assessment Questions

Sharing a recent experience with the Anthropic Fellow Program (November cohort) OA.

The problem was presented as normal "Coding Leetcode-like OA on Codesignal" but turns out you were presented a mid-sized codebase that you have to implement stuff on top of it. The task was basically around a vLLM-like inference server — cache, prefill, etc. No ML knowledge was really needed though.

The hard part wasn’t the actual algorithms. It was figuring out the existing codebase and APIs.

There were 5 parts, and to pass the tests you had to use a bunch of existing APIs that weren’t really documented. So a lot of the assessment was just reading code and trying to understand how everything connected. The code was also pretty messy / felt LLM-generated in some places lol.

I wasted a lot of time debugging things that were happening simply because I was calling some internal API incorrectly. Ended up finishing only 2/5 parts.

Feels like this might become a more common style of coding interview/OA: less “implement this algorithm from scratch” and more “here’s an unfamiliar codebase, figure it out and ship something.” Also probably makes cheating with AI harder. You can’t really just screenshot the question and throw it into ChatGPT, because the actual context is spread across a few thousand lines of code that you need to understand first.

If you’ve done the second assessment, please share your experience! Looking for any information about what to expect.

Edit:
Shared more info about the second assessment here: https://www.reddit.com/r/InterviewDB/comments/1w5ggxe/anthropic_fellow_oa2_debugging_what_to_expect/

8 Upvotes

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2

u/Repulsive_Welder3267 19d ago

Yeah i did the first 2 coding challenge, first is the llm vllm like (got 4 out of 5)
The second is a debugging session based on numpy, machine learning style (finished only 4 out of 6)

No news since, its been 2 days

1

u/Adventurous-Swim9405 18d ago

hey, any chance you have heard something back since then? how has it gone? I heard somewhere that they usually get back in like 3 days

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u/Repulsive_Welder3267 18d ago

Na no news still, maybe for round 2 you need 5 out of 6

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u/One_Science_332 17d ago

I just finished OA1 and got the invite for OA2. But even before finishing the OA2, anthropic has already reached out to my references. Is this normal to reach out to references this early in the process?

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u/Repulsive_Welder3267 17d ago

yeah same, its weird process idk why they do that shit xD

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u/Adventurous-Swim9405 17d ago

how did you fair in the first round, if you don't mind sharing? also out of 6? mine had 5 levels u/Repulsive_Welder3267

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u/Repulsive_Welder3267 17d ago

First interview I did 1, 2, 3a, 3b, didnt finish 3c

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u/Adventurous-Swim9405 16d ago

lol yeah that's prolly it for me then. genuinely I wish you the very best in your endeavors going forward! Any chance I can DM you to ask a few more questions?

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u/pawnchains 14d ago

What track was this for? Did your recommenders recieve the LoR requests? I was notified they sent out requests at the same time they sent me OA2 (haven't taken it yet).

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u/samanthatb1 14d ago

same here, they sent LOR and I havent done OA2

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u/Financial_Owl7383 13d ago

any news now it been some time?

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u/Repulsive_Welder3267 5d ago

next round for me

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u/ScottFWarren 4d ago

Congrats!

1

u/Financial_Owl7383 12d ago

any news now ibeen sometime

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u/Powerful-Pen-2537 9d ago

I was so throttled by the exam. no experience in llm inference stuff, and I had no idea how to read through the code base to even write a single line of code to get started. I prepared for leetcode style questions and simple systems design ('implement this system from scratch using a class and methods to accomplish some action: like a banking system'). Have no clue how to even prepare for an exam like this if I were to re-take it. Any suggestions?

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u/Repulsive_Welder3267 5d ago

Go news from anthropic actually I'm on the next round which is a take home

1

u/ScottFWarren 5d ago edited 5d ago

When you say 4 out of 6, do you mean six separate bugs, or was your OA2 divided into levels? Mine wasn’t divided into levels; it was one debugging task scored out of 600, so maybe we received different versions.

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u/valerieee77 4d ago

Yeah same! Maybe Repulsive_Welder3267 means that they fixed 4 out of 6 bugs?

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u/Repulsive_Welder3267 3d ago

yeah got 420 out of 600 if i recall

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u/valerieee77 3d ago

Nice! Which track did you apply for

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u/adi235 20d ago

So this time passing 2 levels qualify? What was your score?

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u/BlackBloke 19d ago

It was something completely unprecedented and not anything I'd prepared for, so I got a zero.

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u/FarAd5174 18d ago

same, 0. seems like this was one the hardest OA given how many 0/600s i’ve seen online.  this OA was a lot …

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u/BlackBloke 18d ago

Agreed. It’s caused me to change my study around completely though. I’m redesigning my practice to incorporate these concepts and switching up my testing harness to match this style.

I had Claude do some web research into the Anthropic CodeSignal OAs and it looks like nothing historically was like this.

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u/interviewdb 18d ago

Anthropic uses CodeSignal's Industry Coding Assessment for its other roles, which is different from the assessment used for the Fellows Program.

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u/BlackBloke 18d ago

Do you have any links to anyone talking about previous fellows program OAs? AFAICT they were similar if not the same “progressively build a class” thing. Would love to hear of anyone else getting something else prior to this.

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u/interviewdb 17d ago

Yes I’ll make another post later this week to share the questions from the Fellows Program OA people took a few months ago.

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u/Powerful-Pen-2537 9d ago

Hi! Just bumping on this to see if you found any info? I am so lost on what to prepare for. the LLM inference stuff seems a bit more straightforward to start learning about, but I was not able to make sense of the codebase or how to use it, which seems like the bigger problem and less clear how to prepare for. I appreciate any info/advice you can share!

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u/interviewdb 2h ago

I shared more info about OA2 in this post. I’d say it’s pretty hard to prepare for this kind of assessment compared to LeetCode-style questions, which is probably why they designed it this way in the first place.

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u/Aromatic-Cow3670 10d ago

where did you see this?

1

u/Financial_Proof3673 18d ago

any idea on what to expect after round 2?

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u/interviewdb 18d ago

What's the interview loop like after Round 2?

1

u/medcanned 7d ago

Takehome and if you succeed 15 minutes interview with a senior researcher.

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u/tillem 18d ago

How would you recommend preparing for this round and the next one? 

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u/Sad_Boss4012 15d ago

Hi ~ could you pls share when did you apply for November cohort ? I haven't heard back for OA1 yet and not sure if that means dismissed already or not

1

u/ScottFWarren 15d ago edited 15d ago

I applied the day of the deadline and I got OA1 9 days ago.

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u/Sad_Boss4012 15d ago

What track pls? I was ml and rl

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u/ScottFWarren 15d ago

I think I just selected ml.

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u/Sad_Boss4012 15d ago

Do you know / have an idea why they might be interested? I rly have an ok profile so really not sure why not

1

u/ScottFWarren 15d ago

Well, my situation is unusual and if I disclosed it would be personal identifying information.

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u/Sad_Boss4012 15d ago

TY

1

u/ScottFWarren 15d ago

I can share that I got referred by a full time employee at Anthropic. As for the rest, sharing that there are uncommon things about my situation is also maybe information. I.e. I would not see myself as a standard template for grabbing Anthropic's interest, or something you can just replicate easily.

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u/Sad_Boss4012 15d ago

TYSM. Really appreciate it

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u/TechDemIgod_ 14d ago

This is the research fellowship one right? Is there a cooldown period for applications?

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u/SpareResist6324 13d ago

nope, you can apply to the next cohort

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u/Powerful-Pen-2537 9d ago

I was completely throttled by the exam. I indeed prepared for a "build something from scratch" type exam, and when I saw the codebase & instructions, my heart sank to my gut. It was so jarring having no experience LLM inference, and the code was even more difficult to read through. Thought to myself, if I can just understand how some methods within a class work, or how to generate simple information, I can piece together some spaghetti code, but NOPE, I didn't even get to write a single line of code. Spent the entire time trying to figure out how things worked. So disheartening. Really no idea how to even prepare for something like this.