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Comment by cnst | Hacker News Reader

> Through a friend of a friend, I found out that Anthropic had an open position in the team implementing the secret, unreleased feature of Claude Desktop using enigo. I wrote a cover letter and sent out my application. An automatic reply informed me that they might take some time to respond and that they only notify applicants if they made it to the next round. After a few weeks without an answer, I had assumed they chose other applicants.

I've mostly stopped applying to the big companies long time ago (10+ years) precisely because I'd never hear back regardless of the match or the credentials.

The only exception has been JaneStreet — they've contacted me almost immediately after a cold application with a small cover letter about my interests.

Yet going the referral route, it's relatively easy to get an interview almost anywhere, even Google or Apple.

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In my 6 jobs in my career from college internship to startups to Big Tech, I have never gotten a job from sending an application into a site. It's always been through (somehow) tracking down a person to speak to and get a referral.

I would recommend that here. There's no reason why Anthropic couldn't use your talents! See if you can find a friend-of-a-friend who is there, and then do a phonecall with them.

This is the right approach. Connect with a few hiring managers.

>The only exception has been JaneStreet

Huh. I guess if you decide to make OCaml your company's primary programming language, you have to take what you can when it comes to devs.

They put an absurd about of effort into their recruiting, so I'm not really surprised. Pretty much every math-related content creator I listen to has advertised for them.

I doubt anyone who works there is "take what we can get" calibre. They want to attract people who casually solve college-level math puzzles for funsies. So I imagine it's the opposite and if you get hired there, you're surrounded by people who are extremely accomplished.

I wasn't talking about the likelihood to get accepted or what makes a successful candidate, but the statement that they responded fast to cold applications.

Not accurate. They pay very well, and their interview process is supposedly quite challenging.

A thing to consider, though, is ethical: they seem to have been involved in market manipulation. [0]

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y0zgrevl1o

Wasn't referring to the level of challenge but to the fact that they responded fast to a cold application. You don't have to do that unless you have a very hard time finding qualified candidates. And they certainly made it hard for themselves by going all in on OCaml.

Yes and no, I imagine the biggest qualification for Jane Street would still be humility and not OCaml interest or expertise, and the pay probably has something to do with people's desire to apply, too.

I wasn't talking about why people would apply, I was talking about the statement that they responded fast to a cold application. Generally speaking, if you drop a ton of applications for what I assume is a lack of willingness or skill to deal with OCaml, that certainly factors in your hiring process.

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