#124: Inside Anthropic's culture interview | Ben Erez & Marc Baselga (co-founders, Insider Loops)

What does it tell you about a company when every single person it hires, in every function, has to pass the same interview about culture?

In this episode of Supra Insider, Marc Baselga and Ben Erez set the guest format aside for a conversation Marc started because he noticed something new. After two years of coaching people through interview loops, this was the first time he’d seen Ben genuinely fascinated by one specific interview at one specific company. Ben walks through what he’s pieced together about Anthropic’s culture interview: the no-exceptions policy, the rapid-fire format of ten or more questions in a single 45-minute slot, and the fact that anyone at the company, from marketing to IT, can be trained to run it.

They explore the questions that actually get asked, what Ben believes is being evaluated underneath them, why “why Anthropic” demands more depth than the same question anywhere else, and whether the filter holds as the company gets hotter and more candidates learn to say the right things. Then they turn to the question Ben finds most interesting: why almost no other company does this, and what happens inside a company when employees are calibrated to evaluate culture.

If you’re preparing for an interview at a frontier lab, thinking about how your own company screens for values, or just curious what a well-designed culture filter looks like from the outside, this episode is for you.

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If you’re preparing for PM interviews at Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Stripe, DoorDash, Uber, or Figma… we think you’re going to love Insider Loops. You can read about it in Ben’s LI post, Marc’s LI post or check out the site directly below.

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In this episode, we covered the following topics:

* (02:55) Anthropic’s no-exceptions policy: every candidate, every function, the same interview

* (04:55) The format: ten to fifteen questions in 45 minutes, not two or three deep stories

* (13:15) The two Dario Amodei essays candidates are pointed to, and the light and shade framing

* (16:17) A sampling of the questions that actually get asked

* (19:15) How Ben coaches the revenue versus safety question by first questioning the premise

* (23:55) What he thinks they’re evaluating: communication, intellectual honesty, and authenticity

* (26:59) Walking through Anthropic’s seven values and what each one signals

* (31:39) Why “why Anthropic” demands more depth than the same question anywhere else

* (39:40) The cult comparison, and why you mostly have to convince them you belong

* (44:12) Missionaries versus mercenaries, and whether the filter holds as the company grows

* (46:52) The bigger question: why doesn’t any other company do this?

* (55:55) The flywheel: calibrating employees as interviewers reinforces culture internally

* (1:13:49) Why the STAR method backfires here, and how to read the rapid-fire dynamic

* And more!

Links:

* Two essays required for Anthropic’s Interview:

* Machines of Loving Grace by Dario Amodei (2024): https://darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace

* The Adolescence of Technology by Dario Amodei: https://darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology

* Anthropic’s values: https://www.anthropic.com/careers

* Acquired on Sequoia Capital: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/sequoia-capital-part-1

* Insider Loops: https://www.insiderloops.com

* Marc: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbaselga/

* Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benerez/

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