An Anthropic manager drops coding tests for prototypes
Small coding tests used to pick candidates, but AI now beats people at them. He looks at prototypes candidates built themselves instead, and has five tips for newcomers.
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If you are preparing for a programming job interview by working through coding problems one by one, this may make you think again. A manager at Anthropic, the company behind Claude, has stopped using those tests to pick people for his team.
Felix Rieseberg, an engineering manager at Anthropic who has led engineering for Claude.ai, Cowork and Claude Code Desktop, wrote on his blog on 27 October 2026 that he has removed the coding interview from his team's hiring. His reason is that Claude now does these tests better than people, from a little React challenge to assembly questions, The Register reported.
The problem is not that candidates got worse at code. It is that the test measures something AI can now do for them. He wrote that small coding challenges used to be a weak but useful predictor of who would do well on his teams, but that his most impactful builders succeed no matter how they score on them.
He looks at prototypes candidates built themselves
Rieseberg now scans résumés and portfolios for little prototypes candidates built themselves, and checks whether the work shows taste, empathy for users and principled thinking. He told The Register he has not settled on a new way to interview, and that he is probably not the only manager trying to work out how to hire people who build well with AI.
The Next Web reported that this is a change to his own team's hiring, so anyone applying to another team at Anthropic should check that role's process.
Hungry newcomers are overtaking veterans
His post is titled Hunger beats tenure. He sees newer engineers starting to outperform people who have been around longer, because years of accumulated framework knowledge matter less when AI helps write the code.
His example: Anthony Morris and Alice Zhao, engineers at Anthropic, built a prototype graphical interface for Claude Code in a single weekend, and the first public version shipped about eight days later.
Another story he tells comes from Notion, where he used to work. An offline mode was long treated as impossible, but nobody had ever checked that assumption until a newcomer simply asked.
Five tips for people just starting out
Rieseberg says the advice is for anyone without social capital, status or power in an organisation, not only junior engineers.
- Pick business impact over the backlog: understand what your company or team is trying to reach, by looking at your manager's manager's goals.
- Pick a bold idea: choose a few big ideas that could really help the organisation reach its goals.
- Build the prototype over a weekend: make something that works, instead of writing a document and waiting for sign-off.
- One prototype, one idea: don't cram several ideas into one piece, so leaders see both the opportunity and that you can run with it.
- Use your fresh perspective: user-facing work needs empathy for users, and infrastructure work benefits from people who haven't learned what everyone believes is impossible.
Other companies still test skills
Not every company is dropping tests. Nicole Bachaud, a labour economist at ZipRecruiter, told The Register that 62.5% of employers in the information sector still require formal skills tests on the first application.
Google, meanwhile, is expanding pilots of engineering interviews that let candidates use Gemini, according to a Business Insider report cited by The Next Web. Coding skill still matters, but what gets measured is moving towards using AI to get the work done.
Build your first prototype this weekend
If you are looking for work in this field, pick one problem that you or people around you really have, and use this weekend, 31 October to 1 November 2026, to build a prototype that works. Put the link in your portfolio with a short note on what it solves, who uses it and why you designed it that way.
FAQ
Has Anthropic dropped coding interviews company-wide?
Not according to the reports. Rieseberg wrote about hiring for his own team, and The Next Web reported it as a change to his team.
What does Rieseberg look at instead of coding tests?
Résumés and portfolios, looking for little prototypes that show taste, empathy and principled thinking.
What does "hunger beats tenure" mean?
That drive beats years of service. He sees newcomers who build things quickly starting to outperform people who have been around longer.
