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Felix Rieseberg, an Anthropic hiring manager who has led work on Claude Cowork and Claude Desktop, says his team has stopped asking software engineering candidates coding questions. He says the questions produced no useful signal; the report does not establish that Anthropic has removed coding interviews company-wide.
Felix Rieseberg, an Anthropic hiring manager who has led work on Claude Cowork and Claude Desktop, says his team has stopped asking software engineering candidates coding questions. Rieseberg said the questions gave the team no useful signal about candidates, a change that challenges the use of data-structures-and-algorithms interviews in hiring at a prominent AI company.
The account appeared in The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter’s The Pulse report. It describes a decision by a team led by Rieseberg, rather than a confirmed company-wide policy. The source does not state when the team changed its process or how many candidates have been interviewed under the new approach.
Rieseberg’s reported explanation is that coding questions were not helping his team assess applicants. The report does not spell out which interview stages replaced those questions, whether candidates still complete practical coding exercises, or what competencies the team now evaluates instead. The change is described specifically as stopping coding questions, not ending technical interviews altogether.
The newsletter suggests the practice could spread to other teams at Anthropic and to AI-native startups. That is a possibility, not a confirmed plan: it provides no announcement from Anthropic leadership that other teams will follow. The available account also does not include a response from the company or data comparing hiring outcomes before and after the change.
A Shift in Engineering Hiring Signals
Data-structures-and-algorithms problems have long been used in software engineering interviews as a standardized way to test problem-solving and coding under time pressure. If a team finds those questions do not help it distinguish strong candidates, dropping them could change how it allocates interview time and what evidence it values.
The decision may draw attention because Anthropic builds AI products used for software work, including Claude Cowork and Claude Desktop, and because its hiring choices may influence other companies. But one team’s process does not show that coding interviews are broadly disappearing. The report gives no evidence that the change has improved hiring quality, shortened recruitment, or affected candidate performance.
For applicants, the practical takeaway is limited but relevant: interview formats can differ across teams, even within a company. The report does not say what candidates should expect in place of coding questions, so it cannot support a claim that technical evaluation has been removed or made easier.
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What Rieseberg’s Report Covers
The source is a newsletter item in The Pragmatic Engineer, which covers developments in technology companies and startups. Its account centers on Rieseberg’s statement about the process used by his team. It does not present a formal Anthropic recruiting policy or a detailed description of the team’s interview rubric.
The newsletter places the hiring change among other workplace developments, including a report about Amazon incorporating AI use into software engineering expectations and a separate account of a startup reducing AI spending. Those items are not evidence for Anthropic’s hiring decision; they provide only the broader workplace and AI-industry setting in which the interview change was reported.
Rieseberg’s work leading Claude Cowork and Claude Desktop identifies his role in the account, but the report does not say that those products prompted the hiring change. The stated reason is narrower: his team believed coding questions were not giving it useful information about candidates.
Scope and Replacement Methods
The scope of the change is not clear beyond Rieseberg’s team. The report does not establish that Anthropic has adopted a company-wide policy, that other teams plan to follow, or that the change applies to every software engineering role.
It also does not explain what has replaced coding questions, whether practical coding remains part of later assessments, or how the team judges technical ability now. No candidate numbers, outcome measures, or comparisons with the previous process are provided. The claim that the interviews gave “zero signal” is attributed to the team’s experience, not backed in the report by published data.
Whether Other Teams Follow
The next meaningful development would be clarification from Anthropic on whether the change is limited to Rieseberg’s team and what its interview process now includes. The source does not identify a scheduled company announcement, a rollout date, or a formal review of the policy.
Other AI-focused companies could make similar changes, as The Pragmatic Engineer suggests, but no such decisions are confirmed in the report. For now, the reported development is a team-level experiment in hiring practice, with its reach and results still unknown.
Key Questions
Has Anthropic ended coding interviews across the company?
No company-wide change is confirmed. The report describes a team led by Felix Rieseberg stopping coding questions for software engineering candidates.
Why did the team stop asking coding questions?
Rieseberg’s reported explanation is that the questions gave his team no useful signal about candidates. The account does not provide data or further detail on how that judgment was reached.
Does this mean Anthropic no longer tests technical skills?
The report does not say that. It says the team stopped asking coding questions; it does not describe the rest of the interview process or say whether practical coding assessments remain.
Will other Anthropic teams or AI startups make the same change?
The newsletter says they could follow, but it reports no confirmed plans from other Anthropic teams or companies.
Source: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com
