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Felix Rieseberg, an Anthropic hiring manager who has led Claude Cowork and Claude Desktop, says his team has stopped asking software engineering candidates coding questions. He said the team found data-structures-and-algorithms interviews provided 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 coding questions of software engineering candidates. Rieseberg said the team found data-structures-and-algorithms interviews gave it no useful hiring signal, a change that challenges a familiar screening method but is not reported as a company-wide policy.
The development was reported by The Pragmatic Engineer in its The Pulse series, which cited a blog post by Rieseberg. The account describes a decision by a team at Anthropic, a company developing frontier AI models, rather than a formal announcement from Anthropic’s recruiting or executive leadership.
According to the report, the team removed coding questions from its software engineering recruitment process because the interviews did not help it evaluate candidates. The source specifically identifies data-structures-and-algorithms (DSA) interviews as providing “zero signal.” That is the team’s assessment of the method, not a published study or a claim that every coding exercise is ineffective.
The report says other teams within Anthropic, as well as other AI-native startups, could follow the approach. It does not say they have done so. The available account also does not specify what assessments the team uses instead, how long the change has been in effect, or how many candidates have gone through the revised process.
How Interview Design Could Shift
Technical interviews influence who gets access to engineering jobs, and the format can shape which skills candidates prepare to demonstrate. If a team concludes that a standard DSA exercise does not help it make hiring decisions, dropping it could redirect interview time toward other evidence of a candidate’s ability. The source, however, does not say what alternative evaluation this Anthropic team uses.
The development may draw attention because it comes from a company building AI tools used for software work. Teams at AI companies are operating in a field where coding practices and tools are changing quickly, but Rieseberg’s account is not evidence that AI has made programming interviews obsolete. It describes one team’s experience with one category of interview question.
For applicants, the immediate takeaway is limited: candidates interviewing with this particular team may not face the coding questions it has discontinued. Other Anthropic roles, other employers, and future hiring rounds may use different processes. The report does not provide enough detail to predict how widely the decision will spread.
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A Team-Level Hiring Decision
The Pragmatic Engineer presents The Pulse as a series about events, insights, and trends in technology companies. Its report places the Anthropic hiring change alongside separate items about AI spending, workplace expectations, and staff exits at other companies. Those items are not part of the Anthropic decision and do not establish a broader industry policy.
Rieseberg is described as a hiring manager who has led Claude Cowork and Claude Desktop. His role gives the account a direct connection to the team’s process, but the source material provides no company-wide recruiting guidance or independent evaluation of the interviews. The wording “zero signal” reflects the team’s judgment about whether DSA questions helped it assess candidates.
Software engineering interviews often use coding tasks to assess how applicants solve technical problems. This report does not compare that approach with other methods or offer evidence about which interview format best predicts job performance. The confirmed development is narrower: this team says it has stopped asking coding questions after finding its previous method uninformative.
Scope and Replacement Remain Unknown
The report does not establish whether Anthropic has changed its company-wide hiring policy, whether other engineering teams have adopted the same approach, or whether the decision is limited to a particular role or hiring manager. It also gives no date for when the team stopped asking coding questions.
It is not clear what assessments have replaced the coding questions, how the team reached its conclusion that DSA interviews offered no useful signal, or whether that view applies to every candidate and role. The source supplies no interview-performance data, candidate outcomes, or comparison with other screening methods. Those gaps make it premature to treat the account as proof that coding interviews broadly fail or that AI companies have abandoned them.
Whether Other Teams Follow
The next useful indicators will be whether Anthropic clarifies the scope of the change and whether other teams alter their interview processes. The source says those teams could follow, but reports no confirmed adoption beyond the team Rieseberg described.
For candidates, the practical next step is to check the instructions for each role and interview process rather than assume that all Anthropic interviews have changed. Any broader conclusion about the future of coding interviews will depend on further reporting about the replacement assessments, the results teams observe, and whether other employers make similar changes.
Key Questions
Did Anthropic end coding interviews across the company?
The report does not say that. It describes a team led by hiring manager Felix Rieseberg that stopped asking coding questions. No company-wide policy is confirmed.
Why did the team stop asking coding questions?
Rieseberg said the team found data-structures-and-algorithms interviews gave it no useful signal for evaluating candidates. The report does not provide supporting data or a detailed account of how the team reached that conclusion.
What will candidates do instead of coding questions?
The source does not identify replacement assessments or describe the rest of the interview process. That information remains unknown.
Are other AI companies dropping coding interviews?
The report says other AI-native startups could follow Anthropic’s team, but it does not confirm that they have changed their hiring processes.
Source: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com
