Want a job at Anthropic? It might help to get a hobby.
The AI boom is changing the job requirements for an engineer. Not only do they need to have coding skills, but they also must know how to operate vibecoding tools and stay up to date with new AI models.
Anthropic leader Boris Cherny looks for something else: “Side quests.”
“When I hire engineers, this is definitely something I look for,” he said on “The Peterman Pod.”
Cherny’s definition of side quests includes “cool weekend projects,” like someone who’s “really into making kombucha.” It’s a sign that the engineer is curious and interested in other things, he said.
Much of Cherny’s own growth came from his side projects. Cherny is now a key figure at Anthropic. He created Claude Code, a tool that is now popular with engineers across the country.
“These are well-rounded people,” he said. “These are the kind of people I enjoy working with.”
Cherny also said he prefers that his new hires be “generalists.”
He gave the example of an engineer who can code, but is also able to work on product and design. That all-star engineer also seeks out user feedback.
“This is how we recruit for all functions, now,” he said. “Our project managers code, our data scientists code, our user researcher codes a little bit.”
Cherny isn’t alone in pushing for jobs to become more generalist. Figma CEO Dylan Field said in October that AI was causing job titles to merge, resulting in everyone being a “product builder.”
What else is Anthropic looking for? For some time, it monitored whether candidates use AI in their applications.
In May, Business Insider reported that Anthropic asked candidates for certain jobs not to use AI in their written responses so the company could test their “non-AI-assisted communication skills.”
Anthropic changed its policy in July, allowing candidates to seek out assistance from Claude.
For the younger engineers, a job at Anthropic may be hard to come by. In May, CPO Mike Krieger said on “Hard Fork” that he was focused on hiring experienced engineers — and had “some hesitancy” with entry-level workers.
On the podcast, Cherny said that his love of generalists came from his career trajectory. Working at startups since 18, Cherny had to do everything, he said.
“At big companies, you get forced into this particular swim lane,” he said. “It’s just so artificial.”
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