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Anthropic is at a place where they need the world's best software engineers, and they're willing to comp at insane levels to get them. However: You simply canno
by 827a 5mo ago
Anthropic is at a place where they need the world's best software engineers, and they're willing to comp at insane levels to get them. However: You simply cannot post a Linkedin job for "Really Good Software Engineer, comp $10M+" and make any sense of the inbound applications you'll get. They're not the first to figure this out, and they won't be the last: Successfully building a company, and using that company's products, is actually the best job interview you can ask for if you can pay for that caliber of candidate.
What you should be paying attention to: Stainless is shutting down, and their team is joining Anthropic to build, who knows, some dumb integration to make Hubspot data available in Claude, or something equally as boring. But, Stainless was successful. Be the next Stainless. The idea is already validated, these AI companies have already done this to a handful of companies and they're going to keep doing it.
- aleph_minus_one 5mo ago> Successfully building a company, and using that company's products, is actually the best job interview you can ask for if you can pay for that caliber of candidate. This tests for very different skills than being an exceptional programmer.
- elAhmo 5mo agoYes, hence the term software engineer which has programming as just one part of the job.
- skeeter2020 5mo agoOK, let's go to the source then and ask Claude: What's the difference between a software developer and a software engineer? The honest answer is that in most day-to-day contexts, the distinction is more about company culture and title preference than actual job duties. A "software developer" at one company might do more rigorous engineering work than a "software engineer" at another.
- dust-jacket 5mo agoYeah at my last job we A/B tested hiring ads for the same role with developer/engineer alternatives. It's just not the distinction some people believe it to be.
- elAhmo 5mo agoRather than jumping to ask Claude something, maybe you should've read things more carefully. I said difference between a _programmer_ and a _software engineer_ (or _software developer_, it is irrelevant in this context).
- thayne 5mo agoIt isn't a good test for that either. Having a successful business requires a lot of factors that don't really have anything to do with software engineering. Things like luck, connections, access to funding, good marketing, etc. And while have good engineers on the payroll undoubtedly helps, the good engineers aren't necessarily the ones getting a big fallout from the acquisition and may not stick around for long after the acquisition, especially if they get put on a project they don't care about.
- JJOKOCHAA 5mo agoThat is right, a lot goes into having a successful project or team
- 827a 5mo agoI did use the word "software engineer" there, but realistically what they're looking for is exactly the name of the role they wear: Member of Technical Staff. Software Engineer, businessman, product manager, designer, agentic harness engineer, cloud, devops, all rolled into one. They want people who can own the entirety of a product from end-to-end. A responsibility domain so vast that most peoples' first thought is to laugh, and that's exactly why they're acquiring companies; the responsibilities they're looking for mirror the role the founders and higher-level leadership in successful startups would have had. The lower-level engineers will probably be let go. They'll gladly pay $50M-$100M for just a dozen or so of the top people.
- aleph_minus_one 5mo ago> I did use the word "software engineer" there The reason why I avoided this term is that in Germany, there exists a quite strict of whatx an engineer (Ingenieur) is, which is defined in the laws of many federal states (Ingenieurgesetz [engineering law]). "Ingenieur" (engineer) is a protected professional title: > https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ingenieur&oldid=266363685#Berufsbezeichnungen_und_akademische_Grade https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ingenieur&oldid=2... (*) Falsely claiming that you are an Ingenieur when you aren't (by the definition in the Ingenieurgesetz) is a punishable crime in Germany: > https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Missbrauch_von_Titeln,_Berufsbezeichnungen_und_Abzeichen&oldid=258290178 https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Missbrauch_von_Ti... There exist some boundary cases under which as a software developer you can call yourself an "Ingenieur", but you have to be insanely careful about whether you actually satisfy the legal criteria (see (*)) - in most cases you don't and you are thus a criminal if you do.
- torben-friis 5mo agoWait, does that mean that if I self describe as a software engineer on LinkedIn and get an offer by Germans id be breaking the law by accepting? If so, is this ever enforced?
- aleph_minus_one 5mo ago
- EmeraldSky 5mo agoWhy do they need the best software engineers? I thought their product was supposed to replace such roles. Yet look at the positions they’re hiring for in marketing, finance etc.: https://www.anthropic.com/careers/jobs https://www.anthropic.com/careers/jobs Why aren’t they dogfooding their own products to replace such roles?
- fredoliveira 5mo agoThey most certainly are. This is Jevons paradox.
- abirch 5mo agoAI can let you downsize the number of employees that you have and maintain the status quo or it can let you maintain the number of employees, reduce technical debt, improve products, and services.
- IncreasePosts 5mo agoDo the economics work out ? You can downsize the devs you have, but you need to maintain a smaller stable of very expensive devs, and then factor in the token usage. For example, a recent story about the openclaw creator using $1.3M of tokens/month. And let's assume he's getting paid $5M/yr which is probably a vast under estimate. Is he providing value that a traditional software development org with normal developers couldn't provide for $20M/yr?
- ncphillips 5mo agoI feel like using $1.3M/year is a wild outlier. A $200/month Max sub is a pretty cheap way to get quite a lot of benefit.
- IncreasePosts 5mo agoHis usage is actually 12x that ...
- 5mo ago
- skeeter2020 5mo agoI'm not sure how you can equate building a startup and selling to a bigger company as a great interview for developers. Maybe they have great engineers, but IME it's far more likely they've got good founders, marketing or sales on top of (perhaps) some stellar engineering. All that's moot though if your fundamental premise is wrong. Why does Anthropic need "the world's best software engineers" to build on top of the models? Compentent developers can build APIs - sorry - MCP servers and other integration plumbing.
- varispeed 5mo agoWouldn't that be a misuse of data and likely illegal? If Anthropic can rummage through your data and workflows to deem you worthy of their grace, then that is seriously wrong.
- phoenixy1 5mo agoI think what you're missing is that prior to the acquisition, Anthropic was a customer of Stainless. They did not need to "rummage through [their] data and workflows" to understand the quality of their product.
- tikhonj 5mo agoThe top trading firms had top-end recruiting figured out for ages, without jumping through all these hoops. There are plenty of other reasons to acqui-hire, but it is not the only or even the most effective way to hire the strongest engineers
- kaashif 5mo agoTrading firms are surely not hiring for the broad founder-like skill set Anthropic is. Trading firms want narrow extreme technical brilliance.
- robocat 5mo ago> founder-like skill set Successful founder is deeply filtering for very uncommon skills. Effectiveness, grit, decision making, independence, technical plus sales ability. University is a shit filter in comparison. The current word is "taste" but even that is way too narrow. Intelligence is close, although usually too academic (hence the VC uni dropout theme). The other big problem with a independent capable people is that they rarely apply for jobs.
- ahpeeyem 5mo agoFolks need to stop downvoting this and get back to their job applications ;)
- zipy124 5mo agoThat's not true. It self selects for people who are focused on making money, not for the best software guys. There are for sure some people in that venn diagram who overlap, but it is not that self-intersecting. This is mainly because the best software guys are rather more interested in doing their own thing and hacking on whatever interests them, rather than what their boss wants. It also only self selects for those who want to work in stressful/long working day environments, rather than those who value stability.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- rattray 5mo ago> ... and their team is joining Anthropic to build, who knows, some dumb integration to make Hubspot data available in Claude, or something equally as boring. Fun fact, I named it "Stainless" after Stainless Steel pipes, likening ourselves to a high-end plumbing supply shop. If you look at the earliest versions of stainlessapi.com on archive.org, you'll see our original motto was "Quality fittings for your REST API". All that is to say, the incredibly "boring" infrastructural work of making "boring" APIs like Hubspot's more usefully accessible is absolutely the kind of thing I'm excited to do at Anthropic :) (It also happens to be what got us all excited to work at stainless in the first place, but of course, we understand it's not for everyone!)
- riddlemethat 5mo agoIn the niches there are riches and boring businesses build wealth. Congrats!
- JJOKOCHAA 5mo agoNot all boring businesses build wealth
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- fnord77 5mo agoI can't even figure out what Stainless does (did)
- TylerH 5mo agoNothing (AI slop to create an unnecessary product, funded by A16Z).
- 123malware321 5mo agowell you might say that, but they got bought, so in making nothing which no one needed they did find their perfect match, anthropic, who also builds nothing and sells hot air :D. We might have our opinions on AI and slop, but in the end of the day this was a business play and it worked out for the players. Separate that from the actual product and u can respect they did really well for themselves.
- eudicnxke 5mo agoThe world’s best software engineers aren’t optimising for comp — they’re optimising to be the world’s best software engineers
- bulbar 5mo ago> and their team is joining Anthropic to build, who knows, some dumb integration to make Hubspot data available in Claude, or something equally as boring. Normally I would say those Engineers would leave eventually, because there are not enough technical challenges and/or the pace is slower. But I guess when you pay much above market rate that doesn't really matter.
- mock-possum 5mo agoAlso have you tried getting hired lately? Go where? They’re lucky to have jobs.
- bulbar 5mo agoI am right now actually trying to change job. In Europe it's not AS bad as in the US, but still bad. I'm pretty niche (sensor simulation) so I don't struggle to get Interviews, but jobs that fit are quite rare. I see a lot of AI openings though.
- hansmayer 5mo ago> where they need the world's best software engineers For what, to write regex to check for number of "fucks" given in prompts, or to write 20k LoC files with 20 levels of nesting ? As we saw in that Claude code leak recently.
- worldsavior 5mo agoSo basically you said: build a successful startup. Mhm...
- _el1s7 5mo agoStainless didn't do anything new, in fact, there already multiple different SDK generators just as good
- king_geedorah 5mo agoThanks ChatGPT.
- nradov 5mo agoEvery tech company claims that they need the "best" software engineers. How often is that actually true? Are there reasonably reliable techniques to turn a mediocre engineer into one of the best?