Anthropic engineering lead drops coding interviews, says AI era demands judgment and collaboration

In October 2026, Felix Rieseberg, an engineering manager at Anthropic and head of Claude product engineering, said on social media that he has removed traditional coding interviews from his team's hiring process. He argued that since Claude can now easily handle small React challenges and even low-level assembly problems, coding questions no longer effectively screen engineers, and interview results mainly measure AI capability rather than a candidate's judgment, product taste, and collaboration skills in real work.

Rieseberg also advised junior engineers to take advantage of the AI era's lower execution costs, suggesting they focus on specific business goals, use fresh perspectives and AI tools to quickly build a working prototype, and earn organizational support through results. He summarized this approach as "hunger over seniority."