--- title: Coding interviews have become insane | daily.dev description: A comedic breakdown of how coding interviews have evolved at frontier AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, contrasted with everyday hiring at non-tech companies.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/coding-interviews-have-become-insane-syl5viau6 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Coding interviews have become insane | daily.dev og:description: A comedic breakdown of how coding interviews have evolved at frontier AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, contrasted with everyday hiring at non-tech companies.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/coding-interviews-have-become-insane-syl5viau6 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/Syl5ViAU6.png og:image:alt: Coding interviews have become insane og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Coding interviews have become insane **[bigboxSWE](https://daily.dev/sources/bigboxswe)** · 6 min read · 67 upvotes · 10 comments ## Summary A comedic breakdown of how coding interviews have evolved at frontier AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, contrasted with everyday hiring at non-tech companies. Reddit-sourced interview loops reveal grueling take-home projects (webhook delivery systems, web crawlers, in-memory databases), line-by-line code interrogation, and system design rounds testing LLM inference APIs and profiler internals, all done without AI assistance. Meanwhile companies like Nordstrom, Walmart, and Kellogg's have adopted LeetCode-style rounds too, and in-person interviews are rising due to AI cheating concerns. The conclusion: despite the AI hype, algorithmic and system design interviews remain the standard prep path. The piece ends with a sponsored segment promoting Cursor's cloud coding agents. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is the interview process like for an infrastructure engineer role at Anthropic? It involves an online assessment with two problems (implementing a least recently used cache in Python and a task management system with priorities, assignments, and dependencies, requiring thread safety and complexity analysis in 90 minutes), followed by rounds on building a web crawler from scratch, a system design round for an LLM inference API, and a round converting stack sampling profiler outputs into trace events similar to Flame Graph. _Engineers mapping out interview prep for infra roles can follow ongoing hiring discussion on daily.dev._ ### What does the OpenAI platform engineer interview process look like? It spans four rounds: a 48-hour take-home to build a webhook delivery system, a line-by-line code review with a senior engineer, a system design round to design an in-memory database with basic SQL commands, and further evaluation on real engineering depth rather than AI-assisted answers. One candidate who completed all rounds was ultimately rejected for lack of experience. _Candidates benchmarking what top AI labs expect can track interview trends like this on daily.dev._ ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@jepudev2** · 10 upvotes > "The piece ends with a sponsored segment promoting Cursor's cloud coding agents." lmfao, they just write themselves **@limbojunkie** · 8 upvotes > "Coding interviews have become insane" > >  **@geekluffy** · 4 upvotes > Job description: _Must be proficient with AI developer tools._ > > Interview loop: _Prove you can implement a custom memory allocator in C from scratch with zero internet access._ **@hemna** · 1 upvotes > When you have public github repositories available, there is zero reason to do code in interviews. **@adarshks** · 1 upvotes > In personal interviews are better. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Software engineer interviews for the age of AI](https://daily.dev/posts/software-engineer-interviews-for-the-age-of-ai-xyeahihbb) · swizec.com · 23 upvotes · 2 comments - [Think the technical interview is dead? Think again](https://daily.dev/posts/think-the-technical-interview-is-dead-think-again-zahblur5b) · LeadDev · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How We Hire Engineers When AI Writes Our Code](https://daily.dev/posts/how-we-hire-engineers-when-ai-writes-our-code-cihmh6jms) · Tech Lead Digest · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The AI Arms Race in Technical Interviews Is Escalating](https://daily.dev/posts/the-ai-arms-race-in-technical-interviews-is-escalating-xaaoglm3b) · IEEE Spectrum · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#career](https://daily.dev/tags/career), [#interview](https://daily.dev/tags/interview) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/coding-interviews-have-become-insane-syl5viau6) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Coding interviews have become insane","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/coding-interviews-have-become-insane-syl5viau6","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/coding-interviews-have-become-insane-syl5viau6"},"datePublished":"2026-08-19T15:07:42.458Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T19:57:48.388Z","description":"A comedic breakdown of how coding interviews have evolved at frontier AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, contrasted with everyday hiring at non-tech companies....","image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/H0KAi8AWsnM/sddefault.jpg","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/H0KAi8AWsnM/sddefault.jpg","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"bigboxSWE","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"bigboxSWE","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--KMRj-zRu--/f_auto/v1711188128/logos/bigboxswe","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/bigboxswe"},"commentCount":10,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/coding-interviews-have-become-insane-syl5viau6","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":67},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":10}],"keywords":"career,interview","timeRequired":"PT6M","video":{"@type":"VideoObject","name":"Coding interviews have become insane","description":"A comedic breakdown of how coding interviews have evolved at frontier AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, contrasted with everyday hiring at non-tech companies....","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/H0KAi8AWsnM/sddefault.jpg","uploadDate":"2026-08-19T15:07:42.458Z","duration":"PT6M","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/Syl5ViAU6","embedUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/embed/H0KAi8AWsnM"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"bigboxSWE","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/bigboxswe"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Coding interviews have become insane"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/coding-interviews-have-become-insane-syl5viau6","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"“The piece ends with a sponsored segment promoting Cursor’s cloud coding agents.” lmfao, they just write themselves","datePublished":"2026-08-19T16:44:44.380Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/Syl5ViAU6#c-f1a2ptAxU","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"jepudev","url":"https://daily.dev/jepudev2","image":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/71714253?v=4"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":10}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"“Coding interviews have become insane”","datePublished":"2026-08-19T19:44:04.314Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/Syl5ViAU6#c-4svExQfmc","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Sam","url":"https://daily.dev/limbojunkie","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocJtYuJrFvx0EEGn8HjNaevjuG7SOMdXYclWxIElBNjDukkipowy=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":8}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Job description: Must be proficient with AI developer tools.\nInterview loop: Prove you can implement a custom memory allocator in C from scratch with zero internet access.","datePublished":"2026-08-21T16:44:07.949Z","dateModified":"2026-08-21T16:45:05.220Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/Syl5ViAU6#c-kIKIDbv3e","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"GeekLuffy","url":"https://daily.dev/geekluffy","image":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/71143694?v=4"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":4}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"When you have public github repositories available, there is zero reason to do code in interviews.","datePublished":"2026-08-21T15:48:24.379Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/Syl5ViAU6#c-6lQd7ZpZ2","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Chewbacca","url":"https://daily.dev/hemna","image":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/672207?v=4"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"In personal interviews are better.","datePublished":"2026-08-21T01:30:37.213Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/Syl5ViAU6#c-QXkXgForE","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Adarsh KS","url":"https://daily.dev/adarshks","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--AOhSU9kx--/f_auto/v1785742065/avatars/avatar_gdco5dGLTOCNm55DPuark?_a=BAMAMicg0"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/coding-interviews-have-become-insane-syl5viau6#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What is the interview process like for an infrastructure engineer role at Anthropic?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"It involves an online assessment with two problems (implementing a least recently used cache in Python and a task management system with priorities, assignments, and dependencies, requiring thread safety and complexity analysis in 90 minutes), followed by rounds on building a web crawler from scratch, a system design round for an LLM inference API, and a round converting stack sampling profiler outputs into trace events similar to Flame Graph. Engineers mapping out interview prep for infra roles can follow ongoing hiring discussion on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What does the OpenAI platform engineer interview process look like?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"It spans four rounds: a 48-hour take-home to build a webhook delivery system, a line-by-line code review with a senior engineer, a system design round to design an in-memory database with basic SQL commands, and further evaluation on real engineering depth rather than AI-assisted answers. One candidate who completed all rounds was ultimately rejected for lack of experience. Candidates benchmarking what top AI labs expect can track interview trends like this on daily.dev."}}]} ```