ANTHROPIC PERFORMANCE TEAM TAKE-HOME FOR DUMMIES

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

Anthropic used to give prospective performance engineering candidates a notoriously difficult take-home exam designed to assess technical ability and judgment under time pressure. This practice was retired after Claude Opus 4.5 scored higher than any candidate ever after just two hours of work. The company has released the assignment publicly along with a post detailing its design principles. This post breaks down the challenge from start to finish and explains everything from scratch.