Anthropic Engineers Can Make Up to $560,000. Here’s the Unusual Trait an Exec Looks for in New Hires.

It’s not enough to have coding skills — to score a job at Anthropic, you have to think beyond the job description.

By Sherin Shibu | edited by Jessica Thomas | Dec 17, 2025

Key Takeaways

Boris Cherny is an Anthropic leader credited with creating Claude Code, an AI coding tool popular with developers.
He said in a recent interview that he looks for “side quests,” or self-driven hobbies and weekend projects, in potential engineering hires.
Cherny also looks to hire “generalists,” or engineers who can not only write code, but also contribute to product decisions, design and user feedback.

For engineers interviewing for jobs at companies like Anthropic, it isn’t enough to have top-notch coding skills or “vibe coding” expertise with writing programs using AI code editing tools. Anthropic leader Boris Cherny says that the standout trait he looks for in new engineering hires is a rich life of “side quests,” or self-driven hobbies and weekend projects that demonstrate breadth beyond a narrow technical lane.

On an episode of The Peterman Pod that aired earlier this week, Cherny said that he looks for side quests when hiring engineers. He gave an example of someone who is “really into making kombucha.” Side passion projects demonstrate the engineer’s curiosity and drive to learn other things.

“These are well-rounded people,” he said on the podcast. “These are the kind of people I enjoy working with.”

Cherny is a leader at Anthropic who created Claude Code, an AI coding tool popular with developers. Since its release in February, 115,000 engineers have used the coding assistant, which has changed 195 million lines of code. In early tests, Claude Code completed tasks in one attempt that would usually require more than 45 minutes of manual work on the part of human developers.

Cherny noted in the podcast that his own career grew largely because of side projects, highlighting that passion projects are often where the real learning happens.

Scoring a job at Anthropic can be a potentially lucrative feat. The startup had 46 open roles in AI research and engineering at the time of writing. A software engineer can make an annual salary ranging from $315,000 to $560,000 with at least five years of experience. Meanwhile, a research engineer can make anywhere from $340,000 to $425,000 with six-plus years of relevant experience.

Besides side quests, Cherny looks to hire “generalists,” or engineers who can go beyond writing code. They can also contribute to product decisions, design and user feedback. The preference arises from Cherny’s own experience working at startups since he was 18 years old. He had to take on a wide range of responsibilities.

At Anthropic, a generalist mindset now shapes recruiting across job titles. Cherny noted that project managers, data scientists and even user researchers “code a little bit.” Anthropic has built a culture where technical fluency is the norm.

Anthropic has also experimented with how candidates use AI in hiring. In February, the company asked candidates not to use AI in written responses to assess their non-AI-assisted communication skills. By July, however, Anthropic changed its policy and allowed job-seekers to submit materials like resumes and cover letters created with AI help.

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Key Takeaways

Boris Cherny is an Anthropic leader credited with creating Claude Code, an AI coding tool popular with developers.
He said in a recent interview that he looks for “side quests,” or self-driven hobbies and weekend projects, in potential engineering hires.
Cherny also looks to hire “generalists,” or engineers who can not only write code, but also contribute to product decisions, design and user feedback.