You cannot use AI in interviews to be hired by Cursor, an AI coding assistant built by Anysphere.
“We're actually interviewing people without using any AI other than autocomplete for our first tech screen,” said Michael Truell, co-founder and CEO of Anysphere, in an episode of Y Combinator's Podcast published Wednesday.
“Programming without AI is a very great time box test for skill and intelligence,” Truell said, adding that they are the core qualities they are looking for in teammates.
There is another reason behind the rules: fairness.
“We've hired a lot of people who are great programmers who have no experience with AI tools,” Truell says. “We want to hire those people and teach them at work.”
That beginner's mindset is an advantage of the product and could provide fresh insights from first-time users, he added.
The final step in the cursor hiring process is not traditional interviews. Candidates will be invited to the company's office for two days. They work on real projects with their teams, take part in the meal, and demonstrate what they've built at the end.
Truell said the setup will help you find people who are not only shopping for work, but are really passionate about “problemous spaces.”
“If you're probably just looking at it as a job and you're applying to a lot of tech companies at the same time, you probably aren't going to do it,” he added.
Cursor is also looking for engineers who are passionate about experiments. Truell said the company is encouraging people to carve out the time for “bottom-up experiments.”
In an episode of “Lenny's Podcast,” Truell said early employment at Anysphere was slower than it should have been. The goal was to build a group of world-class engineers and researchers. “A certain combination of intellectual curiosity and experimentation,” he said.
Cursor's parent company Anysphere raised $900 million last month at a $9.9 billion valuation, the company said last week.
Business Insider's Eugene Kim reported earlier this month that Amazon was consulting with Cursor to internally adopting AI coding tools.
The cursor did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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Prohibition of AI job search
ANYSPHERE is not the only company that prohibits AI use in recruitment applications.
Business Insider's Alistair Barr reported last month that the leading AI startup humanity would not use AI when applying for employment.
“We want to understand your personal interest in humanity without mediating through AI systems, and we also want to assess your non-AA support communication skills,” Humanity wrote in Economist Jobs.
This requirement was listed across multiple roles, including technical roles such as machine learning systems engineers.
About a week later, the company behind Claude was backed by this policy.
“We need to evolve around the way that many of the forefront of this technology evaluate candidates,” said Mike Krieger, chief executive of humanity, in a May interview with CNBC. “Therefore, future interview loops will have much more of this ability to use AI.”
