Early Anthropic member recalls burnout and big ambitions in the AI lab's early days
An early Anthropic employee wrote a lengthy post, describing the AI lab's early safety culture, equity pledges, an FBI visit, and burnout.
A former Anthropic employee, Ivan Vendrov, shared his 8-month experience working for the AI lab in a lengthy Substack post. Vendrov, who now works at Midjourney, described the workplace as intense, with leaders racing to build safe AI and AGI for commercial use. He began the post by stating his account should not be considered gospel, as he recalled the events from memory and recounted the gist of conversations rather than exact words.
Vendrov started working at Anthropic after a lunch with one of the company's cofounders, who mentioned they were discussing regulators in Washington. He was offered a job by Anthropic after agreeing to pledge two-thirds of his equity to charity, as other co-founders had done. The company's office was described as cramped and unattractive, but provided fresh croissants and regular massages, though Vendrov never managed to get one due to full bookings.
The FBI visited the office once, warning that Anthropic was already a target for foreign intelligence agencies. Anthropic also hosted a sushi chef, but the luxury experience was met with resistance, as a cofounder later wrote in Slack that it set the wrong tone. Vendrov described feeling burned out, with sleepless nights and stress from colleagues, but ultimately decided to resign eight months after signing his contract. He praised Anthropic as an "unbelievably good organization" in his resignation letter.
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