Early Anthropic member recalls burnout and big ambitions in the AI lab's early days
· Business Insider
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
- A former Anthropic employee wrote a Substack post about his 8-month stint at the then-new AI lab.
- It offers a rare look at Anthropic's early, safety-obsessed culture that the author said left him burned out.
- He describes a visit from the FBI and fresh croissants in an ugly office.
Anthropic's executives raced to build a safe AI — and one former employee said that pursuit left him feeling burned out and disillusioned.
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In a lengthy Substack post, Ivan Vendrov, who worked as a member of the AI lab's technical staff from late 2022 to mid-2023, described an intense workplace, where fears of AI catastrophe clashed with the urge to build safe AGI for commercial use.
Vendrov began the post by saying his account should not be taken as gospel. He said he recalled the events "from memory," wrote the "gist of the dialogue rather than the exact words used," and that the post is "merely the experience of one guy in a junior role during a short window of time."
Still, it's a remarkable look into the early days of one of the world's preeminent AI companies, with a named employee explaining how the company's formative period created a highly particular workplace.
It also comes days after Anthropic filed to go public. Anthropic declined to comment on this story.
Equity, the FBI, and a sushi dinner
Vendrov, whose LinkedIn says he now works at Midjourney, wrote that he was weighing contract offers from OpenAI and Anthropic in 2022.
He says he decided to join Anthropic after lunch with one of the AI company's cofounders, who said they were already chatting with regulators in Washington.
A recruiter asked whether he wanted to pledge two-thirds of his equity to charity.
"All the co-founders have made the pledge," Vendrov recalled the recruiter saying. He wrote that he was unsure whether the job offer was contingent on his agreement, so he said yes.
Anthropic's S-1 filing describes an employee donation-matching program, where workers can pledge a "meaningful portion" of their equity awards. The company reported that 50% of its employees are included in the program.
Vendrov described a cramped, ugly office. He said it was stocked with fresh croissants and, later, a popular masseuse came twice a week. He said he was never able to schedule a massage because it was always fully booked.
There was a visit from the FBI once, he wrote. The agent warned that Anthropic was "probably already the target of multiple foreign intelligence agencies."
Anthropic also hosted a sushi chef in the office, Vendrov wrote — but the luxe experience was met with resistance. The following day, he said a cofounder wrote in the company Slack that it set the wrong tone.
"We're not here to get rich and eat caviar," they said, per Vendrov's memory, before pitching future dinners of rice and beans.
The burnout
Vendrov's post detailed sleepless nights, walks with other stressed-out colleagues, and moments where he felt he couldn't be honest about his emotions with colleagues.
Eight months after signing his contract offer, Vendrov said he wrote a resignation letter. As he drafted the letter, he said he thought about describing his doubts to the company, but worried it would create doubt in colleagues who were "smarter than me, more competent than me, more solidly well-intentioned than me."
Instead, he said he praised Anthropic as an "unbelievably good organization."
Vendrov did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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