Claude Code architect Boris Cherny told Fortune's conference that Anthropic hires for intellectual range, humility and empiricism — not coding brilliance alone.
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Boris Cherny, the engineer who built Claude Code, told Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference what Anthropic actually screens for when hiring. None of it is raw technical ability.
Cherny named three qualities. The first is intellectual range. Anthropic wants generalists who move across disciplines, not specialists who drilled deep into one domain.
"We like generalists, because they have context across more than just engineering," Cherny said. "We love people that have context across engineering and design, engineering and product, data science and design."
The second criterion is humility. Cherny said Anthropic actively screens out candidates whose ego gets in the way of shipping work.
"Ego just gets in the way of stuff," Cherny told the conference. "You want to be okay and safe shipping an idea that might turn out to be bad. It's not your fault, it's okay to be wrong."
That emphasis on low ego shows up across industries. Ben Goodwin, CEO of probiotic brand Olipop, told CNBC in 2025: "We cannot hire people whose personal egos are ever bigger than the mission of the team." Claire Isnard, formerly chief product and operating officer at Chanel, told Fortune she applies the same filter: "If people have big egos and want to work solo or are mercenaries doing things only for the short-term, they're not going to fit."
Several CEOs now watch the language candidates use about past achievements. Wisp CEO Monica Cepak said applicants who never say "we" when describing challenges signal they cannot function in a team. Twilio CEO Khozema Shipchandler told Fortune he tests for the same thing.
"I don't really think that demonstrates leadership particularly well. What I do is easy because people are supposed to listen to me. I can bark orders and ideally they follow them," Shipchandler said. "The hard leadership is when you're not in charge. How do you get people, through data, passion, charisma, persuasion, to get people to do things? I really try to test for that."
Cherny's third quality is empiricism. He wants candidates who update their thinking when the evidence demands it, even if that means abandoning a personally invested idea.
"The third thing is we love empiricists. So people that are learning from the data, and that are anchored to reality," Cherny said. "Like, 'I have a brilliant idea, then I talk to a customer and they told me that I'm wrong. I'm probably wrong.' And, 'I should probably throw out that idea and try something else. And that's okay.'"
The three traits – generalism, humility, empiricism – describe the kind of organisation Anthropic is trying to build as it scales from a well-funded startup into a public company valued at $965 billion.
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