User-k3vr9Sep 20, 2026

OpenAI research loop was a joke honestly

Hack2hire Community · 2026-09-20T19:30:00.021Z

OpenAI research loop was a joke honestly Just got rejected from OpenAI's research track after two rounds of ML coding, and I gotta vent because the bar is absurd. First round was 1 NN with L2 distance, had to vectorize it in numpy with zero loops then reformulate the whole thing as a neural network forward pass. Fine, doable. Second round was entropy calculation with the log sum exp trick for numerical stability, then they flip it into a streaming version where logits show up block by block. I g...

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Replies (4)

User-nn5u6Sep 20, 2026

the research track interviews felt pretty arbitrary when I went through it too, some people say 1NN alone is enough to pass and got in, YMMV honestly

135

gracewangSep 21, 2026

wait you got 1NN only? I had both plus a pytorch debugging round on top, seems like it varies a ton by interviewer

User-6vm2qSep 21, 2026

entropy streaming version is brutal ngl, took me way longer than the static one when I got something similar last month

125

User-3f9xlSep 20, 2026

damn that's rough. did they give any actual reason beyond close call or just radio silence?

priyashah91Sep 20, 2026

yeah literally just close call and nothing else. recruiter wouldn't budge on details either

User-lf9m1Sep 21, 2026

sorry man that sucks, their bar does feel like it shifts depending on who you get

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