i just went through the anthropic swe loop from my lunch breaks (yes, interviewing while employed, no regrets) and the timeline was one of the things i wished i'd known going in. here's the actual timeline:
day 0: submitted application online. no referral.
day 11: recruiter reached out for a brief intro call to confirm interest and background. nothing technical.
day 19: first technical phone screen, 45 minutes, one coding problem (algorithms). got a "moving forward" same-day which was nice.
day 26: recruiter sent a take-home that they called a "background reading" which was more like a conceptual discussion prep, not a coding problem. they wanted me to read some material and come ready to discuss.
day 29: second phone screen / technical round, 60 minutes, more of a systems design discussion.
day 36: got invited to the full onsite (virtual). scheduled two weeks out.
day 50: virtual onsite, 4 rounds across one day. hit the afternoon pretty fried.
day 55: recruiter says "we're debriefing this week."
day 63: recruiter call with the offer.
total from submit to offer: 63 days. that's about 9 weeks.
notes: they didn't ghost between stages, which honestly i've come to appreciate as a baseline the debrief period was about a week which is normal, i've seen companies take 3+ weeks on that step so this felt reasonable they asked for a decision within 1 week of the offer but were flexible when i asked for 10 days to compare another offer recruiter was responsive, usually replied within a business day
if you're on H1B or have a timeline constraint i'd flag it early because 9 weeks is pretty standard for them and they don't seem to expedite much unless there's a competing offer in play
overall the process felt more organized than a lot of startups i've talked to. the loops at series a/b companies have been way messier honestly.