Blind TL;DR: Anthropic Prevails, Interview Cheats, and TC Blindness (Feb. 20, 2026)

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Blinders Vote Anthropic over OpenAI

The Anthropic vs. OpenAI debate has been taken to a new level since the announcement of ChatGPT ads and Anthropic’s Super Bowl commercials. On Blind, 1,881 professionals responded to a poll where 85.8% of respondents voted that Anthropic is the better company with better technology, against the 14.2% who voted for OpenAI. 

The sentiment is shared across posts on Blind.

A Retired PayPal SVP Answers Hot Topic Questions: Leadership Drama, Net Worth, and Career Advice

A retired SVP from PayPal took to Blind to offer advice on work- and life-related questions. Our top takeaways:

• The most important transition from Director to VP is working the company’s internal politics. ”[Find] a tribe of peers and people more powerful than you who want you to be a VP.”
• The biggest satisfactions in life come from your family, not work.
• In order to be noticed by leadership, be good at your job technically and keep documentation/ presentations that speak to the impact, if possible by dollar amount.

Cheating on an Interview Might Still Land You the Job

A Microsoft employee shared that their manager pushed them to hire someone who was suspected of cheating on their coding interview, stating there are different “levels to cheating”.

Is the manager onto something? If you’re using AI to guide you in the right direction, while still thinking independently and coming up with answers on your own, you must be a capable employee. The time-old saying still stands: work smarter, not harder.

Is the Prestige of Meta Worth the Toxic Environment?

Employee reviews of Meta show that it truly is a good place to work. With a 3.7 rating on Blind, are employees bluffing the toxicity on their posts? Warnings to stay away have tempted a current Microsoft employee to not accept an offer for the tech giant. Is having Meta on your resume worth the risk of a bad manager and team that leads to a toxic working environment?

This Generation of Workers is Money Hungry and Out of Touch

Our retired PayPal SVP shared that he retired with $5M saved up. The response from users saying this isn’t enough money to retire with was too loud to ignore. Does this generation of Gen X and Millennials have a scarcity mindset? Aiming for the highest, most luxurious lifestyle and complaining about a TC less than $500K seems out of touch in this current economic climate. 

Blind brings together tech workers of all backgrounds and experience, where we celebrate having any TC at all. 

Read last week’s Blind TL;DR for more on Meta layoffs, flailing startups, and ChatGPT ads.