← Antithesis
Antithesis role-play cheat sheet
For the mock cold call at the end of most SDR interviews.
What they sell, in one line
Sells an automated testing platform that finds hidden bugs in complex software systems before they reach customers.
Who you'd be calling
VPs of Engineering, engineering managers and QA or reliability leads at companies running distributed systems like databases, fintech and cloud services.
Your opener
“Hi [Name], this is [You] from Antithesis. We help engineering teams catch rare, hard-to-reproduce bugs before release, do you have a quick minute for me to explain why I called?”
Problems you solve for them
- Rare bugs only show up in production and cause outages
- Hard-to-reproduce failures waste engineers' time
- Manual tests can't cover every way a complex system can fail
Discovery questions to ask
- When did a bug last make it to production, and how long did it take to find the cause?
- How does your team test for failures across many services working together?
- How much time do engineers spend trying to reproduce bugs they can't easily recreate?
Objections they'll throw at you
“I'm busy right now.”
→ Understood, I'll keep it short. Could we find 10 minutes later this week?
“We're not interested.”
→ Fair enough. Are production bugs rare enough for your team that testing feels solved, or is it just not a priority now?
“We already have a strong testing setup.”
→ That's good to hear. What kinds of bugs still slip past it, like timing or rare failure cases?
“Send me an email.”
→ Of course. What type of system does your team build, so I can send something relevant?
Interview tips for this company
- Understand simply what a distributed system is and why bugs in them are hard to reproduce.
- Keep your pitch honest and low on buzzwords, because engineers push back on exaggeration.
Written from public information about Antithesis to help you practice. Ask an insider what their role play looked like; it's the best prep there is.