What is the best time of year to apply to FAANG?

I'm not sure there's a specific "hiring season." It probably depends on level and when the company does headcount/financial planning.

• New grad recruiting season happens in the fall (September/October, and you'd start in May/June/July of the following year)
• If the company just launched some new initiative or round of funding, they're probably aggressively hiring.
• November and December are typically more difficult times to apply, since recruiters and engineers are frequently on vacation
  • (The analog here is when VCs take the whole month of August off 😅 so fundraising is tough)

I'm curious your experience -- what has been your specific experience with companies you've applied at?

My main piece of advice is to avoid the holidays (late November -> early January) as many people will be on vacation during that time and the employees still in the office are often checked out due to code freeze. If you apply during that time, there is a very high chance your application goes into a black hole.

Aside from that, it's hard to come up with a best time as companies follow different fiscal year cycles and patterns for opening/closing headcount. So there's really no way to game the system here.

Your strategy overall is to apply to FAANG as early as possible, as you want to quickly learn whether or not your resume can even make it past the screen to begin with. I have seen so many engineers spend 6+ months grinding LeetCode to "get ready" for their FAANG interview, just to immediately get rejected at the initial resume screen, making that entire DSA grind pointless. In these scenarios, it would have been much higher ROI doing side projects, contributing to open-source, and networking (to get referrals) to amp up your overall portfolio.