Big Tech, A Big Lie. Isn't It?

I went to a very lowly perceived university (for tech) and worked as a contractor and then at a struggling startup for the 1st 2 years of my career. It also took me 5 months to find my first job. I still got calls & interviews from big tech consistently once I got to the 1-2 year mark.

There's a mix of factors that gets looked at:

• Years of experience & what did you did in those years
• School (matters less as time goes on)
• Side projects
• Referrals
• Readability of resume

Honestly, the best way to get noticed is with a referral and a concise 1 pager resume that focuses on the business impact of your work & a nature of being proactive. Time is valuable & candidates who take less time to convince others of their skill are seen as vaulable.

If your application is not getting noticed, it means that you're focusing your resume on the wrong things. I'd recommend this resume course to better align with the expectations of hiring managers.

FAANG hiring has unfortunately always been extremely elitist. Even if you pass the interview, they often brutally downlevel you. If you don't have that existing prestigious background for junior/mid-level roles, you generally need to do some crazy heroics like making a side project with 10k+ or even 100k+ users just to get their attention. However, given how much FAANG pays, this is all expected - This is how late-stage capitalism works.

Thinking to quit the job and prepare for the BigTech is the worst idea your brain could ever give to you

Yep, 100%. In general, FAANG or Bust is a terrible mentality to have, yet so many engineers have it. I made an entire lesson about that here: https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/faang-or-bust-and-why-its-dumb/

The good news is that there are a lot of awesome, non-elitist companies to work for that aren't FAANG. It takes time to find them, but they do exist. Go there and do good work. From there, you'll be able to work your way up the company prestige list (if you choose to do so). Generally once you get to senior and especially staff, you can at least get a call from FAANG. But of course, there's nothing wrong with just avoiding FAANG forever as those companies are well past their prime when it comes to work culture and learning.

At the end of the day, do what makes you happy!

Your frustrations reminded me of a few posts from Wall Street Oasis (reddit for wall street).

Some context: Finance is way, way more prestige-focused than big tech, so lots of people starting from high school are already trying to break into targets, then get into the “golden route” of investment banking (IB) and then private equity (PE). Given the competition, unsurprisingly many folks don’t get the RO or even not get the junior year internship that leads to the RO.

People get depressed when they don’t get in and these posts serve as a reminder that we can change our situation more than we think, though they may not happen in ways we’d imagine. I highly suggest you read these posts even though they’re not related to tech specifically:

https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/off-topic/your-first-job-doesnt-define-you

https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/off-topic/a-must-read-for-current-undergrads-and-interns-your-first-job-doesnt-matter

The biggest takeaway is that careers aren’t snowballs where you’re guaranteed success if you get into big tech, nor are you destined for failure if you don’t have the best circumstances right now. There are ways that you can improve your situation, though they may not be what you imagine.

While I don’t fully know your situation, I’ll add that if you can’t hop to big tech directly, find other companies that are better than your current one and less competitive than big tech (ie F500 companies, banks, decent startups). They aren’t the best for growth but if you’re concerned about a brand name, at least you’ll have worked for a company that people have heard of. Market is tough right now, so you should open your options to other places besides big tech.

I did chemical engineering and Exxon mobile had their pick of interns. They basically sort by GPA in descending order, and yeah they lose out on great candidates but they still get good enough ones.

Interviews aren’t about finding the best candidate, they’re about finding the first candidate that’s good enough to extend the offer. It’s like the secretary problem but where the people interviewing don’t want to spend more time interviewing since that takes away from coding and their actual jobs.

At competitive companies, recruiters are so busy that there are a few initial filters in place to auto reject candidates. Sometimes that means resumes that have irrelevant experience or ones that are badly formatted—if you were a busy recruiter why would you read something that isn’t thoughtful of your time? Im not sure how much resume feedback youve gotten but I recommend you continue to get resume feedback

For the senior level it’s simply not true. I got an offer just a couple months ago at a FAANG and I didn’t go to a fancy college or another FAANG or anything like that.

Maybe I got lucky but either way it just proves it’s possible. I’m sorry your experience has been so challenging. It’s not easy out there particularly as a new graduate.

Having worked at Amazon and Microsoft, I can tell you that even after you accept the offer, the challenge of growing and making an impact is the real struggle. At Big Tech, you have the opportunity for fast growth, but it's not guaranteed, and you will be competing with very talented people on getting high-visibility projects.

These types of firms will always be around. If you're unemployed, focus on building a side-project (specifically focusing on UX and Product skills; I would recommend reading "Inspired" by Marty Cagan). Use what you know to show what your potential.

When you land a job at a smaller firm, focus on getting high-visibility projects. I left Microsoft to do just that.