Applying for a job in Silicon Valley companies
To apply or not to apply - that is the question
If you want a job apply for it. It’s so low effort and the potential upside is huge. Always apply. I always get so frustrated when I hear someone didn’t apply because they knew they wouldn’t get it. Well the only way you know you won’t get it is if you don’t apply!!!
Preparation before applying
The issue is, they are likely to get 1000+ resumes for that job, even after the filter they will likely have 200+ solid candidates, more if it’s a fully remote gig. The question is, what gets you to the top of the pile? These jobs are usually filled by referral. I work for a large tech company (50K+) and the best way to get a job is to know someone and have them talk to the hiring manager. Maybe you are a unicorn and you’ll have a long successful career at Google strictly based on the strength of your resume, but if you’re like me, it’s the referral that will get you in the door.
Couldnt hurt to apply. But I actually know someone who works at google and he told me he literally studied for 2 years to get into Google. I have visited the NYC Google building and holy shit is it so nice. Free breakfast/lunch/dinner and free snacks + drinks with complete remote work (most ppl only go in office to get free food). Unless you have godlike experience, you need to prep yourself to get into Google. My friend prepped for 2 years before he even applied bc he was determined to get in. Hes a software eng, so he did MANY personal projects, learning all the software/programs that Google uses and formulated his resume into exactly what they were looking for. FAANG jobs are incredibly competitive. You may have a lot of experience but you best know someone who has even more experienced has already applied, so what makes you better than them?
If you look at a job application for a Google employee, the qualifications/preferred will list a bunch of different types of softwares they want you to be well versed in. So learn that type of software - do random things with it to get good at it
I got two interviews from Google without referrals. The one time I got a referral, my application was auto-rejected.
To be honest you just have to get really lucky. Assume everyone has a equally good, if not better, resume than you and hope your name gets drawn out the pile of other qualified/over-qualified resumes.
In this job market, I think it’s going to be a non-negotiable that you meet the required and preferred skills especially with a company like Google. Not even a referral can help you with that unless it’s coming from an executive.
Some learnings
- Your LinkedIn profile is way more important than you think it is. You can get interview calls from good companies based on how attractive your LinkedIn profile looks to recruiters.
- It is very important that you communicate your ideas clearly to the interviewer - it’s your thought process that they ultimately want to test.
- Don’t give up. Even if you completely screw up an interview, don’t let that affect your mindset. I screwed up an entire interview and still got an offer. Google onsite interviews are not knock-out interviews - the hiring committee looks at the big picture and not individual feedbacks from interviewers.
That said, I personally feel that Google interviews are crackable by almost anyone who is ready to put in efforts for improving their problem solving and coding skills. It doesn’t require for you to have an Einstein brain for getting through the interviews successfully.
If you want to work for FAANG, then only solving a few Leetcode questions won’t help much. Instead, you should be able to write an optimized clean code, knowing their worst-case and best-case complexity, have a stronghold in data structure algorithms, oops and CS subjects.
Technical preparation
I had 5 rounds of onsite interviews. The interviewers were mostly friendly, with a few exceptions. I was tested mainly on DP, DFS, BFS, Probability and a few Design aspects.