How To Break Into Big Tech As A Software Engineer
I was originally going to include this in the my comprehensive guide on getting a software engineer job, but I ultimately decided against it as that article was getting quite long and, as you’ll find out from this article, there really is no secret sauce to breaking into Big Tech. However, there are some aspects that make the process of getting into these companies unique, so let’s cover them.
The #1 Way To Make It In: Patience
I pride myself on being honest and not mincing words when I give advice, so here’s a cold, hard truth: If you’re a junior developer, getting into Big Tech is near impossible. Pretty much everyone wants to work for Big Tech, and there are just so many new junior developers nowadays - I’m sure that for every junior engineer position at a company like Google, there are 100+ applicants. You can’t just be great, you need to be genuinely extraordinary.
So if you’re a junior developer and you can’t get that Big Tech interview after countless applications: Just stop trying. Look, life is a marathon, not a race. It took me ~3 years to get into Facebook, and I don’t regret taking that long at all. You don’t need to make it into Big Tech immediately; you have decades of career ahead of you. Once you start getting Big Tech interviews, you’re probably going to fail the first…
