I think a much more self-aware article from him would be "Personalized emails didn't work. My recruiter didn't help. But studying the crap out of Data Structure

I think a much more self-aware article from him would be "Personalized emails didn't work. My recruiter didn't help. But studying the crap out of Data Structures and Algorithms did. My personal projects might have helped but I can't really tell." I guess the downside is that's the advice freely available anywhere advice is given to fresh grads, and so is much less exciting.