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Yeah it's not impossible, but it's not easy. Did you go to MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, Harvard, a different highly selective University? Were you previously

Yeah it's not impossible, but it's not easy. Did you go to MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, Harvard, a different highly selective University? Were you previously working at another highly selective/famous company? If so it's pretty easy to get the interview, if not it's pretty hard without a referral.

yitianjian 7y ago
I work at a FAANG right now - I received interviews for FAANG, top unicorns (Palantir, Uber, Lyft), quant/finance (Citadel, TS, Jane St), with an unrelated degree (Biochem), average school (top Canadian school), and 2ish YOE at a no-name startup. So I would say it's better than I had expected.
xxpor 7y ago
At the time I started, my university had a 75% acceptance rate. I didn't do any interesting side projects or have amazing extra curriculars. I just went to the jobs page and clicked the "I'd like a job please" button. And what do you know, a recruiter contacted me a few days later to setup an interview. I think people underestimate how desperate big tech companies are for warm bodies right now. It's not that hard to get an interview.
- fossuser 7y ago
  Maybe things have changed then (or you went to a highly selective brand name school in which case it’s easy). I went to RPI which isn’t a bad place, but isn’t MIT. I had a good gpa and decent projects but got ignored or instant rejections from Google and Facebook, I was able to get other interviews (Twitter, Palantir) and after working at a famous company now it’s easy to get interviews, but there’s a randomness to it. If you don’t have a brand name school or don’t know someone it’s still difficult. Not the fault of the companies really, there are just too many applicants. Since I was in school there are more companies tackling this like triple byte so maybe it’s better now?
  - xxpor 7y ago
    I went to Case Western and got in to RPI as well. So similar tiers of schools IMO.

yitianjian 7y ago

I work at a FAANG right now - I received interviews for FAANG, top unicorns (Palantir, Uber, Lyft), quant/finance (Citadel, TS, Jane St), with an unrelated degree (Biochem), average school (top Canadian school), and 2ish YOE at a no-name startup. So I would say it's better than I had expected.

xxpor 7y ago

At the time I started, my university had a 75% acceptance rate. I didn't do any interesting side projects or have amazing extra curriculars. I just went to the jobs page and clicked the "I'd like a job please" button. And what do you know, a recruiter contacted me a few days later to setup an interview. I think people underestimate how desperate big tech companies are for warm bodies right now. It's not that hard to get an interview.

fossuser 7y ago
Maybe things have changed then (or you went to a highly selective brand name school in which case it’s easy). I went to RPI which isn’t a bad place, but isn’t MIT. I had a good gpa and decent projects but got ignored or instant rejections from Google and Facebook, I was able to get other interviews (Twitter, Palantir) and after working at a famous company now it’s easy to get interviews, but there’s a randomness to it. If you don’t have a brand name school or don’t know someone it’s still difficult. Not the fault of the companies really, there are just too many applicants. Since I was in school there are more companies tackling this like triple byte so maybe it’s better now?
- xxpor 7y ago
  I went to Case Western and got in to RPI as well. So similar tiers of schools IMO.