“The only winning move is not to play” My advice as someone who doesn’t accept these kinds of interviews on principal - and has repeatedly payed the price for

“The only winning move is not to play” My advice as someone who doesn’t accept these kinds of interviews on principal - and has repeatedly payed the price for my insolence - you have three choices: accept and do it, work around it, or something I don’t know about. I work around it. My life isn’t special, no one cares what I have to say, and no book will ever be written about me, but I get to build great software everyday and I am happy. In not so many words, you have to optimize for what you really want. - Do you just want to build software? - Do you want to have a lot of money? - Do you need access to a quantum computer? - Do you want to live your life learning new things, or focus only on one thing? - Maybe build your own business? - Do you want to buy and sell people like cattle? If you’ve got that right in your head, and you don’t want to play the game I’ve found the gigs outside of the valley/US to be more often about doing work than about status and position. It’s less about the “difficult hiring process as a badge of honour” BS, and more about building things. I mean, Ex-fannG people are out here too so you still run into it from time to time. So, TL;DR, maybe look at the world as an option instead of narrowing in on the typical valley/FANNG path.