Around six months ago, I was a Staff SWE at Google with ten years there. I applied to a few smaller-than-FAANG public companies online...and never heard back fr

Around six months ago, I was a Staff SWE at Google with ten years there. I applied to a few smaller-than-FAANG public companies online...and never heard back from any. The only way I managed to get interviews, or even have a recruiter acknowledge my existence, was by pinging potential hiring managers on LinkedIn (or in one case, having a former Google coworker ping the CTO of the company, since they were connected on LinkedIn). I ended up with very strong offers from Coinbase and Roblox; I never heard back at all from Airbnb. (I took the Roblox offer and am happy with the decision. :) )