I didn't read it that way. Startups live on the backs of people who either can't or don't want to work in big tech. The US in particular glorifies entrepreneurs and scrappy startups, but it's super hard and most fail.
If I thought I could pass the tech screening, and then deal with big company bureaucracy I would tomorrow. Instead, I'm a tech generalist who also doesn't mind handling business or selling, and I have a low BS tolerance. I've done ok in small companies over the second half my career, but I certainly made less than big tech.
I would say until the last three months, it seems like with a few years of experience and “grinding leetcode” anyone could get into one of the BigTech public companies.
I got in by doing a slight pivot from software engineering. But I definitely tell a couple of younger relatives who just graduated to do the monkey dance.
What is diff about last few months? I’m going to be doing the monkey dance too. I don’t get satisfied from doing more enjoyable coding work compared to salary increases. Even if I don’t get to big tech until after a recession possibly hits.
Companies are slowing down hiring and the startups and recently public companies are laying off people and freezing hiring.
I’m older (48) and fell into BigTech via the cloud consulting division - cloud application development. I never had to go through the leetcode grind. But my path was very narrow and I recommend that people go through the leetcode grind.
Ah yeah I was not sure if that’s what you meant. I’m older relative to college grads or graduate students.
I’m switching to programming as a full time career now after coding on my own for a long time.
I’m now trying to pivot to getting any meh job and then grind through leetcode in spare time. Vs do the grinding and possibly find myself unable to get a decent job.
Of course I’m not necessarily going for big tech for either first career job. Just as close as possible with the leetcode and hope to be in there after the 1st.
—
Will you have to do the leetcode grind if you switch job and want to “level up” as it were to an even better job and company?
I only know about small non tech enterprise companies where I never had a serious coding interview and was able to lean on my experience and my most recent job at BigTech where I didn’t go through any coding interviews, was able to lean on my experience and did have a couple of System Design rounds where I had to explain real world implementations.
From what I understand, for more senior level software development positions, they still put you through coding, system design and behavioral.
Why not just become The Rock? Dude makes way better money than Google pays.