Yeah you’re also disadvantaged as a senior when you apply by a form - people will obviously think ‘why is this FAANG-level person applying blindly like that’ and think it’s off and discard your application.
This is an odd take given that the majority of remote software developer jobs I've found, with form applications, are specifically listed at the senior level or higher. Maybe you're suggesting it's something like Groucho Marx's quote "I wouldn't belong to a club that would take me as a member."
Is that how it works? Imagine your typical 51-200 person company with your, I don't know, mobile, backend, product teams, whatever you call them. Is there some unspoken rule you pick up at FAANG or the Ivy League that the front door is for the unwashed and people in the know use back channels to get an invitation? If someone reached out to me and I redirected them to the careers page, would I be committing some kind of faux pas? I'm joking but only a little, I really don't know how those circles operate.
> Is there some unspoken rule you pick up at FAANG or the Ivy League that the front door is for the unwashed and people in the know use back channels to get an invitation?
Err yeah kind of. I always recommend people find someone in the team they want to join and reach out to them personally or via a mutual.
If you fill in the form without someone on the other end waiting to pick your application out of the firehouse it can get lost in the HR mystery machine.
I think that’s a pretty common opinion? I’ve never gotten a job with a blind application. I’ve gotten every job I applied to when I did it by reaching out.
At smaller places the HR mystery machine is one or two people with names and faces. If they're not passing resumes down to the tech teams then there is some problem that should be sorted out. The dynamic would have to be pretty broken for me to help some random stranger bypass the system everyone in the company has agreed to use. Plus, accepting back channel applicants could mess up relationships with external recruiters, or DEI hiring initiatives.
Also the teams in smaller places are not anything spectacular, just backend, frontend, data, whatever, with a lot of overlap, so the idea that someone would be aiming for a particular team, meaning whoever is working on that part of the stack this month, is also strange.
What you're saying makes sense with big, complex companies with huge HR processes and teams of varying levels of prestige and expertise. Probably a good idea if you're aiming particularly for a team at Google that works on a particular thing you like.
BTW, this isn't a FAANG/Ivy League thing. In fact, I expect that it's even more common in a lot of other areas. Friend of a friend jobs are incredibly common. If you're just trying to navigate the system from the complete outside by handing your resume around, you're at an incredible disadvantage.
I'm certainly more likely to know people at a random large company, but I know a lot of people in the industry to various degrees from we've met at a conference to I've worked with them. If I were thinking of applying somewhere, one of my first steps would be figuring out who I knew there. I won't automatically refer someone if I don't think they'd be a good fit but if I know them well enough to have a positive opinion about them, I'll let them know what I know or can find out and put in a referral.
