Hello all! Looking for advice... I would love to work for one of the tech giants, but have been unsuccessful. Google, Apple, and Facebook have never got back to me on my application and I have been unable to get through the online technical screen for Microsoft. I went to college for IT and computer science, but spent the better part of my career acting as an electrical engineer. I'm relatively young at 28 and I finally have migrated to a formal software engineering role. I'm wondering what I need to work on to make me stand out to the companies that haven't gotten back to me and to better prepare myself for the screen/interview if that time comes. I've seen a couple people on here ask for referrals. While that would be great, I don't necessarily want someone to stick their neck out for my name. :-) Any help or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated!
Work at a company that gets acquired by Microsoft
They don't want to hire experienced software engineers. Those firms would rather churn and burn impressionable youth out of college than some guy at 28 with experience and an idea of what an office should look like
Well I’m not that experienced, so I should be golden. Lol
That's bs lol. Competent senior software engineers are in the absolute highest demand at these companies. The problem is, a lot of the senior swes complaining aren't even up to the new grad hiring bar yet they feel entitled to both higher pay and higher titles just because they have been working for longer. Then they go and get destroyed by basic interview questions and end up blaming "the system" for their own incompetence and lack of progression over the past 5+ years.
Maybe join to a tier-2 company first, which will improve your resume. Then tackle the big companies
I have summarized all the advice I have here mohsinali.net/guide.html
Are you trying to work at a big company just because it's a big company?
That’s a valid question. In short no, I’m not I ultimately want to work on a product that has an impact on the world. All of the big companies have a lot of great products that have some benefit to society. I’m also drawn to the culture (at least from an outside perspective) of these companies as well. I think that there are many more ways to grow since there are so many different areas I could potentially work in.
That's a great outlook to have! I got my interview with Microsoft by doing well in a coding competition they held at my school's campus, and similarity I got an interview with Google through "foobar" the programming challenge website they use for recruiting sometimes. As far as getting into Microsoft outside of a college recruitment setting, I don't know enough to give any meaningful advice