[simon83]

From their website[1]:

The Top 3%

"Everyone at Toptal has a proven track record and elite industry experience. There are Toptalers from Wharton, MIT, CERN, and Google, as well as Django committers, Top 100 Rails contributors, leading global designers and art directors, professors, founders and more."

Holy crap man I'm not even going to bother, I'm none of that.

Impostor syndrome intesifies

[1] https://www.toptal.com/top-3-percent

[amingilani]

Don't let that get to you, they have an intense screening process but after you pass it, that's just it.

I'm 25, I have a degree in Economics and Finance, and no formal computer education. All I have is my self-taught experience.

The first time I tried, for all my confidence, I flunked it really bad, which came as a shock to me. I mean, I knew I was good. The recruiter gave me a timeout and said I could reapply later. The next time I'd studied my butt off, solved advanced level coding exercises and reached 4 Kyu on codewars.com

At that point, I breezed through the exercises, and when I was asked to build a live project, I had fun learning and creating my first React web app.. I'd been meaning to learn React, but never had time before.

Of the dozens (dozens!) of people I've referred to Toptal none have passed the screening process. However, I strongly believe it's because they didn't push through it. I know the screening process itself can be beat if you take the time to improve yourself.

Besides, on the other side of the screening process is the greatest community of Ninja developers I've ever seen in my life! Anything I have trouble with, I can discuss on our community chat. I've never been part of a community like this before. And the clients are absolutely brilliant, since Toptal screens clients too!

[simon83]

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience. You are working purely remote, I assume? I'd be curious to see how I'd fare in their screening process.

Can you tell me roughly how many hours in total the screening process takes? (excluding the time you took to study) And how many hours did you spend on the live project? Was it an actual project, or just a dummy one?

I'm asking because I'm working full time, and the whole screening process sounds very time intensive. Not sure if all of this could be done after work hours, or if I'd have to take a couple of days of vacation.

[amingilani]

Yes, I work purely remotely.

The screening process shouldn't be that tough. It's broken into multiple stages. The first three are short sessions. The longest of which was around (I think, don't hold me to it) an hour.

The project is a confidential project you make according to specifications, but they give you enough time to pull it off, even with a full-time job.

[simon83]

Thanks! Maybe I'll give it a shot...

[JamesBarney]

Just curious but where are you based? From previous hacker news comments it sounds like toptal pays poorly for the U.S., ok for Western Europe, and really well for the rest of the world.

[amingilani]

Pakistan :) but I know a dev from Switzerland whose rate is much higher than the US devs.. never heard him complain.

Honestly, all the devs I've spoken to at Toptal love working here, and I'm no exception. But you should really try it out.. at worst, you'll fail and you'd be exactly where you are right now.