[rodly]

A post about hard work and diligent learning about CS concepts followed by an offer from a top-tier tech company will always be greeted by a bunch of dinosaur software engineers who feel entitled to a job in this industry for life purely because they have some arbitrary number of working years.

If you're applying for an IC role, code or shut up. I don't care if you have solved wicked problems before, it's all talking and hand-waving. Can you take a hard problem, and apply CS concepts and good ole problem solving to produce working, succinct and well written code? That's what you're being hired to do, stop complaining.