This is not anywhere close to true. Have you built a bootstrapped startup from scratch and negotiated an acquisition? It's far, far harder than practicing a few leetcode Facebook problems and getting a referral.
Agree 100%. I've bootstrapped, I've been acquired, and I've gone through the FB/G/etc. interview processes. Going through those interviews took a few weeks of light prep, whereas bootstrapping to acquisition was a multi-year slog. Just the due diligence portion of the acquisition too many, many, many times the effort of job interviewing.
I concur. My sparse LinkedIn profile shows decades of doing CRUD work for no name companies and I have had recruiters from most of the major tech companies reach out to me. No I couldn’t pass any DS&A tech screen without a lot of preparation.
Even now that I work at one of the Big 5 tech companies, I clearly state that my role is not officially development, I still have recruiters reach out to me from FB for development positions.
Yeah, but the discussion was about referrals. Referrals are for getting your foot in the door. You don't generally need them for FAANG. You just need a half decent CV.
The hard part is passing the interviews, but referrals don't help with that, from what I know.