| One of the hardest parts of applying to FAANG or any job is how draining it is to go through the trouble of applying and then not even getting a response. I've been there, it feels bad every time. I've been involved in hiring at most companies I've worked at and I can assure that hiring is a complete disaster everywhere. In fact, you mentioned that you were introverted but if you volunteered to help out with interviewing at your current company you might find it to be an eye opening experience. It does tend to be better at faang companies, but not that much better. Still lots of ego and superstition. One option to consider would be to just keep applying to either faang companies or companies with generally higher prestige that might lead to faang companies. You can also look into doing contract work for them which tends to be an easier onramp to working there full time (but still quite hard). You can also take this time to poke around at what you find interesting. This will likely also help your career a lot in various ways. I've been in your situation a lot of times in my career "well this is boring. Now what?" I don't want to say this is advice exactly because you never know where it goes - but for me I've always looked around to see what seems most interesting and worked on that. Mostly because I'm a very lazy person and if I'm not deeply in love with my work it feels like pulling teeth. Selfishly I'd love to have you back in the US! We need all the developers of your caliber we can get. But I totally understand not wanting to mess with visas. I have some friends who are on H1-B's. I would go crazy with all the nonsense they have to do. I had no idea how long it took before talking with them about it. One last thought, ycombinator has been doing a push towards becoming international lately. You could take some time to think of something the world needs and you could plausibly build with great effort and then apply to YC with just the idea. Perhaps something that could only be built with a deep knowledge of Laravel. Getting into YC is a longshot but you may find the questions in the application and sketching out your startup idea illuminating in it's own way. You can also apply again with more than just an idea next time if you don't get in. Or seek other funding (though that road is probably more difficult in India than in the US. Who knows though, there must be parts of India with a startup scene.) Good luck friend! |