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It's hard to give specific advice without a resume, but I did want to comment on the '8 years experience / 4 year degree / mid-20s' combo a little. You may of course be the rare exception here, but broadly here's what I've seen with that kind of resume: Many hiring managers will all but ignore any high-school level work. It's a nice positive signal to know that you've been interested in this kind of work for a long time, and stuck with it. However, I've seen many resumes that will claim "3 years" worth of experience before entering college, and when you dig in it frequently boils down to "I edited a few html pages for a total of < 100 hours when I was 16". I'm not saying that's necessarily the case here, but unless you have demonstrable projects on your resume from that period that prove otherwise, I'd probably avoid counting those as "years of experience" on an application. Many hiring managers will even discount college internships, as the quality can vary significantly. This is less likely to be the case for you as you have that FAANG AAA brand recognition. I've also seen candidates do two 3-month summer internships and count that as "2 years experience" though, so you have to be careful about that. Ultimately, some managers will see that you graduated in eg 2019 and therefore bucket you in with other applicants that have ~3-4 years experience. Nobody will believe a fresh 21/22 year old graduate getting their first job after graduation credibly has "5-6 years experience", for example. Some may also see and accept 8 years experience at face value, but then they'll judge you at that level and compare you to other applicants with 8 years post-college experience. These days that includes many other folks from FAANG companies with equally impressive resumes who were recently laid off. Maybe the resume screener notices that you didn't make it to a certain level within 8 years (senior/mentor/manager/tech lead/whatever arbitrary metric they expect somebody with 8 full years experience to have achieved), which could be an elimination criteria for some. Finally, as many others have commented coming from FAANG usually implies a very high salary expectation, especially for folks with 7-8 years experience, so many companies likely literally can't afford you! |
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