Don't get me wrong, I'm glad OP is happy with where he is right now, but his story's ending is underwhelming.
> Instead of emailing as many black holes as possible, I would spend a week deeply researching a company and the business problems it faced, then put together a working prototype that I would cold-email to the CEO as a product improvement. ... My strategy was working!
Really? Interesting, let's see the outcome.
> I made my cold-emails insanely customized: for the language-learning company Duolingo I sent them a video of me speaking four languages.
Seems like it's not really working, Bill.
> Getting attention is only the first step. The next step is to interview.
.... right. So OP wasted a lot of time on something that yielded the same result as spam (applying to every job).
> I met Aline in San Francisco and she remains to this day the best recruiter I’ve ever worked with.
Ok, so it seems those weeks spent deeply researching companies were a huge waste. Ouch. But at least the recruiter helped you get a job, right?
> Not only did she personally introduce me to companies, she helped me recognize that the recruiting practices of top Silicon Valley companies are largely based on superstition. This meant that if I wanted to interview well, I had to put in an unreasonable amount of practice.
Oh, so still no job. Tell me you found a way to avoid the bullshit interview preparation and used your time to improve the skills you'd actually be using in your job.
> I bought all the popular technical interviewing guidebooks and read them cover-to-cover.
Huh, dived head first into that one... might've just gone and gotten yourself a CS degree then.
> At the same time, I continued to scour Hacker News and AngelList for companies with open positions, and continued to cold-email CEOs.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
> I also signed up for Hired which ended up having the best response rate—their platform is where I eventually found my current job.
... so why'd you put all that effort into making personalized emails for companies? Ugh.
> In the end, after hundreds of awkward sales calls, hundreds of rejections, and thousands of hours coding, I was able to choose a company that best aligned with my personal values. I’m now working at FutureAdvisor.
Ok... never heard of them, but I do like the rose-tinted glasses. Not sure what Bill's secret for being positive is, but it seems to be working for him.