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I worked at a FAANG company. My co-worker hadn't graduated High School. I recommend applying and grinding leetcode if you aim for a SWE role. Two years SWE experience is enough for them to give you an interview with a cold application through their job board in my experience.
Choose one side of the coin and prepare accordingly.
To simplify:
- FAANG (and FAANG wannabes): leet code, algo, CS stuff
- other tech companies: getting things done, Open Source contributions
In a way it's insanely easy to get a high-end tech job in the US. You don't need to spend 4 years in college. If you're willing to lock yourself in your bedroom and do leetcode for 3-6 months, one of them will hire you.
I applied to Google in late 2021 / early 2022. The suggestion was to grind leetcode.
The recruiter emailed me after my interviews to say they'd resulted in good news. She set up a phone call shortly afterward in which she told me I'd passed the interviews, I should prepare for a series of "team fit" interviews, I should see a job offer in about 6 weeks ("the end of February", when the call occurred in mid-January), and congratulations!
I was never offered, or contacted about, a single "team fit" interview. When the end of February rolled around, she informed me that, because I'd done poorly in the interviews (the same ones mentioned above; my results were good in January, but by February they had apparently spoiled), Google was uninterested in hiring me.
No one has really been able to explain why, in Google's eyes, "you did so poorly we're rejecting you" is a message to congratulate the candidate over, or why performing at that level is considered "passing" the interviews.
You don't need a CS degree and you don't need certs once you've established yourself. I've been in SRE or SRE-adjacent roles at Amazon, Microsoft, Dropbox, and now a quant hedge fund (the first three in the US, the last in London). My only degree is in English lit. Your hardest step is getting into your first job with good name recognition in the tech industry. For this, your best bet isn't certs, it's networking --…
If you want to talk to someone about this don’t hesitate to reach out over email!
In a way it's insanely easy to get a high-end tech job in the US. You don't need to spend 4 years in college. If you're willing to lock yourself in your bedroom and do leetcode for 3-6 months, one of them will hire you.