FAANG Hiring Was Never About Merit

Only now we are hailing it

Photo by Zulian Firmansyah on Unsplash

A week ago, while strolling through Reddit, I came across a highly viral post with the title:

How I “Cheated” My Way Into FAANG Interviews and Got the Offer

Source: Screenshot by author

Before even reading the content, I felt a familiar tinge in my heart: I have known it all along.

I have never attempted any of the steps listed by the OP. Why? I am old enough (and foolish enough) to have bombarded FAAMG+ Applicant Tracking Systems year after year (actually, every six months—their usual cooling off period), only to have my CV end up in a digital trash pile.

It’s been years since my PDF resume V1 must have crossed its legal document retention limit and must have been recycled.

With Google, my relationship has an extra layer of irony: Due to GMail’s erroneous spam feature, I lost close to 150+ non-Google job opportunities. Reason? My CV got spam-trashed even before the recruiter could see my email due to Gmail’s default blocking policy containing personal info attachments.

I was disillusioned with the FAAM(N)G Ferris wheel quite early, before they were in demand. And I…