I want to land a job in a big tech as a SWE - How to do it?

I have actually spent a lot of time trying to get Big Tech to hire more talent out of the Middle East, which is a historically neglected region when it comes to SWE talent. From that experience, I really validated what I'm sure everyone here expected: It's really hard breaking into Big Tech when you don't live in a major tech hub. 😔

That being said, I have seen success cases and here are the levers they pulled:

• Open-source contributions - Most of these companies have giant libraries on GitHub, and this is a way for you to directly show your skill to their engineers.
• Side projects - If you can build something on your own that gets 10,000+ users, that's going to be impressive to anybody anywhere. I have gotten reach-outs from Google, Block, Uber, and more from my side projects.
• Effective networking - This leads to a lot of concrete pathways like referrals, access to exclusive events and diversity hiring initiatives, and other smoother lanes into the hiring pipeline.

All of these levers are applicable to people who live in Silicon Valley, but they're even more important for folks who are coming from a less traditional background.

We have a lot of other resources around breaking into Big Tech where we go into this entire topic more in-depth:

• "What technologies or stacks should I create a project to add in my resume for entry level software jobs?"
• How To Get FAANG Interviews

I truly believe that anybody can eventually make it into one of these prestigious companies, but I want to make it clear that it's extremely hard (usually 5x harder than people think) and you will need a lot of patience and grit. This is where the Taro community can really help - Any arduous journey is far better with company. 😃