FAANG to YC startup, back to FAANG again?
Hey Taro team,
I spent the first 7 years of my career being a full time iOS engineer at a couple different companies including FAANG (max level reached was E4/L4). And then over the last 3 years I started a startup and have been a full stack engineer (being a founder, you have to wear many different hats and basically build anything and everything the startup required e.g. web app, backend) working with little scale and mostly solo.
After 3 years of running the startup, I'm now looking to get back into big tech as an iOS engineer again. Given it's been 3 years since I've done major iOS work (I have done a tiny bit and I feel like I still know iOS, at least UIKit, SwiftUI is another story), my question is this:
Is it advisable to first build and ship an iOS app to production (might take me a month), then do leetcode/interview preparation, and then reach out to companies to do interviews? Or should I just dive straight into leetcode/interview preparation and then reach out to companies?
Can you walk us through your thought process for Taro members also thinking through a return back to FAANG?
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Discussion
(2 comments)- 2
11 days agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroHope you had fun and learned a lot with the startup - I can very, very, very much resonate with the "wearing many hats" thing hehe.
I feel like you're overthinking the process - Instead of preemptively trying to fill in your preconceived notions of what your gaps are, just apply to the jobs first and find out the gaps.
If you have worked at FAANG before, coming back in shouldn't be too hard though admittedly the demand isn't the highest right now for L3/L4. At the end of the day, boomerangs are still immensely valuable though as they have near 0 onboarding cost and are low PIP risk. I am getting 1-3 Meta reachouts per week now to go back.
Anyways, after you apply to a bunch of jobs, 1 of 2 things will happen:
- You get the interviews - Cool, now you just need to prepare. Talk to the recruiters to and look online to figure out the interview process and study accordingly.
- You don't get the interviews - This isn't great, but it is fixable, especially for your situation. Probably just need to retool your resume and maybe flesh out your portfolio a bit with legit side projects and open-source contributions.
I talk about all this and more in our master job searching course, which I highly recommend: Ace Your Tech Interview And Get A Job As A Software Engineer
Can you walk us through your thought process for Taro members also thinking through a return back to FAANG?
It's pretty much what I just described: They apply and adjust accordingly.
Best of luck!
- 210 days agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
I think you should target Senior roles (L5/E5) and apply directly to companies now. Two reasons why:
- Your startup experience is valuable, even if you didn't have a huge outcome. I have a friend who tried and failed as a founder, and after the 2-year startup grind, they landed a Staff role (!!) in Big Tech. Depending on the company and team, and the story you can tell, I'm very confident you could come in as a Senior or Staff Engineer.
- You have prior FAANG experience, so you should have an easier time getting a strong referral. Talk to at least 4-5 people on your former team, even if they no longer work at that company. This will get you (1) a feel for how you'd be viewed as an engineer, (2) understand how their career has gone, and (3) potentially get a referral.
You can still publish the iOS to production, but to be honest, that sounds like it'll be more fun/therapuetic, rather than an efficient way to improve your candidacy.
After running Taro for a few years, sometimes I just have the itch to write simple code on a small utility app. I imagine you also had difficulty doing this in your startup journey.
