Same here. Knew nobody at Google. I didn't even go to a particularly good school or anything. I was approached by a recruiter. Didn't pass the interview, but oh well.
Out of the handful of companies I interviewed at, Google was the only one who offered feedback on where my interview went wrong. I thought that was nice of them.
At the time I started, my university had a 75% acceptance rate. I didn't do any interesting side projects or have amazing extra curriculars.
I just went to the jobs page and clicked the "I'd like a job please" button. And what do you know, a recruiter contacted me a few days later to setup an interview.
I think people underestimate how desperate big tech companies are for warm bodies right now. It's not that hard to get an interview.
Maybe things have changed then (or you went to a highly selective brand name school in which case it’s easy).
I went to RPI which isn’t a bad place, but isn’t MIT. I had a good gpa and decent projects but got ignored or instant rejections from Google and Facebook, I was able to get other interviews (Twitter, Palantir) and after working at a famous company now it’s easy to get interviews, but there’s a randomness to it.
If you don’t have a brand name school or don’t know someone it’s still difficult. Not the fault of the companies really, there are just too many applicants.
Since I was in school there are more companies tackling this like triple byte so maybe it’s better now?
I work at a FAANG right now - I received interviews for FAANG, top unicorns (Palantir, Uber, Lyft), quant/finance (Citadel, TS, Jane St), with an unrelated degree (Biochem), average school (top Canadian school), and 2ish YOE at a no-name startup. So I would say it's better than I had expected.
