Hi all,
Put in a post given my current experience with my job search.

About Me

For context, here are relevant points about me:

• 6 years of software development experience in C# and C++ in .NET stack. Been in the same company.
  • 3.5 years in C# as a generalist and now doing C++ as a specialist since around 1.5 years
• Pursuing OMSCS degree part time and completed 7 courses so far with specialization in Computational Perception and Robotics i.e have completed academic projects in python for ML, CV, RL, AI Ethics, and in C/C++ Intro to OS etc
• MS in ME 5 years ago with specialization in programming (Computer Graphics, OOP)

Next, here a comparision of my experience with job search now vs job search when I had 4 years of C# experience in 2019:

In 2019:

• Got phone interviews from Google, Argo, Amazon with C# .NET no database and web experience

In 2021:

• Same experience as above but with C++ industry experience
• Got OA from Amazon
• Reject at HR level from Zoom, Cruise, Zoox, Motional, Snap and Bloomberg i.e no OA or phone screen
• Had a take home from Adobe. But Adobe is dragging the process and my submission is correct based on the tests I wrote might not be the most optimal

Given this experience, here are my observations:

• I got calls when I was entry level in 2019. That time databases, cloud and web development was not required
• Now in 2021, at the moment, I cannot apply to Salesforce, Microsoft and other companies for some positions because they require web experience

Takeaways

Finally takeaways based on the rejections I am seeing :

• ML and CV coursework is good. But to make the cut i.e get a phone interview at FAANG you need industry experience or research publications. Remember you are competing with entry level graduates who might have recent research publications as part of their MS or have PhDs.

• better to switch especially if you have no database experience and web experience within first 5 years when you are entry level. It becomes harder to switch later atleast in my experience in 2021 at the moment.

What do I mean by "web" experience?

Web experience is required nowadays.
As a concrete example, here is a post from a Microsoft recruiter on LinkedIn:
"Software Engineers! We are #hiring like crazy here at Microsoft (Redmond, Atlanta, and Remote). If you are a Senior level SDE (6+ years of experience) with strong **back-end **or full-stack experience, and experience with distributed systems - let's talk!

If you are a Microsoft employee, please like this post to help me bring awesome engineers to these opportunities!"

Note that backend experience implies experience with databases. i.e desktop software backend does not count in this context.

The break down of what comprises of web development is mentioned below:

Cloud technologies for cloud engineer roles:

• Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform
• related services: SQS, S3, EC2 etc

Databases for backend roles:

• Relational: Postgres, SQL, etc
• Non relational:MongoDB, Cassandra, etc

Big Data for Data Engineer positions:

• Apache Hadoop, Spark i.e Map Reduce related technologies
• Front End for full stack developer:
  • Angular, Node.js, TypeScript
    Note: Companies do not provide the reason for rejection so this post is a guess based on my understanding of why companies are not interested in my profile.

What is my plan?

• Contribute to open source to gain experience with TypeScript and Postgres
• Put in a section for this in my resume

Note

• My situation is in a way putting the cart before the horse.
• Specifically, EPI and CTCI both have early chapters recommending putting in projects to catch the eye of the companies.
• However, I was confident that my coursework projects and .NET desktop development experience will make the mark. But this is not the case.
• Overall, glad I realized this. Now the next steps is to get the right experience on the resume.
• We will see how this goes.