Unpopular Truths About Tech Hiring | Generated by AI
Question: What are some unpopular opinions about why many people fail to learn programming effectively or land permanent positions at big tech companies (FAANG/MAANG/etc.)?
Answer:
Here are some genuinely unpopular (but frequently observed) opinions from people who have hired or mentored hundreds of engineers at big tech companies:
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Most people who “try to learn to code” never actually wanted to become programmers—they wanted the salary and status.
They tolerate LeetCode and tutorials the same way someone tolerates gym workouts while secretly hating exercise. Real programmers code in their spare time for fun as teenagers; the latecomers who only start at 25+ because of the paycheck rarely develop the deep intuition needed to excel. -
Bootcamp graduates are often worse than self-taught developers with zero credentials but 5 years of personal projects.
Bootcamps teach you to pass a very narrow type of interview (LeetCode medium + React todo app), but they don’t teach taste, systems thinking, or how real codebases work. Companies figured this out around 2022–2023 and quietly stopped treating bootcamp certificates as a strong signal. -
Doing 500–1000 LeetCode problems is still the single highest-ROI activity for getting a big tech job, and anyone who says otherwise is coping.
The “build projects” and “contribute to open source” advice sounds nicer, but statistically it’s much weaker unless your project gets 10k+ stars or you become a known maintainer. Grinding algorithms is painful and “unfair,” which is exactly why it remains an effective filter. -
A huge percentage of people who complain about “toxic LeetCode culture” simply aren’t smart enough (in the raw IQ sense) to get good at it under time pressure.
They’ll call it “not real engineering” because admitting the cognitive gap feels worse. Big tech pays 400–800k for a reason; they want people in the top ~1–2 % of problem-solving speed and accuracy. -
Remote-only job seekers who refuse to relocate or do any on-site final rounds dramatically reduce their odds, yet blame “the market.”
In late 2025, most FAANG-tier companies still strongly prefer people who will eventually spend at least some time in office. Refusing that signals low commitment. -
Having a CS degree from a non-target school is still better than having no degree at all, even in 2025.
Recruiters and automated filters haven’t fully caught up to the “degrees don’t matter” narrative. A 2.8 GPA from a random state school still beats a bootcamp + LeetCode in many hiring pipelines. -
The people who fail for years aren’t usually missing “one secret trick”—they’re missing consistent, focused effort over multiple years.
The successful ones you see on LinkedIn posting “6 months from zero to Google” are almost always either (a) already strong at math/logic, (b) former engineers in another discipline, or (c) lying about the timeline. -
Imposter syndrome is overrated as a barrier.
The real barrier is that most people dramatically overestimate their current skill level. They think they’re “pretty good” after a year of part-time coding, when in reality they’re still at the level big tech would reject in the first phone screen 95 % of the time. -
Networking and referrals matter way more than most meritocracy believers admit, but not for the reason you think.
A referral doesn’t get you hired if you can’t code—it just guarantees your application gets looked at by a human. Without one, many résumés are auto-rejected by ATS even if the candidate is excellent.
These takes are unpopular because they’re harsh, but they’re repeatedly validated by hiring data, recruiter anecdotes, and the observed trajectories of thousands of candidates over the last decade.