We’d like to start with a few considerations on this topic:
- In general, competition is tougher for junior roles (0-1 year of experience) compared to senior roles (2+ years of experience).
- If you are flexible to choose between backend, frontend, full-stack, or mobile, we recommend focusing on backend; the number of new and available positions is higher.
- If you are planning to apply for backend roles, we recommend gaining experience in distributed computing, which is in high demand at top tech companies.
🐤 Application Strategy Suggestions
To qualify for senior roles, we recommend applicants:
- Focus on a few, modern technologies to master, avoid technologies like C# and PHP
- Learn the basics of other new technologies to understand architectural options
- If possible, join teams with stronger developers, better work culture, and processes
- Aim to take on more responsibilities in more impactful projects
- Look for ways to gain experience designing systems
- Always challenge yourself by trying to improve your impact by 10x
- Start measuring your impact on:
- users (e.g. latency, usage, time spent on the product, overall satisfaction)
- company (e.g. speed, cost savings, new revenue streams, ideas you implemented)
🍎 Students
Many students face the chicken-egg problem: they don’t have experience, and because of that they can’t get experience. We know that it can be quite frustrating, but in our experience, when looking for your first job, the key thing is to demonstrate that you've been active in building your skills and portfolio.
👩💻 Professional Experience
The more traditional ways to gain experience without having already worked somewhere are:
- Internship at a local company. Prepare a list of companies in your area, create a result-driven resume, and polish your portfolio (creating a website helps). Apply on the company’s website or reach out to someone who works at the company through LinkedIn.
- Internship at a startup, in-person or remote. These are harder to come by because usually startups don’t have time to teach younger engineers, but if a startup’s mission deeply resonates with you, we recommend you reach out to them and make your case.
- Unpaid internship. Naturally, this is an option everyone can afford, but if that’s the case, looking for learning experiences without expecting to be paid, for a limited amount of time, may not be a bad idea. Use LinkedIn to look for projects that resonate with you.