Help! I'm A Junior Dev... How Can I Transition To FAANG?

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all right it is Monday after Thanksgiving I don't know what day that makes it it's December 2nd or something I don't know second December 2nd um I got this stupid this stupid uh X1 uh courtesy vehicle um I just clearing the windows off here so we got got to wait a little longer for the the SUV to get uh the air conditioning fixed so my wife has the car and of course my TT never drives um so I can't take that um I should really get on that for the spring but uh I got some topics today so we'll go through a couple that were submitted uh the first one that I'm going to do on the drive into work here is about the someone had asked if they were a junior engineer at a you know small to midsize company how can they approach

uh like kind of going into big Tech like what does that look like what are uh either recommendations or Pathways for that uh so I'll chat through that um man there's no heated s there there's nothing in this car man my uh my phone has to be down here so I can see how the traffic is it's going to be a rough couple days um so just a reminder to before I get get into this topic if you have stuff that you want me to go over please just add it in the comments uh if you want it to be anonymous I do have an anonymous uh one coming up probably for the Wednesday drive or uh maybe tomorrow morning for CrossFit um the uh yeah find me on social media uh Dev leader uh on any platform just send me a message and then

I'll keep it Anonymous for you otherwise just add it in the comments if it's like a generic thing that you just want some uh some perspective on um so yeah let's dive into it so if you're a junior at a you know small to midsize company um it's really difficult to give like super I don't know um specific advice h on this because I don't know the company that you're at and this is going to be very different for everyone and then the problem here is that like when I go to give generic advice it might seem so generic that you're like well how the heck is that even use for me so what I want to try and do is spend the drive talking about a couple of different examples and hopefully it's like it's generic but there might be some specifics that apply

to you and you can kind of think through that so um the first thing that I want to say is uh there's depending on the company you're at when it's a smaller company depending how small the sort of the the call it the life cycle I don't know of the company the age of the company kind of where it's at from a growth perspective um you might find that even as a junior software developer you are doing tons of stuff and that's actually really good um I know maybe for a lot of people the idea of doing Lots at work sucks like hey if I could do nothing at work and get paid isn't that isn't that the dream um I think the answer to that actually no uh and I would say that if your goal in software development is to kind of find

that then like you're probably I don't know like it's not good for growth it's not really good for being a better software developer um and I would say like why not just find something that you actually enjoy doing and spend the time doing that so if you are at a smaller company uh and you're junior it almost doesn't even matter what level you're at when it's a smaller company if it's pretty Scrappy you'll probably find that you're just doing lots of stuff and that can actually be super super helpful in my opinion for uh for applying to different companies regardless of big Tech or some other company because you basically are cramming tons of different experiences into a shorter amount of time so um like when I worked at a startup before Microsoft like for for context right I was at a startup not my

own but I was at a startup for eight years and uh when I applied to Microsoft I applied to Microsoft at a principal level um so and and got the job so the my point here is that like I had 8 years of experience uh at this one company in particular and you know I started that was my first full-time job aside from my internships so I had uh two years of work experience before that but that was my first full-time job so I started there as a you know Junior software developer but um the my point here is that like you gain so much experience when a startup is uh just like either going through hyper growth or just like experiencing Growing Pains of trying to you know trying to survive right um there's so much to do and B like seemingly no one

to do it everything's always on fire um and I don't know I think that you know you can get unlucky someone's probably watching this being like well this is bull crap you know I've seen startups that are total disaster yeah like I I'm not not saying that they're all going to be awesome uh but I do think that there is a ton to learn about softare development in general uh from being at small scrappier companies um I feel like there's a point when you start to become you know more midsize so like hundreds of employees it could even be you know like I would say probably somewhere around 100 and over um that scrappiness starts to die off now I'm not saying it's gone and I'm not saying this is a rule but like I would say it starts to to die off so when

you're in a company that is pretty Scrappy just trying to survive I think lots of experience so um number one if we take this uh if we make this assumption and we think about okay well what are the pathways to going into to Big Tech and I should clarify um this is part of the question that was being asked I'm not here trying to promote necessarily like this is what you need to do this is the path you must take you got to go into big Tech like I mean go work wherever you'd like um that's not for me to say uh I enjoy Microsoft but I'm not I'm not going to sit here recording a video and say everyone must work at Microsoft it's not going to be a good fit for a lot of people so I don't want to pretend uh like

that is the case but this person asked if I wanted to get into big Tech and I'm currently a junior what does that look like so we can talk about the pathway of applying so I think again if you're at a startup it's Scrappy you're building up this experience like I would say if you continue to be feeling like you're building up this experience right where you're like hey man we're all like I'm learning about how to get continuous deployment working continuous integration working um I'm learning about stuff for getting our infrastructure in the cloud I'm learning about whatever if you feel like every day you're like drinking from a fire hose like learning stuff about how to get software up and running how to scale it how to do all sorts of things related to software development that's probably a good spot to be

in I know people like feel like they want to find some imaginary shortcut to like a successful career and I think you know I'm not saying this necessarily for this person I don't know them but if uh if the idea is like hey if I just get into big Tech my career is you know I've kind of won at my career like no I think personally you win at your career by by putting yourself in a place where you're constantly learning and growing like if you're doing that yeah the pay is is going to come you're going to be able to get promoted and you know kind of do do things at a higher level for sure but if you try to you know shortcut it and you're not going through this this learning process you're going to find yourself in a spot where you're

like like I don't really know how to be a good software developer but I guess I get a paycheck and then you might start asking yourself well how long is that going to last for if I don't actually know what I'm doing so I would say like don't rush it right um so back to this idea of how do we start to transition from a small to midsize company as a junior um if you're building up that experience um this is all awesome stuff that you can start slapping onto a resume and you will have all sorts of different experiences that uh people like your peers that are around your level of experience in terms of uh time in the field right you'll have all sorts of different things that other people won't have which is super cool if we want to compare and contrast

that to so say someone say someone's at a company and we can kind of window is down that's weird um we don't have to necessarily focus on um the size of the company I want to talk about like I'm going to use the word Scrappy a lot if we talk about companies that are Scrappy and we take someone with 2 years of experience at a really Scrappy company that's always trying to like move fast you know move fast break things learn and keep going versus someone who's at a a company that's not so Scrappy things are kind of slow kind of stagnant but it feels kind of safe the person who's at the scrapp ofier company for the same amount of time is going to build up all sorts of different experiences that the other person likely will not so I think it puts you

at a great advantage to be at companies that are you know moving fast failing uh failing early iterating and just like constantly go go go um it feels uncomfortable and again I realize there's going to be people listening to this that don't like like this opinion but like that's been my experience is you know if you're moving fast you're learning right so cuz not everything's going to go well and you have to adapt so you build up this experience I recommend staying at the place you're at as long as you are like learning like crazy right it's a good spot to be in you know especially if they're treating you well if you're being treated well you're being paid fairly uh and you're getting this like crazy learning experience it feels like every day is something new stay there Build It Up And now when

you go to start thinking about applying to say big tech companies your experience in applications you'll have so many different things that you can call out that will stand out compared to other people um say let's take someone that's uh very Junior right so if we're talking about they haven't worked or let's take someone who's worked say for a year right um within a year at a company that's moving a little bit slower you might have worked on you know some features in a particular product area so we would assume some amount of time for ramping up your Junior so they're not going to give you likely they're not going to give you uh very large Advanced features that require like you know architecture redesign stuff like that uh but probably smaller features to start with maybe you'll start to work up to something a

little bigger by the end of the year but um you know likely you you worked in a product or service area built a few things fixed some bugs the first year is not is likely not going to feel wild in terms of uh exposure to stuff and that's fine right you got to kind of build up to it um so if this is maybe like the average experience again compared to someone who is doing all of these other things you'll be able to say like I worked across different uh you know uh projects different Services uh and different parts of the stack too right so maybe someone who's at a larger company where things are going slower they never even had to go touch anything with the cicd system like why would they there's a whole team for that you know you cool I used

it but like I don't know I don't know how it works um but you know at a smaller company or a scrappier company where you're like hey like we had to go build a cicd system we didn't even have that like you might be one of the people that got to go work on that and touch it so I think it can put you at a huge Advantage when applying compared to say the average person at the same level of experience so um this is another reason too uh when I talk about people that are just trying to get into the industry you'll you know I talk with people that will say hey like I'm you know I I'm just graduating college or I'm finishing up my boot camp like refer me to Microsoft and I mean first of all if you're a stranger like

I'm I'm not referring you I don't know you um that's not me trying to be like elitist or gatekeep it's just like it's a really weird thing it's against my morals to to like refer someone if I don't even know them because I'm putting my name behind that and that just feels very wrong to me so it's uh I only refer people if I've work with them because otherwise how can I vote for them but I'll have people that ask and I'm thinking in my head like like again I like working at Microsoft I have a lot of people on my current team or my previous team where Microsoft is their first job outside of college or university and that's awesome like it's awesome but it's actually not what I would recommend and it's not what I would recommend because my experience is very different

and I actually like how my experience went I liked going to a small company first um I feel like from what I'm observing from some of the very Junior people that I've worked with at Microsoft compared to some of the junior people I worked with when I was at a very small company the amount of exposure to different parts of software development is just wildly different now don't get me wrong at Microsoft or other big companies and stuff there are Juniors that are working on things that have you know you're touching hundreds of thousands of machines across the planet like it's pretty incredible so someone at a very small company may not have that experience but someone at a very small company is going to have I would say likely the opportunity to be touching many more things across the company if that makes sense

so um this is sort of one thing I want to call out is you is uh you know staying at a small company as long as you're getting the learning experience can be really good uh for for building up that resume now something I just I'm trying to think about different uh aspects of this I want to call out so you know I have I've had a couple people message and I mean this is pretty common people are saying like hey I'm applying but I'm not getting into places and for this person that reached out and they're asking about you Junior going they want to get into big Tech like I would say be ready to apply to a lot of different positions be ready to be rejected and be ignored and not because you're not good that's not what I'm trying to say at

all um I would say just because of the sheer volume of people applying right you have a company that's like Microsoft Amazon Facebook Google you know whatever um these are companies like their household name people know about them so you're just going to have so many more people applying so many more people not to mention they end up carrying like that you know air quotes here Prestige of big Tech so the volume of applications is immense so if you're like okay well I'm ready to apply and there's like one role at Google I want to apply for I'm going to go apply for it I mean like okay you take one chance and the likelihood already is low when you don't get uh even you know the opportunity for an interview and you go oh okay I guess I guess I can't get into big

Tech meanwhile there's other people out there that are sending like you know boatloads of job applications out so I'm not saying that one of these ways is right or wrong I'm just saying you're literally competing against people that are blasting out tons and tons of applications so if you're not playing the same game it's like you're at a disadvantage just by default so that's what I'm trying to to call out here so um when you're ready to go from that Junior position and you want to go over to Big Tech I would say just be ready for lots of applications um another thing on the application part here is like say you get your application you're able to in you're getting an interview because you were able to stand out um a remind that a lot of the stuff I mean a lot of the

stuff you're doing in big Tech versus a smaller company like you might have applied to that smaller company and your interview um I don't know maybe your interview didn't fit like the stereotypical big Tech interview so a reminder that I want to put out there is like if you're when I say a stereotypical big Tech interview if you're like I don't even know what that means then I would say just get on the internet and start reading about what that looks like because it will probably catch you offg guard if you're already familiar with what I'm saying with then you understand and I mean still got to prepare but uh stereotypical big Tech interviews will be multiple rounds like three to five interviews um they will either split up the interviews dedicated to these topics or or merge them but you will have coding rounds

where you're writing code it's kind of like leite code style question so it's not in my opinion it's not really realistic scenarios but it's my opinion you'll uh have system design type questions when you're more Junior you see these less because the expectation that you're designing systems as a junior is likely a little bit lower uh but you'll still you should still prepare for it and then you'll have behavioral interview questions as well so these will be like 3 to five interview rounds so again if if you're hearing this and being like Oh like that sounds crazy I don't know how to do any of that like no worries just make sure that you're practicing this stuff um I might as well promote my own stuff because you're watching this and I might as well shout it out but I do have if you check

the the description of this video and the comment that's pinned uh I have links to courses that I put out I have tons of free content so I don't mind like I don't mind saying that I sell stuff to um but I have a course uh with a friend of mine Ryan Murphy on do train for Behavioral interviews so that part specifically if you're interested in hopefully that's helpful uh sorry I got to check the map here it's telling me to get off the highway but the fast Lane's moving so I'm not doing that okay so we talked about building up experience as a junior right if you're if you're at a scrappy company and there's a lot of uh learning opportunity talked about you're going to need vault volume of applications uh hate to say it right but I think that's the reality right

now and then interview prep because going to Big Tech versus the company that you're at if it's smaller potentially has a different interview format so there's lots of information online about what big Tech interviews look like um there's plenty of content creators that are sort of capitalizing on this Market of people that are trying to interview for big Tech in terms of like the the the questions that you'll get asked so there's tons and tons of resources on this stuff I'm just saying it so that you don't um get caught off guard uh when I went to go apply for my role at Microsoft even as an engineering manager I like I was practicing my leite code questions so that I could interview properly and my system design questions so I still had to do it at the principal level for an engineering manager after

8 years of being at a company and and programming stuff every day I was wildly underprepared uh when I was doing my first sets of interviews at at other tech companies so it's you know huge eyeopener um and I think that I am a talented software developer um so it was just one of those things like if you're not practicing that stuff it's going to be a a rude awakening so okay what else can we look at let's take a different approach a little bit if you're at a smaller company right and your Junior and you're not getting these opportunities to you know to to get this like rapid fast-paced learning because it's it's very Scrappy and you're getting to get all these different experiences if that's not what it feels like where you're at um I'm not going to say like hey like get

out of there uh cuz especially if you like it or whatever like that's totally fine but you're going to want to find ways to build up unique experiences so either you hang out there for longer and get more opportunity or I would say like try to see if you can be doing extra stuff and it doesn't have to be work related um I've made other videos about like what types of projects and stuff to focus on I mean there's a million different options here but my point is again if we think about competition if there's other people that are getting that experience at work dayto day and you're not it's not a matter of like oh that's unfair like I'm not getting that chance like I hate to say it but like boohoo right they don't care they're just going to be at an advantage

so I'm not saying that to be an I'm saying that because like it's the reality so if you're not getting that experience at your your job every day I highly recommend that you find ways to go create it for yourself and what I mean by that is not like oh go start a company now you have to go get customers and stuff I just mean like you know say let's pick Let's make up a random example you're at a company right now you're building uh Android and iOS apps and you're like I want to get into big Tech and I want to work on stuff that's like I don't know like web apps uh apis at scale things like that um and this guy's really got to move over you're killing me dude and this car doesn't help um if you're not getting that experience

because you're building mobile apps at work like it's not that like this is again my my opinion on this stuff is like I don't just hire people uh because they have exact experience right I look for more generic things but I'm not every hiring manager I'm not every HR person I'm not the person that's scanning every resume and application so if you're looking for better odds at this stuff I would say go build that that experience for yourself if you're only building mobile apps at work and you want to go work uh in a service that's going to be you know Planet scale web application at a company like if you're trying to go to Microsoft for example to do this in Office 365 I would say hey like go go play around with building stuff in asp.net go play around with Azure it's not

that you would never get the job if you've never used as p.net or you're not familiar with Azure but like it's only going to help and even if it didn't help you actually land the job it's only going to help if you're using it like on the job cuz it's going to shorten your learning curve so again if you're at a company that's not creating these opportunities for you regularly I think that you need to carve out some time to go create those opportunities for you to learn yourself oh this car is brutal my God not to mention the guy the guy in the the lane back there was driving like 15 M hour under the speed limit I don't know what that is in kilometers anymore I don't want to do the math I'm Canadian I can't even believe I said miles um okay

so create experiences that you're not getting at work I think that's key I would say that this is applicable for anyone right it's that's really generic advice but I uh I feel like I can't say it enough because I always end up hearing someone saying something about it being unfair right like I don't have time for that I have these other obligations outside of work I can't just be coding all the time and it's just like I get it especially going from like when I was at a startup uh and I was single and I didn't have any responsibilities like I could literally work all the time and not have to worry about anything else going on and I basically almost did that I literally have we have five animals at home I have a wife there's other stuff going on like I understand what

it means to have other commitments I don't have kids so I don't understand what that's like but I know it's a lot um my point is that like it's not about it being fair because other people are building up that experience and they're not going to say oh you know what uh Johnny doesn't get that opportunity to go build up that experience I should I should not they don't like they just don't care right they're just going to keep trying to progress so the point is you need to try and find ways to prioritize this stuff if you're not getting the opportunity at work now one more thing that I want to mention because I'm getting closer to the office here is okay you're not getting the opportunities at work you're also saying like I don't feel like I have a lot of time outside

of work okay how can we talk about what you're doing at work to try and help you transition okay so if you can talk with your manager Maybe can do uh some extra Focus work for a different team that's working on some different types of projects or something like that um there's there's different opportunities you could explore and again this isn't going to work everywhere I can't give you specific advice and overly generic really sucks I get it but um this is something that you could try to have a conversation about um if there's some type of way that you could work on other things in addition to what you're doing or maybe uh your manager would let you cve some of your time like 20% time to go help with a different team uh investigate different Technologies stuff like that that could be really

good so I wanted to recommend that and the final thing I got to touch on is because I think it was actually asked in the the question itself was like about kind of like job hopping um and I just want to touch on this briefly so if you're not familiar with the term the idea with job hopping especially when it comes to uh like software development tech companies and and your levels is that the idea is that if you were to be at I'm just going to make up like very simple uh leveling scheme here if you're at level one you're a brand new software developer at level one and you so you're maybe to get promoted it's going to take you a year okay so you start working at this company and you know within six months again I'm just making this up for

an example within six months you go to a different company but they actually let you start at level two okay so you actually just leveled up in half the time that would have been expected now you're at this other company and to go from level two to level three is probably let's say it's 2 years now and you stay there for a year and then you're going to jump to another company and they actually let you come on board at level three because what you're able to do is in the interview process so through your application and your interview process you're able to sort of demonstrate to them hey look I can do things at that level that you're talking about and what you end up doing is you're sort of shortcutting the amount of time it takes to go up in levels and uh

this does work I'm not going to sit here and pretend like people don't do this uh it absolutely does work um but there's always a butt it's kind of what I said earlier earlier imagine repeating this process it's going to get more and more difficult to do it because you're uh your applications and your interview it's going to get harder and harder for the higher and higher levels and if you're not actually spending the time doing the stuff at that level because you are constantly hopping you may find you may very well find that you get to a point where you are unable to perform at that expected level even though you got the job so now instead of being a good solid performer you're at a higher level than underperforming and now what so again I'm not here to say like no one does

this or whatever like it's going to end your career lots of people do it um if you look at the average tenure for people in tech companies right like there's evidence to show like this kind of thing does happen so it's not a secret or anything like that I forgot this thing doesn't have a backup camera doesn't have literally anything going on for it I don't even know if it has sensors and there's a car behind me like I just I'm going to stop here um so Oh I thought it was still rolling oh my God almost had a heart attack so people do this um I'm not saying it's good or bad I just want to say that if you only focus on this if you you make your entire career out of how do I just job hop to the max I would

say you will probably reach a point where it's not helping you and it's working against you but I do recommend to people if you're like I'm not progressing at my company and I think that I'm valued more I would say absolutely go look somewhere else nothing wrong with that you should be getting what you deserve and you should be getting paid for what you're worth I think that's just fair I don't know what you're worth I hope Lots so for this person that's asking about Job hopping in terms of progression like yep it will work um you might even find that if you're maybe you're building up experience in your Junior to midlevel um sorry someone's messaging me I don't want to don't want to read it um you might even find that once you kind of and I don't again I'm not a fan

of this this concept but if you were to get a a job big Tech so you maybe you apply for a a a role that's actually underleveled for where you think you're at just to be able to get in um now you have it on your resume you can say oh look I was at Amazon I was at Microsoft or Facebook or Google whatever um now it's there right now you start this job hopping process people can do that um again I'm I'm just not a big fan of the JW hopping thing um when it's overdone because I think that I see too many people that talk about this online like I became a senior in like 2 seconds and I'm like okay like did you did you build any experience or did you just happen to find it's like uh what how do they

do this it's like I became a senior so fast and like buy my course so you can see how to do it and it's like uh okay you want to tell people you've been a software engineer for like a year and you're senior and now you're going to teach everyone else how to do it like that sounds a bit like scammy to me um anyway I'm trying to think if there's anything else on this I wanted to mention and I think that might be mostly it so um it's definitely you know if you're if you're getting those experiences at the small company really good opportunity to build that up for your resume um big Tech is not sort of uh I don't think that people should look at that like the the ultimate path through their career cuz it's not for everyone um I know

personally I love the pace of small companies I love things moving fast uh Microsoft as a huge company compared to was where I was at it's definitely slower but the scale of impact is much greater so these are different things to look at these are things that you need to weigh out for yourself um these are things that may change for you over time too so just a reminder like to not hyperfocus on this stuff is like the ultimate end goal uh it may change for you over time so I hope that was helpful again if you have any other thoughts questions on this type of thing uh comments uh work really well or just find me on social media and send me a message and I'm happy to go over it and I will see you all on the drive home thanks for being

here take care