On the flip side companies don’t really seem to care if you’re interested either. I applied to around 200 companies in the final 2 years of my data science undergrad and no matter how much interest I showed in the fields of my interest: stream processing, network analysis, and recommendation systems nobody really cared. I added projects and hackathons and applied directly to teams working on that stuff, never even got an interview in those areas. I ended up getting a front end job at a FANG.
The truth of hiring is nobody is actually honest about it, most of the advice you read online is unrealistic. Engineers mostly care about compensation, working conditions, and future job prospects. Companies mostly care about whether you fit some pre defined funnel and can pass their interview hoops they don’t care about how interested you are or “how much value you can bring” like you read online.
Companies will hire the engineer who passed all 5 technical interviews with good feedback over the engineer who got medium feedback but has experience and interest in the field. And engineers will turn down the most interesting job with middling pay for the high paying boring job that offers remote.
> Companies mostly care about whether you fit some pre defined funnel and can pass their interview hoops they don’t care about how interested you are or “how much value you can bring” like you read online.
I think this is overly cynical. Companies do want these things but at large companies you:
1. Cannot maintain a network of trust amongst people making hiring decisions to keep the bar high.
2. Want a plausibly "objective" process to avoid complaints or lawsuits for discrimination
This leads to modern hiring practices. Smart smaller companies put up fewer hoops, most aren't so smart and just ape the big companies not understanding the forces that led to those hiring practices.
If you can get a strong enough recommendation from someone within the central network of trust of an engineering organization you can skip interviews even at large companies like Google.
I doubt about skipping interviews at Google. I've been at Google for about 8 years, but never met any Googler that joined after skipping interviews (except for acquihires or people who join after a company merge/acquisitions).
This is unsurprising, the network of trust I'm describing at Google isn't large while the company is huge (~27,000 engineers). Additionally, bypassing the interviews expends cultural capital, so you'd expect those who can make it happen to not usually do so. If I haven't been lied to, at least one person in the last few years joined as an IC without the standard interview process because someone near the very top of the org chart said they absolutely needed him on their team ASAP.
The truth of hiring is nobody is actually honest about it, most of the advice you read online is unrealistic. Engineers mostly care about compensation, working conditions, and future job prospects. Companies mostly care about whether you fit some pre defined funnel and can pass their interview hoops they don’t care about how interested you are or “how much value you can bring” like you read online.
Companies will hire the engineer who passed all 5 technical interviews with good feedback over the engineer who got medium feedback but has experience and interest in the field. And engineers will turn down the most interesting job with middling pay for the high paying boring job that offers remote.