Ask HN: How do you survive the tech hub market with no contacts?

Whereas some people want to jump right into a big company like Intel or Google right off the bat, with no room for "stepping stone" companies in between, I took the other route. Since I graduated in something other than CS or STEM related, I assumed that high-profile companies won't look at my resume for entry level work.

Now I've worked at five different small, local companies, taking on different kinds of projects and facing different challenges. Ten years later I want to finally move to one of the large tech hubs, either in SV or Seattle.

I have no friends or contacts there and generally speaking, I don't use referrals to get any of my job interviews, and people don't really vet for me. However the cold approach doesn't seem to work as well over there. Sending in applications to large SV places is falling on deaf ears. I know the competition is high. What is needed now to survive without referrals?