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I feel like this is one of those moments that shouts “Hacker News is not typical”. A lot of people are employed through recruiters, including for Facebook, Google and the rest! Aiming to impress the CEO is all very well, but it’s not common.

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This comment should really be more towards the top of the chain so more people are aware that the grandparent comment is one of those "HN is atypical" moments. Many HN users like the grandparent are very disconnected from the reality that exists for everyone else, where plenty of people have to swim and trudge through the hellscape of recruiters who don't know or care that LINQ is a feature in C# and not a separate language but who will ultimately decide whether or not you're qualified. They have to be appeased like everyone else if the applicant doesn't have the luxury of an extended network of people they can casually ping and go "hey pal i'm back on the market hook me up :)"

Being in tech, I am friends/acquaintances with several people that work for both Google and Facebook. I also interviewed with both. In both cases, it was because an in house recruiter reached out to me on linkedin, not because I had some inside connection.

At the start up I interned at during the beginning of my career, I got the interview and the job because I knew one of the developers. Every other job has been bog standard: apply , talk to recruiter, do phone screen, do onsite.

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