From Sydney to SF:

A Guide To Finding Tech Work

December 2014. I quit my job at Freelancer.com in Sydney, decided that I wanted to work in the Mecca of technology: The San Francisco Bay Area.

This post serves as a brief guide for someone who would want to move to San Francisco for a short duration to look for work. Topics to expect:

• Planning your trip
• How to get the most out of the bay area
• Applications and Application Channels
• What to expect in interviews
• Rejections and Offers

Before you start

Update your resume. 1 page sharp and concise. 2 pages max if you’re senior.

Ship something. Whether you’re Engineering, Product, or Data — Ship something! A product, an analysis, or an insightful blog post. Put what you’ve shipped on your resume. You will almost always be asked about it. Shipping can be almost as good as professional experience.

Update your LinkedIn. Great for networking. Setting your location to SF will leave you open to inbound recruiter messages (if you want them). Here’s mine.

Planning a trip

This guide assumes and strongly recommends moving to San Francisco during the job hunt. It allows you to meet people in the scene, commits you to the hunt, and means you can do casual in-person interviews. That being said, I have many friends who have been hired by Facebook, Google, and Uber who were interviewed in Sydney. Large global companies do recruit from around the world, but smaller and middle sized companies do not.

I booked flights for an 8 week duration. The typical full hiring loop will take about 4 weeks after you get the recruiter phone call. So I don’t recommend any time less than 5–6 weeks. You could possibly do all the phone interviews overseas and just come to SF for a couple of weeks of interviews. However I’ve personally found that people always ask where you’re located, and was paranoid that smaller companies in particular would have this count against me. I’ve been asked for a casual early-stage “lunch interview” that just wouldn’t be feasible if I weren’t in SF.

Stay in a ‘Hacker House’. Hacker Houses are a phenomenon that is big in the bay area. It’s essentially an apartment or house that is full of short-term stay tech people. In my 8 weeks, I’ve become friends with founders from 3 different funded companies, including one from 500 startups. One of my housemates was also a cook at a 2 star michelin restaurant. More importantly you’ll make friends! I used AirBNB to find them. Expect to pay $45+ / night for a hacker bunk bed. I stayed with in Vic’s HackerHome network. Also, yes, rent is expensive — especially during intern season.

You will likely be so preoccupied and stressed about finding work that having to make friends may be considered “low-priority”. Being isolated in a new city with no social support network is tough. I know making friends wasn’t a priority for me, but spontaneous friendships from just being in the same house is something special.

In the Bay Area

When you’re in SF, you will have a lot of down time between applications, homework assignments, and interviewing. Figure out constructive stuff to fill that gap. Here are some suggestions:

• Side project. Build and launch something! This will be extra material to show and tell during interviews.
• Writing. Write about your favourite tech topics or products. This will help you become an expert in that domain.
• Events. SF has an abundance of events you can find on Eventbrite, or Meetup.com. Check out the startup digest to get events too.
• Travel. If you’ve never been to California or the US, this could be a great opportunity to travel to Yosemite, or drive down route 1.
• Study for interview prep (important). There are plenty of great guides/books on interview prep. Hackerrank.com is also great to brush up algorithmically.
• Education. Take some online (or offline) courses to extend your knowledge.

Also once you arrive get a US number, and if needed a US email. Change these on your resume and LinkedIn. There’s always a preference, if slight, for local candidates. Don’t give them any reason to not call you back. You can get a U.S. VOIP number if needed.

Applications — General

• Who to apply to? Apply to companies that interest you and companies that you have a strong expertise in. It’s somewhat of a numbers game. More is better (and I mean target 50+ applications). Find products and companies that you use. Check your browsing history and apps you have installed on your mobile.
• Always write a cover letter (unless they explicitly say they don’t want one. e.g. Google). My typical format for a cover letter has been an anecdote on how I use the product/heard about it/love the product] and then why you’re awesome. 1–2 Paragraphs is plenty. Most recruiters won’t know about the reputation of foreign schools or companies — this is where you SELL yourself.
• Manage your applications. Create a spreadsheet with each company you apply to. Put the date, the position, and where you are in the loop (Applied / Declined / Active). This will be your dashboard for your hunt.

Application — Channels

Likely the vast majority of companies you apply to online will never call you back. A lot of the hottest companies get so many damn applications that unless you have top-tier silicon valley tech experience or graduated from Stanford they won’t call you back at all.

• Directly on the company website. If you like a company, apply directly on their website.
• Online portals I had the most luck with were Linkedin Jobs and angel list. LinkedIn jobs for medium to large companies, and angel list for startups. All the other portals were useless (e.g. Indeed) because they just didn’t have the top tier tech companies.
• HN Who’s hiring The monthly HackerNews who’s hiring (example) is a gold mine. Many of these job applications have a direct email, which greatly increases your odds of a call back.
• Referrals / Meeting people. A lot of strong tech companies have a referral system which will almost guarantee to get you a phone call. Leverage your networks to get referred! LinkedIn is good tool for this. First degree connections work best. I had some attempts at second degree referrals but I didn’t have any luck. If you don’t have any people in the valley, try to meet them! Events, hackathons, people in your hackerhome. One of my housemates met a Twitter recruiter using uberPool.
• Hackathons are a great source for finding tech companies hiring. If you win them you’re bound to get some attention. There’s always people recruiting, you’ll have a great time, and could win prizes. My team won 2 major HP prizes at the 2015 Developer Week Hackathon. One of my teammates was a chilean iOS developer I met staying at an AirBNB Hackerhome. He got a formal offer a week later on the back of our win.
• Hiring Events. I personally didn’t find the majority of tech events to be helpful for job opportunities. However events that are geared towards hiring are great. Look for hiring mixers.
• Hussle. For many people, most of their dream companies won’t even return a phone call. If you are in love with the idea of working for a specific company, and don’t have the ability to get referred, then HUSSLE. Email the CEO, message them on twitter. Tell them how you could make their product better. Impress them. I used this technique to get into call backs from two companies I really liked.
• Direct emails. If you submitted an application but don’t get a response. Try to get a email directly to the recruiter or hiring manager or someone with a similar job function. You might get this through Hackernews, friends who did the interview loop previously, or maybe even on their LinkedIn profile page.
• Recruiters (Agencies). Agencies in SF will almost always get you a phone interview if they think you’re the right fit. The only problem was that I found that recruiters typically that were not very popular / companies I had never heard of. I talked to a few, and they were definitely helpful with leads, but none of the leads were truly interesting.

The interview process

Companies all have their own hiring loop that might vary between role. I’ve found that they generally fall into the 4 main interview stages. It will take about 1 week per stage.

• Recruiter phone call. The first call will be the recruiter. Their job is to filter out candidates that are not a good fit for the company. They will be your point of contact for the entire process. Generally they will talk about your background, why you applied at the company, and logistical questions (Do you need VISA sponsorship?) If you have a special visa class such as Australians, make sure you make this extremely clear, and emphasise how it is different to the typical H1B.
• Technical Phone Call. The next step is a phone call from someone in the role you are applying for. Expect highly domain specific questions in addition to the questions asked by the recruiter.
• Homework. Really typical of bay area companies. They will give you a take-home technical challenge. They may be short timed challenges (<2 hours), long timed challenges (~1–2 days) or simply “whenever you’re done”. Work your ass off on this homework, and bring your A game. Some companies will make you do this and forget about it, some companies will ask some minor follow up questions, some companies will base their entire on site interviews around this. I’ve been asked to design database schema (data engineering), write longest path algorithms (backend engineering), calculate LTV (data analytics), and design product features (product).
• On site interview round . The on site interview round is more often than not, the last round of interviews. It typically involves 4–8 people interviewing you sequentially. Expect them to take half a day to a full day. In larger stage companies expect to meet engineers, product managers, designers, and analysts. In earlier stage companies, expect to meet the founders. Wear jeans + a dressed shirt. Try not to get stuck in the “call and answer” form of interviewing. Great interviews are discussions and dialogues. Ask questions throughout. Don’t just wait until the generic “Do you have any questions for me”.

Rejection

Rejection is part of life. If you don’t get rejected during this process it means you haven’t taken enough risk (either in terms of company or position). Note that how you do during bay area interviews is not a measure of your self-worth.

You could go to Imperial College London, and a US recruiter may think “never heard of it”. You might be a rockstar, but get rejected because the company doesn’t want to deal with a H1B. You might have written a piece of software 90% of Google engineers use but get rejected because interviews are just inherently volatile. It’s rare to get feedback on rejections, just keep in mind that they also happen for a huge range of factors outside of your control.

Stay strong. It can be an emotional rollercoaster. I didn’t get my first offer until a week I was set to fly back to Sydney. I didn’t get the offer I accepted until literally the night I was about to fly out.

I was unusually confident, not because I knew I would get offers. But because I tried to make sure that I made the most out of my time, so even if I didn’t leave with a job, I would have left with an amazing experience.

Offers

If you make it to the offer stage, congratulations! Here are some tips:

• Ask for time to finish any active interview loops.
• Be transparent, let the companies know that you are actively interviewing.
• Early stage equity is incredibly hard to value. I don’t have any specific recommendations here — but there is a lot of articles out there, so please do more reading!
• Always negotiate. I was nervous (paranoid) that the offering company would be offended if I negotiated. This is illogical. If you get an offer, they like you. Always negotiate.

Concluding Thoughts

I’ve now been on the other side of the interviews for a while now. Here’s a few finer details that I always found interesting.

• Hiring is bottleneck for growing companies. Everyone wants to hire competent people. The bar is often non-negotiable but hiring is a priority. (AKA if you get an offer you have a lot of leverage).
• Be humble. People want to work with people they like.
• Timing could matter. Hiring headcount in large companies are budgeted in regular intervals. Typically the financial or calendar year. Sometimes quarterly.

San Francisco is an amazing place for tech. You should consider coming here if you’re in tech. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me at @jimm_y_oung.

Thanks to Julia for giving me feedback on this article.