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Ask HN: Has anyone been hired by the big 4 companies from outside the US?

7 points by employee123 ↗ HN
I wanted to know if anyone has been hired by the big 4 from outside the US. How did it happen? what was your experience with the interview and most importantly what role? I want to know if this is possible or I should just forget the idea.

A little about me:

I am a front-end dev, with strong front-end skills currently taking courses in Data structures and Algorithms and bought the book Cracking The Coding Interview, been doing one question every day since. I have worked for a number of European startups as a remote front-end dev, but I've always dreamt of going to the valley. I live in Africa.

14 comments

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ThePawnBreak
Probably at least 20-30% of big 4 employees are or were on H1Bs. Getting a job is very simple, but not very easy:

1. Get a good resume. They're not very picky here, if you have a couple of years experience programming professionally, it should be enough.

2. Apply online.

3. Get an interview.

4. Pass the interview (hard).

5. If you get an offer, you'll need to get an H1B visa to go to the US. It's ok, if you're unlucky they'll probably offer you a position in a different country, and you can transfer to the US after 1-2 years.

NhanH
For the last step, if what you truly want is just coming to the US, please don't do it for your own sanity. Waiting 1-2 years working outside the US and then come to the US on H1B/L1 is something potentially quite stressful (not to mention the follow up is anything but pleasant).

Of course, if you just want to work for a big 4 co. anywhere on the world, then it's different.

employee123
why is waiting 1-2 years outside the US unpleasant? kindly explain more.
NhanH
Not specifically the part of ONLY waiting 1-2 years outside the US, but the whole thing. I'm just highlighting that doing H1B, trying to get GC, then citizenship alone is a pretty bad process already, adding 1-2 years on top of that is more of a straw the broke the camel's back. Not to mention that there is no certainty the company can actually bring you over to the US after that 1-2 years period, they certainly WILL try, but the immigration situation in the US currently just seems to be more and more hostile every year.

Realistically, getting H1B should pretty much be discounted from your current plan (the odd is somewhere around 30%), so it leaves you with an L1 visa. That would leave you even more locked to your employer than H1B would.

To make it short, if I've already got an H1B, and currently in the US, I'd stay while nagging the employer to make sure my EB process is going. In your situation (which I am right now), I'd try to get to the US through either O1 or the startup visa parole, assuming the latter comes to fruition.

And just to make sure we're clear, for me working for a big 4 corp is something nice (I don't think I'd hate myself for doing it), but absolutely not my current goal.

employee123
Thanks for sharing, you've really opened my eyes to a lot of things. Looking up O1, it says extraordinary ability in sciences or art. What exactly qualifies as an extraordinary ability. I'm a pretty decent programmer and the ease with which I get jobs at European startups pretty much validates that. But am not sure if it qualifies for an O1. Can you give a few examples?
NhanH
I do not have personal experience with O1 visa, so I'd suggest finding a lawyer or put up another AskHN for it. I'm sure several HN users have went through O1 process before.

That said, I can tell you what I know, but takes it with a lot of salt.

You don't need to be anywhere near Nobel winner level to get an O1 -- which is the impression one might get from reading on USCIS description of O1. However, you still need to be demonstrably good. Since the agency is unable to judge whether anyone of a profession is an expert or not - this is not a slight on them, it's just impossible for an outsider to judge competency of any practioner of any profession - they mostly defer to other external validation you've already got in your field: professional award, news about you or your work by mainstream newspaper (even non-US one, I think news in your own country counts), patents, your alma mater, other well known experts in your field etc. Basically it might be a bit of a popularity contest. To make it concrete, I know an acquaintance who got O1: went through MIT, has a couple of patents, working at a good company, couple of highschool awards, had some articles on him when he was a teenager. I don't know exactly the extent of who was writing recommendations and such for him.

I've also seen a HN user who said they was executive of a startup that exited at reasonable high returns, yet unable to secure O1 visa (some other HN users in that same thread indicates it might be a lawyer issue, I don't know).

Finally, can you make a couple of million bucks? That might be the easiest way to get to the US ...

Also as someone else have said in another thread, if you got an offer from the big company, they'd glad to relocate you to another country where they have an office. Everything I said just applied to the US and I think any other country would be much easier.

ThePawnBreak
I have several friends who are doing the Microsoft Vancouver -> Seattle visa dance, and they're ok with it. I also have a friend who got a green card while working at Microsoft.

I think you don't realise how much better the US is for a software engineer than any other country in the world.

NhanH
Actually I do, I left the US just a couple of months ago after living there for 6 years. And my advice is the same: know your odds, play your lottery, but don't bet/delay your life on that.
emilburzo
Can't help with your question, but I was wondering how did you get in touch with the European startups you worked for?
employee123
I checked out remote job boards, found a couple of listings and applied. Did the interview (most of them took up to a month) and got the offer. You have to know that I have about 4 years experience coding, started while in college and have worked for a firm in my country that contracts out software devs to work as remote devs for startups abroad. So I have a lot of experience working remotely.
emilburzo
Thank you.

I actually have 6 years of experience working remotely, but I guess I've been doing something wrong recently when applying.

employee123
Oh well, one thing I try to do is study a lot. I realised even if you could program well, it pays to know the buzzwords and how things under the hood really work, and that's what normally asked during interviews. I made it a goal to read a lot of books on Javascript, HTML5 and CSS3. I recently started learning data structures and algorithms, turns out this knowledge is useful not just as a programmer(sometimes, depending on what you do) it helps you when interviewing at big companies, especially if you want to get into one of the big 4 like I do :)
guessmyname
I have interviewed with two "Big Corp" companies and during the interviews I asked about the possibility of an immigration sponsorship considering that I live in a South American country, and they have always assured that once the interviews are done and the company extends a job offer they can help during the immigration and relocation, not only to North America but also Germany, Scotland, Japan, Canada or any city where they have an office.

I wouldn't worry about that, just be sure to study a lot to improve your profile as much as you can, every skill counts considering the fact that they receive tons of resumes all the time, you have to differentiate yourself from the others.

PS: Since you mentioned being a front-end developer, I want to give you some advice with respect of your current learning strategy. A couple of days ago I interviewed for a position in the web development team of one of the "Big 4", my background is mostly on back-end development. After reading several articles from people who interviewed with the same company I realized that most of the questions they were asked were related to algorithms and data structures, so I decided to refresh those skills, bought the latest edition of the CtCI book. The day of the interview I was surprised to find that all the questions were regarding the DOM, basic CSS concepts, and new features introduced in the latest specification of JavaScript. During the ~40 mins of the interview I was never asked one single algorithm question.

employee123
Interesting, thanks for sharing this. Actually, I've been reading up a lot on front-end technologies and I'm pretty vast with them. I made it a habit to read one JS book every two weeks, and later moved to CSS. I only recently added data structure and algorithm to the list because of similar reasons.