Olá! Interessante notar que é brasileiro porque também sou.

To answer your question, of course I have references, amazing references even, just not anyone inside the companies that I'm applying to. One of the weird things is how none of these companies even care about my references, everything boils down to a series of 45-minute 1:1 interviews.

Opa!

What I meant is, none of the people you know has asked you to come work with/for them?

I have some 12 years of experience and after my first gig I never had to take an interview and go through hiring process again.

Now I'm working as an H1B in the US and even this happened because of someone I worked a few years before. No interview or weird process except for the VISA thing.

And I don't think I'm an exception. What I learned is that people usually build a network of people and work with them most of their life.

Well a big part of this is that I'm trying to get into slightly larger companies than I've been at in the past, and the companies are brand name SV companies with very high standards where they tend to have pretty rigid hiring processes even for referrals. I know a handful of people at these companies, but none of them are hiring managers, and none of them are from my most recent two jobs (ie. the last decade) to be able to vouch for my recent experience. Also, out of a 16 year career, only 5 of those years were in SV, the other 11 were split between London and US flyover country, so my network is pretty dilute in SF.

Truth be told though, I haven't reached out to much of my network because I don't just want any random job to pay the bills, I am looking for a specific kind of company and experience. If it keeps going like this though I will probably need to broaden my selection.