But if you are a hiring manager at one of the big name companies you would not even short list non-top tier candidates for the interview. I have been applying since the past one month and its the small companies that respond.

I think someone who has worked in Microsoft - who might not have contributed much - minor bug fixes compared to the guy who has a worked in a startup - build products from scratch and all that in an extensive deadline - staying up entire nights on a new few occasions to make the release date ends up getting a straight reject.