Agree 100%. I've bootstrapped, I've been acquired, and I've gone through the FB/G/etc. interview processes. Going through those interviews took a few weeks of light prep, whereas bootstrapping to acquisition was a multi-year slog. Just the due diligence portion of the acquisition too many, many, many times the effort of job interviewing.

You don't even need the referral. Unless your CV only has farming experience or something :-)

I concur. My sparse LinkedIn profile shows decades of doing CRUD work for no name companies and I have had recruiters from most of the major tech companies reach out to me. No I couldn’t pass any DS&A tech screen without a lot of preparation.

Even now that I work at one of the Big 5 tech companies, I clearly state that my role is not officially development, I still have recruiters reach out to me from FB for development positions.

There is a big difference between getting recruited and actually getting a job offer.

The discussion was about the need for referrals. But isn’t that what I just said?

No I couldn’t pass any DS&A tech screen without a lot of preparation.

Yeah, but the discussion was about referrals. Referrals are for getting your foot in the door. You don't generally need them for FAANG. You just need a half decent CV.

The hard part is passing the interviews, but referrals don't help with that, from what I know.

An actual referral for an "industry rockstar" would catapult them past the first few rounds of interviewing.

And referrals for top management do the same. Why are we talking about something applicable to maybe 0.00001% of candidates out there?

Because far up the comment tree, referrals were confused with "some recruiter said I should interview for a job".

There was no “confusion”. The only purpose of a referral is to get the interview. If an internal recruiter reached out to you, a referral isn’t necessary.

Either way you still have to go through the same loop.

Yes, I “work for a FAANG” like many others do here.

Yep. Bootstrapping a startup is hard.

FAANG interviews are not even close.

Even just the diligence behind a potential acquisition (stated 'win' condition) is orders of magnitude more stressful than reviewing DFS, lol.