How I found a job in San Francisco

Everything I write here is my personal experience and observation. During the time that I was looking for a job, I was confronted with the fact that there is a lot of contradictory information on this topic on the Internet, to say the least. All people are very different, everyone’s situations are very different - what worked for me does not work with you, and vice versa. Therefore, my text should not be taken as an instruction, but as simply one of the stories about how you can find work in San Francisco.

In addition, it is important to keep in mind that the experience described in the article is relevant at the time of writing (September 2014). The economic situation is changing, immigration laws also (at least in theory), all this also needs to be taken into account.

0. My background

This spring I finished the program of specialty of one famous St. Petersburg university. Specialty - Information Systems and Technologies.

One can argue a lot about the value of higher education in our time, but when it comes to work visas in most countries, higher education is a mandatory criterion for issuing a work visa, and the US is no exception. There are workarounds , but they are often less trivial. So think 10 times before deducting.
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Even before the uni, I started freelancing, in fact, before the start of the last, fifth year, I worked only remotely, mostly on an hourly basis. I started with Flash, then PHP, JS. Then I switched to Rails and when I was looking for a job, I positioned myself mostly as a Web / Rails / Node developer.

In my last year, I got a job at a startup in St. Petersburg, I also worked there mostly in web-based stuff, I went through Python and went to the office once a week, most of the time I also worked remotely.

In addition to all this, I have an account on a githaba with a bunch of different kinds of code, one project with 900 asterisks, a couple of file side projects, about which I, however, wrote in the summary.

From my own experience, I can say that my own projects / blogs / participation in contests / stars on the githaba help a lot in the hiring process. Many recruiters / engineers paid attention to this interview.

Another very important point that it is better to take care of in advance is English. The last 3 years I have been pumping a skill on American TV shows, the program Work and Travel and working with English-speaking customers. They say that it is easier for people with a technical mindset to learn a language, so it’s a sin not to use it. By the way, if anyone does not know, in general, in the USA, we understand people who speak English poorly. So do not be ashamed of your accent or be afraid to ask again 10 times.

Very often on the Internet they write about networking and how cool it is to find work through friends and friends of friends. Yes, this is cool, but I will hasten to please social phobians, until recently there were no friends / acquaintances in San Francisco, which did not prevent me from finding a job, which means it is possible.

1. Drawing up a resume and cover letter

A lot of things have already been written about how to make a resume, including on geektimes. I can recommend the Google Resume book and read all the articles on this topic, for example, this one: 6 lame words in your resume .

A cover letter is needed when you send letters to potential employers. I personally used this template , simplified the text a bit and then changed the company name and a couple of other suggestions.

2. Actually job search

The basic principle is that sooner or later the quantity will turn into quality. Well, do not be upset when you are refused or do not respond at all. I just started sending resumes wherever possible, at first I just feel the ground, then more confidently, selecting companies / vacancies. Along the way, I corrected the resume and the cover letter, looked where the conversion is better.

In total, I sent about 40-50 letters. I tried different options:
- Craigslist;
- twitter on hashtags #job, #web, software engineer;
- my personal list of top startups in San Francisco;
- Hacker News.

My attempts at Hacker News worked best. Once a month, on the first day, 2 posts appear there: Who is hiring? and Who wants to be hired? . In one write those who are looking for employees, in the other respectively, those who are looking for work. In the first post I wrote to all companies that had H1B or VISA written and a job description at least half fit my skills. In the second post, you just need to drop the link to your resume and maybe someone will write to you. Both companies I went to for an interview found me through Who wants to be hired?

3. Interviews

About this, too much has been written, but it will not be superfluous.

Typical format like this:

The first interview - screening, by phone (Skype), with a recruiter. Its meaning is to clarify some points in your resume, tell about the company, weed out inappropriate candidates. In small companies, sometimes this stage is not present or it is combined with the following.

Further technical interviews with engineers will follow, again by phone (Skype). Get ready to write code in the online editor, talk on technical topics.

Then you will be called for an interview in the office. One of the discoveries for me personally was the fact that even very small companies are ready to pay for flights / hotels / small expenses to potential candidates, so be morally ready for this.

The whole process with each company takes on average 2-4 weeks.

All technical interviews turned out to be quite simple and very similar. All tasks were reduced to recursion, binary search, search in width, the main data structures.

Very often they are asked to evaluate the complexity of the algorithms. No red-black trees were even close.
Often they are asked to tell about the latest projects on which you have worked, to tell how and what works, why it is so and not otherwise.

As a preparation, I would advise you to read some kind of one book about data structures and algorithms, for example, this one , deal with big-O and then solve 100 different tasks, for example, from here .

4. Visas

To go to an interview you need to get a B-1 visa. In my case, it was enough to ask the host company to write an invitation in free form. I came to the consulate with him, honestly answered all the officer's questions and in a couple of days I received a passport with a visa.

To work in the United States, being in the status of B-1, you can not, you need to get a visa, which gives the right to work. Fortunately, even the smallest start-ups often have access to immigration lawyers who can help you solve all these issues. Now in the USA there is a rather difficult situation with work visas, however there are options - these are H-1B, L-1, J-1 and O-1 visas. Everything is described very well here.

Due to the fact that H-1B candidates from overseas need to wait at least six months, many companies practice the J-1 -> H-1B path. This is a very real option, especially if you have recently finished studying. Now I’m in the USA in J-1 status.

By the way, one of the first questions asked during screening interviews is the question of whether you have a higher education. As I said, unfortunately, without him a visa is much more difficult to obtain.

5. Work on the bugs, or what I would have done a little differently.

When one company pays for a flight and a hotel, it’s kind of not comme il faut to go for an interview to another. At the same time, the flight to San Francisco from St. Petersburg takes almost a day - to put it mildly, you do not fly every day. As a result, I had to choose one of the 3 companies from home, who called me for an interview and, fortunately, in the very first they gave me an offer.

If I had the money (and the reason for obtaining a tourist visa), I would try to schedule all the interviews within two weeks and go to the USA myself. I would be like an interview, gain more experience, it would give me a choice and a better position to discuss salaries. So, if you have such an opportunity - I advise her to take advantage. If not, finding a job while sitting at home is also quite realistic.

6. Useful resources

While I was looking for work, I read a lot of any articles and I think it would be appropriate to publish links to good resources here. Some of them already flashed in the text, some still do not:

Success stories

A series of articles from Alexander Kirov , a very interesting experience;
Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search ;
Getting a job in San Francisco ;
How to intern in Silicon Valley with a J1 visa .

About resume, job search, career

Larisa Aharkava's articles: on geektimes , in a blog ;
Video from the series Ask a Google Engineer ;
Youtube channel of Mikhail Portnov. In general, I’m a bit dumb to trust a dude who still has Windows XP on his computer, but in general, it’s sometimes fun to listen to. For example, a whole playlist about job search .

About visas

Excellent article about the main visa in the United States .

I wish you all success!