
Ask HN: Has anyone been hired by the big 4 companies from outside the US? - employee123
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.<p>A little about me:<p>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&#x27;ve always dreamt of going to the valley. I live in Africa.
======
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.

------
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.

~~~
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 :)

