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Comment by b3b0p | Hacker News Reader

I have similar struggles (double digit years in my career). I've always worked at smaller companies being the jack-of-all-trades. Given the work no one else could, would, or was entrusted to do. I get plagued by recruiters and companies just about every single day from both large tech companies to younger and startups. At almost all the big companies I get onsite at the feedback I get is I'm stronger in one area, and need to work more on another area or I'm not as strong in a specific area they wanted. At this point I feel like I'm stuck grinding LeetCode for the rest of my life to find my way in to these larger companies.

Nothing wrong with smaller companies and startups, but the pay increase and resources available in a larger company are something I would like to experience. Getting my foot in the door is a frustration though.

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I have had a lot of smaller company experience (LI in profile in case you want to verify :) ). I got into large companies two times (and then left later, but that's not relevant).

Both times it was as a contractor. The first time I was employed by a body shop as just simple staff augmentation. This was in the 2000s, but I believe they are still around. I think if I'd wanted to convert to full time it would have been a process, but I definitely got to meet employees and managers from the bigco (and connect to them on linkedin).

The second time was in the mid 2010s when a friend was at a big company (his startup had been acquired and then acquired again). The friend was able to intro me directly to the hiring manager's manager. We had a friendly conversation, I had a quick tech screen and they brought me in. That would have been no trouble at all to convert to FTE (in fact they had a conversation with me that began with, paraphrasing: "how much do you like money?").

I think the best way into a larger company as a generalist beyond the early stage of their career is an acquihire, but the second best is as a contractor. Risk is lower all around (well, except for you).

I never understood why larger companies do this, I.e. either early stage of your career or as a contractor (with some possibility to FTE) and not as directly to FTE if you're a generalist. Companies do at-will employment, but I guess it is difficult to let go without evidence (I.e. performance reviews) though I'm not really sure.

When some of the contractors went FTE at a previous role, their salaries dropped dramatically (though they were paying for their own health insurance through an agency).

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