Background: London. Comp Sci. from top 10 worldwide college. 2 years C++, Python, iOS experience in well known company on high profile project. Internship at start up with VC funding before that. Github profile with open-source projects, own projects etc. Started blog etc...basically everything that is recommended.
Studied for 5 months (up to and including interview time) and did projects whenever I could. Applied to 40 companies in San Francisco. Got 12 straight no thank you, 2 interviews and the rest ignored.
Started process on Jan 1st 2014. Had interviews at Yahoo! and Palantir. Former, pulled the plug when the H1-B deadline was looming and they felt it wouldn't be done in time. They suggested a workaround to work out of London and try next year and then they pulled that idea a few days later when they didn't have the team in place to support it. The latter, I did 1 telephone interview which went fine, then on-site where I was quizzed for 1 hour in functional programming (never done any before and job is in Java) and had to code not on paper, or a whiteboard, but the glass conference wall...
Will have to wait another year.