• Maulik Suchak knows a thing or two about résumés.
• The lead software engineer has reviewed hundreds of his peers' résumés through a résumé-building site he built.
• He shared with BI the résumé that got him a Mag 7 tech job and what he wishes he'd done differently.

You could call Maulik Suchak something of a résumé expert.

His résumés have gotten him to final-round interviews at Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix, and Atlassian, and led to multiple offers, including at Yelp, Microsoft, SurveyMonkey, and the Magnificent 7 company he's been at for nearly five years out of his 14-year career.

But, as the 34-year-old lead software engineer told Business Insider, "My deep dive into résumés didn't start because I was job hunting — it started because I was building a product."

Launching a tool to help people strengthen their résumé content and structure

In 2013, at 23 years old, Suchak co-created a résumé-building platform, CVsIntellect, with another engineer. The idea came from wanting to solve a very real problem; Suchak and his cofounder noticed their peers struggling to craft strong résumés, especially those without access to mentors or design tools.

Their vision was to make the résumé-creation process easier by offering a tool that didn't just generate résumés, but helped guide users toward stronger content and structure. This side project became Suchak's crash course in résumé content.

"I wasn't just writing my own résumé — I was reviewing hundreds of others," he said.

The platform grew rapidly, attracting thousands of users worldwide and surpassing over 100,000 résumés reworked via the site.

"This gave me deep insights into both the content and presentation side of résumés: what stands out, what gets ignored, and how different audiences interpret the same information," he said.

Leveraging his years of informal training helped him land job offers

Two years after launching CVsIntellect, while working as a software engineer in India, Suchak leveraged his learnings to finesse his own job-search materials.

"I knew how to write in a way that hiring managers would respond to, because I'd spent so much time thinking like one," Suchak said. Crafting a breakthrough résumé was about storytelling, positioning, and clarity — skills that ultimately helped him first break into Big Tech and later nab a role at his current Magnificent 7 company.

His efforts led to multiple job offers from companies such as Microsoft and Yelp. He accepted the Yelp offer and relocated to San Francisco, California, at the end of 2015.

In just under five years at Yelp, Suchak grew to lead a team of 14 software engineers as an engineering manager. In this capacity, he gained hiring responsibility, which gave him another foray into résumé review.

He also began mentoring other aspiring engineers. "Whenever someone reaches out for feedback on their résumé, I try my best to help," Suchak said. "Every résumé I read adds to my mental library of patterns — what works and what doesn't, what stands out visually and what falls flat, and how different people articulate their strengths."

Suchak followed his natural curiosity about how people at top companies present their experience. "I've spent a lot of time reading LinkedIn profiles, GitHub READMEs, and personal portfolios to understand how engineers craft their narratives — especially those in roles I admire," he said.

His research furthered his understanding of the language and structure common to strong résumés for Big Tech roles.

Landing a job at his current company

In 2019, Suchak moved to Silicon Valley and began applying to a flurry of Big Tech jobs, including several Magnificent 7 companies.

He reached the final round interviews at Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix, Atlassian, and SurveyMonkey, again receiving several offers. In 2020, he accepted the job at his current Magnificent 7 company.

He attributes much of this success to the first impression his compelling résumé set. "With my résumé, I not only effectively initiated a lot of connections with recruiters and hiring managers, but I landed a job that I'm really proud of," Suchak said.

Five résumé strategies to capture the attention of Big Tech recruiters and hiring teams

Here's the exact résumé that helped Suchak achieve these victories — and five strategies he feels played a major role in ensuring his résumé told a persuasive enough story to open the right doors.

1. Show clear impact of work and projects, not just tasks

Every bullet point on his résumé included a tangible result — metrics or improvements that demonstrated real impact. This framed his work as meaningful and effective, not just functional.

"I always asked myself, 'What changed because I did this?'" Suchak said. "For example, instead of saying 'Worked on improving Yelp Cash Back sign-up page,' I wrote 'Improved Cash Back sign-up pages with various A/B tests with Python and JS resulted in 2X higher conversion.'"

2. Tell a precise story of career growth

Suchak treated his résumé like a narrative. In describing the roles he'd held earlier in his career, he focused on smaller-scale project impact; in his more recent roles, he showcased how he led product decisions or mentored others.

"Each role built logically on the previous one, and I highlighted progression — either in scope, skillset, or leadership," he said. "The idea was to show momentum and intentional career moves rather than random hopping around."

3. Stay clear, concise, and to-the-point — aim for 1 page

When building his résumé platform, Suchak often saw résumés that were three or more pages, filled with every job, internship, or online course candidates had ever done.

But when he realized most recruiters review résumés for less than 10 seconds, he wanted to do it differently.

"Each bullet was one to two lines max, and I avoided buzzwords," he said. "This made it easier for a recruiter or hiring manager to scan quickly and still get a full picture of my strengths."

4. Favor projects over certifications

In Suchak's early career, he spent a lot of time collecting technical certifications that he now feels didn't mean much. Over time, he shifted his strategy to emphasize actual working projects over just any certificate.

"In my résumé, I made sure to link to real-world projects, ideally hosted live or on GitHub," he said. He even mentioned one of his projects in a Magnificent 7 interview, he said, "because it showed initiative, technical depth, and a bit of product thinking."

Suchak has also tried to highlight independence. "I'd done a lot of projects on my own from end-to-end, which my employer now really appreciated," he said.

5. Remember readability and formatting

A "last but not least" job-search principle Suchak believes in is that even the best résumé content can be overlooked if the formatting is messy.

"A readable résumé feels more professional, even before a single word is read," Suchak said.

He opted for clean fonts, consistent spacing, and clear section headers. He also avoided dense blocks of text and added just enough white space to make for a comfortable reading experience.

He even printed his résumé out first to see how it looked on paper before submitting it online.

Suchak still doesn't think his résumé was perfect

"Looking back, if I could change anything about the résumé that got me into my Mag 7 job, I'd highlight more personal projects with shorter descriptions of each," he said. "I'd also try to add even more impact and numbers."

While many career experts suggest customizing your résumé for each job and company you apply to, Suchak didn't tweak his résumé at all for the job he ended up landing.

He now recognizes the value in tailoring résumés to the position you want, studying job descriptions, and integrating keywords from them to get past ATS filters.

"This is one I learned the hard way — while I received multiple offers, I also used to get a lot of rejections," he said. "Instead of sending the same generic résumé everywhere, I'd now match my experience to each role," Suchak said.

Do you have a story to share about your tips for landing a Big Tech job? Contact this reporter, Sarah Jackson, at [email protected], or this editor, Jane Zhang, at [email protected].

• Jigyasa Grover's résumés have helped her secure roles at Big Tech companies like Meta and X.
• Her strategy included highlighting academic achievements, technical skills, and leadership roles.
• As she's grown in her career, Grover has updated her résumé to emphasize her work's strategic impact.

Jigyasa Grover kicked off her career in Big Tech with an internship at Meta, scored her first full-time job at X, and is now a Google Development Advisory Board member alongside her current full-time role as lead of AI and research at the startup Bordo AI.

The San Francisco Bay Area resident, 29, had to be strategic over the last decade to achieve these experiences. Part of her strategy involved leveraging her résumé to win over Big Tech hiring teams.

"My résumé has always been structured to highlight a balance of technical prowess and practical impact, though the emphasis has shifted over time," Grover said.

The machine learning engineer shared with Business Insider two résumés that she crafted.

One helped her land her Meta internship in 2018 at 22 years old:

And another got her a full-time job at X the following year:

She walked us through the points she feels worked best about her résumés, along with insights she's gained along the way about which elements she would change today.

Breaking in — focus on academic background and "meticulously detailed" technologies

The résumé that Grover used as a college student to catch the attention of Meta focused heavily on her academic background.

"I made sure to list my GPA and highlight my top percentile ranking to demonstrate a solid academic foundation," Grover said. She feels that having a strong GPA at the University of California, San Diego and being selected to participate in the weeklong Cornell, Maryland, and Max Planck Pre-doctoral Research School helped her get her foot in the door.

Showcasing her self-starter attitude and non-traditional work experience

To demonstrate her proactive approach to learning beyond the classroom, Grover highlighted some international research internships she had participated in. She also flagged her active engagement in open-source projects like Google Summer of Code.

"This was a particularly important part of my application for early roles because it showcased that I'm a self-starter," Grover said.

Since she didn't yet have experience as a tech employee, she feels that listing these experiences was critical and "surprisingly effective," even though they weren't traditionally considered work experience.

Grover used the experience section to meticulously detail the various technologies she'd worked with, emphasizing the technical depth of each project. These contributions provided her a chance to show real code and impact as an active participant in the tech community.

"This was essential to show that I could handle complex theory as well as the practical implementations needed for AI/ML roles," she said. "Early-stage companies and Big Tech often looked for specific skills, so having a deep understanding of certain programming languages and various ML frameworks certainly helped."

Beyond technical projects, Grover also felt it was important to demonstrate leadership and community contributions

"I chose to include leadership positions at organizations like Women Who Code, Google Developers Group, and as a mentor in open-source communities to show my commitment to impact beyond my own work," she said.

This allowed her to differentiate herself from other candidates who may have only had academic or work experience on their résumés, and highlighted her soft skills like communication, collaboration, and strategic thinking.

"Leading and organizing events, mentoring other engineers, and presenting at conferences demonstrated my ability to contribute beyond just writing code," she said. "It showcased that I was more than just a developer, but also a community builder and a team leader, which ultimately helped me to take on more leadership roles at different companies."

Grover's full-time résumé followed a similar structure, but with an emphasis on impact

As she gained more industry experience, the academic section of her résumé became less of a focus and more of a "check the box" element. She kept the framework of her template the same but underwent a fundamental paradigm shift in her presentation approach.

"I began focusing on value creation, quantifiable business impacts, architectural decisions that exponentially scaled systems, and leadership initiatives that transformed an organization's capabilities," Grover said.

She added that while the experience section remained essential in establishing credibility and domain expertise, she learned how to transform this section from a mere checklist into a platform that demonstrates her unique professional narrative and value proposition to potential employers.

Emphasizing her research publications also helped add credibility to her work, demonstrate thought leadership, and prove her commitment to continuous learning.

"It demonstrated my ability to deliver projects with no external motivation," Grover said. "The fact that I built so many independent projects really showcased that I wasn't just following a set curriculum, but was also curious about areas of computer science outside of my comfort zone."

She also expanded the section for her awards, media features, podcasts, and public speaking to show additional achievements. Highlighting her top placements in multiple hackathons revealed her competitive spirit and willingness to innovate and push boundaries.

Grover believes that this combination of open-source work, research projects, strong academic performance, leadership experience, and quantifiable impact ultimately made her X application successful.

"Each element demonstrated a unique part of my skillset and showed that I was well-rounded and ready for the challenges of Big Tech," she said.

Knowing what she knows now, Grover would make some changes to her résumé

"In life, there's always room for improvement," she said. "I'd focus my résumé even more on strategic impact and cross-functional leadership."

While Grove feels that she's made solid progress in highlighting business metrics, she thinks she could further emphasize how her technical decisions aligned with broader company strategies.

She'd also consider these résumé changes:

• Restructure the publications section to more explicitly show how her work has influenced industry practices.
• Make the community involvement section more selective and focused on the most strategic impacts.
• Consolidate some of the technical project details to make room for more emphasis on team leadership and organizational influence.

One key learning for Grover has been that as you progress in your career, showing how you influence and drive change across organizations becomes increasingly important.

"My old résumé emphasized the 'what,' but now in the latest iterations, I try to emphasize the 'why,' the impact, and the overall story," Grover said.

Do you have a story to share about how you landed a Big Tech job? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at [email protected].

• Akshay Phadké has gone through countless interview rounds as a candidate and faced numerous rejections.
• Reflecting on his experiences, he shares the 3 interview strategies he wishes he'd known earlier.
• He recommends showcasing personality, demonstrating clear communication, and evaluating company fit.

Akshay Phadké has had what many would consider a successful career in tech. He turned an internship at Ericsson into a full-time software engineering job in 2016, landed a role at Microsoft in 2019, and transitioned into the startup world as a senior software engineer in 2021.

But the 32-year-old told Business Insider that he's also had his fair share of failures. He's gone through countless interview rounds at dozens of companies, and while some of those led to job offers, such as at 23&Me and Wayfair, others ended in disappointment.

In 2019, before he landed his role at Microsoft, Phadké was rejected by Meta, Amazon, Dropbox, and Yelp after multiple rounds of on-site interviews.

He can't say for sure why he was rejected after making it so deep into the process, as companies generally don't share feedback and at most will offer informal high-level notes, he said. But based on his experience of his performances in each process and informal feedback he received, he has some thoughts on why he may not have made the cut.

Learning from his rejections

With Meta, Phadké feels he did well in the technical rounds but identified a possible interview misstep. "Their informal feedback was that I could have done a better job of demonstrating 'product sense' in the round where I was asked to design a feature on the Facebook platform in terms of technical architecture, execution, and rollout, and measuring success and adoption," he said.

He found his Amazon interview process "a bit chaotic" — he applied for multiple roles within the company and worked with different tech recruiters — and says he didn't do as well as he would've liked in one of the coding rounds. And in his Dropbox interview process, Phadké believes that he didn't perform well on one of the technical interviews.

Through it all, Phadké's big takeaway is this: "Rejections are a part of the interview process," he said. "You learn a lot from rejections as opposed to wins, and you shouldn't let them discourage you or make you feel lesser."

Hindsight is 20/20, but in Phadké's case, it's also fortified with ample experience; in addition to his many interviews as a candidate, he has also since sat on the other side of the table as a technical interviewer many times.

Here are three interview strategies he knows now that he wishes he had known back then.

1. Recognize that people aren't going to hire you just because you write good code.

Tech industry candidates should avoid being overly focused only on the technical aspects of the job, Phadké said, and should be sure to let their human side show.

"Your interviewers are your peers, and may potentially be teammates or people you work closely with," he said. "They're also trying to understand what kind of person you are, what you're looking for, what motivates you, and if they see themselves working well with you."

With this in mind, Phadké advises talking about your life outside work during any dedicated windows of time before and after the technical and behavioral assessments.

"You shouldn't pass on those opportunities to let your personality shine," he said.

2. Prioritize clear communication, even in the technical rounds.

The soft skill of communicating clearly is an obvious requirement for the behavioral interview rounds, but Phadké stressed that it applies equally to the technical rounds.

"It's poor form to just be typing away silently for the duration of the interview," he said.

Instead, he advised candidates to ask clarifying questions, check if it's safe to make certain assumptions, go through a few examples, and discuss the solution at a high level before attempting to code.

"Even while coding, explaining what's going on will help everyone stay on the same page," Phadké said. "It's also easy to overdo it, so be concise and don't ramble."

Listening is another underrated part of communication skills tested by the hiring committee.

"Interviewers might mention certain nuances to the problem, or offer hints if you are stuck, or encourage you to think of a better approach," Phadké said. "It's crucial to demonstrate your receptiveness to these inputs by acknowledging them."

Beyond verbal communication, candidates also communicate with their code, he added.

"A well-structured solution — with thoughtful comments that help readers follow along without a lot of copy/pasting and furious rewriting — communicates clarity of thought," he said.

3. Approach the interview as a two-way street.

One of the most powerful lessons Phadké has learned is that interviewing isn't just for the employer to grill you, but for you to evaluate the team and company for fit as well.

"Your interviewers are trying to see if you have the required technical skills and if you'd be a good fit within the company," Phadké said. "It's also your opportunity to determine if this role will allow you to meet your career goals."

He now views interviews as conversations in which he, as a candidate, has some element of control. This mindset shift has helped reduce his interview anxiety so he can present the best version of himself.

He added that candidates shouldn't hesitate to politely and firmly ask tough but meaningful questions around the company's financial health, product vision and roadmap, culture, and challenges.

"As your interviewers are trying to get signals from your interview performance, the strength of their responses should give you a better idea whether this opportunity is worth investing in," Phadké said.

Do you have a story to share about landing a job at — or getting rejected from — a Big Tech company? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at [email protected].

• Software engineering jobs have decreased significantly since 2020, which impacts job seekers.
• Five experienced software engineers shared tips they would give to industry newbies to stand out.
• The experts advise aspiring engineers to align with company values and seek mentorship.

Software engineering appeared in the top 10 of Glassdoor's "Best Jobs in America" list in 2022, but it's become more challenging to land these positions in recent years.

Job openings for software engineers on Indeed have plummeted more than a third compared to 2020 — and in 2022, there were three times the number of these roles listed on the site that there are today.

AI tools are also causing worry for many job seekers. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced a hiring freeze for software engineers in 2025 and soon after announced layoffs of 1,000 employees.

If you aspire to become a software engineer, especially in a tough market like this one, it helps to have some inside guidance. Five software engineers and industry experts shared their best tips, insights, and strategies for anyone new to the field with Business Insider.

1. Do the right thing, the right way, at the right time

Yehudit Nathan, who leads six teams of 28 engineers as the senior director of engineering at the fintech Octane, said it's always best to "do the right thing, the right way, at the right time."

"The industry has changed as the world has moved to a faster, instant gratification type of life," she said. "You need to be able to think how you can develop something that's actually needed now and not too far in the future. If you think too far into the future, you could miss your window to succeed."

2. Seek out a company that aligns with your values

Sylvana Santos worked at Codecademy from 2020 until February 2025, when she joined Maribel Health as a full-stack engineer.

She said that since many tech companies are mission-driven and looking for people equally passionate about helping them build their products, you can use that knowledge when applying for entry-level positions.

"Dedicate some time to finding companies closely aligned with your experiences, values, and goals," Santos said. "Craft a cover letter template that speaks to who you are and what drives you. When you find a company that seems like a good fit, you can tweak that cover letter so there's a clear story."

3. Avoid coding in a bubble

Another tip from Santos is to avoid coding in a bubble by using the software development technique of pairing, where two engineers work together — virtually or in person — in real time on the same code.

"Pairing is the best way to learn, especially at the beginning of your career," Santos said. "It's a great way to gain technical knowledge and optimize your workflow."

Santos told BI that she learned many VSCode shortcuts and debugging tricks while pairing with other engineers.

4. Seek mentorship and mentor others

She also suggested that newbies find engineers with strong mentorship skills and set up pairing time with them. "Be willing to ask questions and seek feedback," Santos said. "I wouldn't have discovered those VSCode shortcuts if I didn't ask, 'Hey, how did you do that so quickly?'"

Santos emphasized that knowledge sharing as you gain skills can help advance your early career. "Just because you're just starting doesn't mean you don't have valuable information that might be useful for others," she said. "This can also provide a talking point for self-reviews and promotion packs."

Santos recommended working with a mentor or manager to seek opportunities to share your learnings with or outside your team.

5. Demonstrate your adaptability

Whether you're on the job hunt or starting your first engineering role, Santos believes it's important to show that you're willing and able to step outside your comfort zone.

"This shows employers that you're adaptable and proactive — someone who embraces learning and isn't afraid of the unknown," Santos said.

6. Collaborate whenever possible

Jacqueline Garcia is a senior software engineer at CircleCI, an integration and delivery platform for software innovation, where she's worked since 2018. Garcia is passionate about communication and collaboration within and beyond her team.

If you're a new engineer, she advises that you collaborate with other engineers on your team — especially more experienced members.

"This will help you level up your skills very quickly," Garcia said. "It's also a great way to get guidance and feedback in real time."

7. Don't be afraid to ask questions

Garcia also stressed that beginners should know it's OK not to know something. "Focus on staying curious about learning new things and being OK with being in situations where you don't know all the answers," she said. "Those are usually the best opportunities to become a better engineer."

She recommended that fresh engineers not be afraid to ask questions — no matter how trivial you think others might think they are. "By asking questions, you'll build important skills for handling ambiguity down the line," Garcia said.

8. Identify unmet needs and address them

Asif Savvas — a former Oracle employee who is now cofounder and chief product officer at Simeio — manages his company's entire engineering team. He advises that industry newcomers focus on identifying unmet needs in their organization and the market and then explore opportunities to address them.

"Instead of merely following trends, innovate and offer differentiated services to fulfill business needs," Savvas said. "Becoming an expert on a new, emerging language or challenge can help you carve out a clear role within your current organization or land you a dream job."

9. Take a holistic approach

Savvas also advised taking a holistic approach when identifying your specific role as a software engineer. He emphasized that if you can level up your thinking to be strategic even as a new employee, you'll be ahead of your peers and positioned to become a leader.

"Look at the bigger picture when solving real-world problems for customers and businesses," Savvas said. "Understand the underlying issues driving demand for your team's services and consider all relevant factors, including people, processes, and tools to develop effective strategies."

10. Tread lightly with jargon

Samuel Malachowsky, principal lecturer in the software engineering department at Rochester Institute of Technology, has over 20 years of experience in the industry. Before teaching, he served as a software engineer and technical project manager.

Today he works with his team at RIT to create free Software Engineering labs and often tells his students to be careful how they use industry buzzwords or jargon, as this can backfire — akin to using a few words of a foreign language and immediately regretting doing so.

He said that while the terms are important, it's more important to understand the essence of the jargon than the terms themselves, flagging "agile," "scrum," and "DevOps" as examples.

"In résumés, I would much prefer something like 'Experience with iterative models, especially direct customer interaction' than 'Scrum Certified,'" he said.

"In interviews, just asking an applicant what 'DevOps' means can create panicked, stumbling responses. But if I asked someone for examples of deployment toolchains they've worked with, a much more useful conversation would likely ensue."

• Keith Anderson transitioned from teaching to Big Tech by revamping his résumé.
• He added personal touches and industry language to align with tech hiring practices.
• Anderson's unique approach led to a Google job and later stints at Meta, Uber, and DoorDash.

Nine years into his education career, Keith Anderson was fed up with his job as an adjunct teacher.

"It was low pay, no insurance, and no sense of community," Anderson told Business Insider.

He dreamed of leaving his $27,000 salary behind and working at a Big Tech company like Google. His friends and family told him that someone whose career experience was almost solely in education would never get an interview at a Magnificent 7 company.

Anderson ignored them and applied to every role he could find at Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Netflix. He also applied to many tech startups. His initial efforts ended in disappointment.

"I applied to about 100 jobs but didn't hear a word back. I was devastated," he said.

Anderson hired a career coach to help him understand what he was doing wrong

The coach was equally discouraging. He said Anderson lacked the traditional background of Big Tech hires and recommended he pivot to another education role, which shook Anderson's confidence.

He tried again by hiring a résumé writer who created a polished, ATS-friendly, keyword-heavy résumé. After blasting it out to even more Magnificent 7 job postings, he still heard crickets.

Anderson tried using LinkedIn to cold message more than 50 Google employees. Most ignored him, and when someone did respond, he struggled to keep the conversation going.

Next, he looked for community

Many of his teacher friends were also dissatisfied and exploring new career paths. A small group began meeting monthly to support and review each other's résumés.

Anderson also started attending tech networking events and connecting with people transitioning from other industries, such as nonprofits. "I was genuinely curious about their journeys, so I often asked to see their résumés to better understand how they framed their experience and told their story," Anderson said.

He noticed that while all of the résumés were polished and loaded with impact-driven metrics, none of them adequately expressed that there was a unique person behind the accolades.

This realization led Anderson to try these four résumé strategies, ultimately landing him a Google job.

1. Adding a quirky 'Interests' section and placing it at the top

Anderson realized that no one would likely open a door for him unless they first felt comfortable with him. He reworked his résumé to reflect his authentic personality. He added an 'Interests' section and placed it at the top.

"This made sense to me because when I'd first meet someone, I'd share some unique tidbits about myself to build a warm first impression," Anderson said.

He also went beyond listing generic interests and strove to highlight specific details that couldn't be associated with anyone else.

"Instead of saying things like 'I enjoy cooking,' I shared that I entered a pie contest and came in 3rd place," Anderson said. "That small, quirky detail made me stick out and made me human."

2. Including tech phrases and terminology

Anderson realized he needed to be able to speak the industry lingo he used in his résumé confidently. While the writer he'd hired had filled his résumé with all the right buzzwords for the tech industry, it created a new problem.

"I didn't know how to actually talk about my experience in the language of the tech world during phone screens," Anderson said. "This caused me to stall in the interview process because I sounded disconnected from the résumé I'd submitted."

He started listening to talks, interviews, and meetings with influential people in the tech industry. He wrote down key phrases and terminology that he'd hear repeatedly and rewrote his résumé using those exact terms.

"I wanted the language to feel natural so that when I spoke during interviews, it would align with how the hiring managers were already talking," he said.

3. Crafting a unique selling point

Anderson needed to create a unique selling point that helped showcase his educational background as an asset, not a liability.

"I realized that the combination of my creative background — education, writing, and linguistics — and the analytical, technical side I was building made me a more valuable candidate," he said.

Anderson chose the phrase "Creative + Code" to communicate his brand. He made it a big part of the messaging on his LinkedIn and portfolio and included it in his résumé's summary section in bold.

"Creative" represented his ability to teach, communicate, solve problems, and bring a fresh perspective. "Code" represented his technical and analytical skills, which he developed through coursework and self-study in front-end development coding.

4. Writing for the right audience

Anderson realized he needed to craft his résumé with a clear audience rather than targeting it more generally.

Since he was applying to roles at Google Hardware, he studied the types of problems those teams were facing and adjusted his résumé to show how his skills could solve those specific pain points.

"I gravitate toward new technology, so I became really excited about the team and project at Google when it opened."

Once he began focusing on the audience and the specific challenges they were hiring to solve, he finally started gaining traction. He adjusted his résumé to tailor it for each role he applied to.

These tweaks landed him a job at Google

After one recruiter screening, six rounds of interviews, and a project, Google offered Anderson a job as a web developer in 2015.

He stayed at Google for two years before joining Meta, Uber, DoorDash, and the telehealth startup Calibrate. In 2022, Anderson left Big Tech to start his own career coaching company, Career Alchemy.

Anderson said his Google manager told him he was hired because of his perspective, not because of his experience, and he offered a unique combination of skills they didn't realize they needed until he showed them.

"Landing a job at Google wasn't about being the most qualified," Anderson said. "It was about clearly positioning myself as the solution to a problem they didn't even know they had."

Do you have a story to share about breaking into Big Tech? Contact this editor at [email protected].

• Taylor Rosenbauer's company, RocketAir, has had a four-day workweek since 2023.
• The company's shorter workweek is complemented by a remote work model and integration of AI tools.
• Rosenbauer and his employees use AI to help with data synthesis, project management, and brainstorming.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Taylor Rosenbauer, the 32-year-old founder and CEO of RocketAir, a design and strategy firm. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm the CEO of a design and strategy firm that formally implemented a four-day workweek to avoid burnout back in 2023. For us, Fridays are considered the weekend.

We've also built our entire company culture around a remote work model. While it might not suit every company or industry, it naturally complements our four-day workweek.

It lets our team of 15 — including full-time employees and independent contractors — skip commutes, avoid unnecessary meetings, and manage their time intentionally, which is essential when compressing a traditional five-day workload into four days.

Having a "small but mighty" team is intentional. It makes it much easier for us to experiment with and adapt to new ways of working, like the 4-day workweek.

The shorter week has forced us to become more efficient as we try to produce the same output in less time. It also naturally pushed us to explore technology — especially AI — more deeply.

We want to use AI to amplify rather than replace

The way we think about leveraging AI is that it allows us to raise the ceiling on what we're capable of as designers. By letting AI tools handle routine, repetitive tasks, our team gets more time to focus on big ideas, strategic thinking, and pushing creative boundaries — areas where humans truly excel.

With less busy work and more brainpower spent on high-impact activities, we'll be able to dig deeper creatively, explore ideas more thoroughly, and bring original concepts to life faster than ever.

Here are a few ways we've started using AI tools to help our work:

1. We use AI tools to synthesize and contextualize data to create smarter design solutions

During the discovery phase of a project, we're ingesting troves of data from clients, including customer research, industry reports, Google Analytics, and user personas.

With AI tools like ChatGPT, I can upload any PDF and ask the tool to give me a list of key takeaways relevant to my business. This manual task would usually take hours and now takes less than a minute.

We can also use ChatGPT to generate a summary of an industry or audience in seconds, even tailoring results with specific parameters or asking follow-up questions. We may need more in-depth research, but it's a good starting point.

2. Our project management and remote collaboration are more robust

We've been using Notion as a hub for client projects; we store all timelines, meeting notes, and working files in a central area. Its AI features allow us to highlight text and instantly create a summary, list of action items, or rewritten text in simpler language. This is particularly useful when our producers need to consolidate client feedback and share specific next steps with copywriters or designers on our team.

Since the team is remote, we often record meetings for those who can't join live. We use Otter.ai to transcribe the dialogue from meetings in real time, create summaries, and pull out action items from conversations. This also helps reduce the number of meetings team members must attend.

3. AI is another brainstorming partner

Tools like DALL-E and ChatGPT are limited when it comes to creating polished work; we wouldn't use these tools to generate a brand mood board or design a UI layout. But we've found they can be useful to get ideas flowing. We check our work by asking ChatGPT to analyze something we've written and point out anything we've missed.

We've also been experimenting with no-code, AI-powered tools like Lovable.dev to bring velocity to the creative process with prompt-based rapid prototyping, to create high-fidelity prototypes that feel like real digital experiences.

Similarly, we're playing around with the latest advancements in AI image generation — Open AI just introduced 4o image generation in late March — for rapid concepting. These tools aren't replacing our creative output, but they're super useful as brainstorming partners, accelerating the early stages of idea generation and exploration.

We'll never rely fully on AI

We're vigilant about the tendency of some AI models to hallucinate or generate inaccurate content, so we never fully rely on them. There's always a human layer of due diligence, whether it's fact-checking research, reviewing competitive analysis, or knowing what will resonate with people.

AI will always be a partner for us, not a replacement for talent. We're focused on raising the ceiling of our creative output and capabilities, and building toward a future where human ingenuity and AI-driven efficiency come together.

For example, we're building our own AI-powered design intelligence platform and our goal is to scale it for middle-market and enterprise clients who have massive amounts of disparate data but haven't yet brought it effectively into their creative processes.

In order to win in the market, brands need to create an emotional connection with their audience. That's the part we'll never fully outsource to AI. Novel ideas and culturally relevant strategies will always rely on humanity.

Do you have a story to share about your experience with a four-day workweek or another unconventional schedule? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at [email protected].

• Elvi Caperonis was laid off from her Big Tech job in July 2024.
• She used the layoff as an opportunity to focus on other ventures she'd been running on the side.
• Caperonis now runs her own career coaching, content creation, and Airbnb business.

Elvi Caperonis had a dream to work in Big Tech — and after five years and over 100 rejections, she reached it by landing a role at a prominent Magnificent 7 company in 2017.

But in July 2024 — seven years later — Caperonis was laid off.

Instead of her dream morphing into a nightmare, though, Caperonis told Business Insider that the layoff actually boosted her career.

She was able to focus on her own ventures as a career coach, content creator, and Airbnb Superhost and grow her entrepreneurial revenue to six figures in 2024, which Business Insider verified with documentation.

"Now that I work for myself," she said, "I have freedom to live life on my own terms and have discovered more profound happiness."

Working in Big Tech was exhilarating

It wasn't that Caperonis didn't appreciate her Big Tech job. In fact, she loved it.

"I saw world-class people build teams and was always on the cutting edge of technology like AI and machine learning," she said. "I was always fascinated by learning something new and having fun."

Her company felt like more than just a workplace — it was a platform where she thrived on the joy of learning and being constantly challenged, an opportunity she called "genuinely exhilarating."

The role included a lucrative six-figure compensation package, quality health insurance, remote work opportunities, and company parties.

Her LinkedIn kept growing and growing

In January 2020, Caperonis began building her personal brand and business on the side. She created content on LinkedIn to share her personal experiences and practical advice, in hopes of helping others boost their self-confidence and land jobs in the tech industry.

Thanks to a daily posting schedule — balanced with her full-time Big Tech job — and some viral posts, she grew her LinkedIn to 10,000 followers within a few months.

She began charging $150 per coaching session to help job seekers land their dream jobs at companies like Meta, Coinbase, Sonos, Microsoft, and Amazon.

In 2021, she started doing live sessions on LinkedIn to share her career insights and expertise, and in 2022, she grew her LinkedIn follower base to 80,000.

"I struggled to find new ideas but eventually shared my rejection journey in multiple posts, which in total got over 6.5 million views," she said. "It wasn't easy, but sharing my experience and the lessons I learned from it resonated with many people."

After going viral a few more times in 2023, Caperonis' LinkedIn surpassed 100,000 followers, which also brought in new clients. She started posting successful testimonials, which helped her increase her prices to $499 for a package of three coaching sessions.

In March 2024, just prior to her layoff, she secured her first official brand partnership on LinkedIn, which paid her $3,200 for three LinkedIn posts.

"This partnership provided a substantial financial boost and validated the value of my work and the reach of my personal brand," Caperonis said.

Caperonis also began co-hosting on Airbnb with her sister in October 2022 and earned the title of Superhost in 2023. This gave her another income stream alongside her coaching business, earning them $43,911 in revenue in 2023 and nearly $50,000 in 2024.

The layoff turned into an entrepreneurial opportunity

In April 2024, just one month after landing her brand partnership, Caperonis was told that she'd be laid off from her Big Tech job in July.

Instead of dwelling on the adversity, she used it as an opportunity to put her full effort into developing her side gigs.

"The layoff spurred me to tap into my entrepreneurial instincts," Caperonis said.

Coaching and content creation became her full-time job. She started engaging and posting up to twice a day on LinkedIn, and more brands reached out to her for partnerships.

In July 2024, she launched her business, Reinvent Yourself Academy, and the following month she received the LinkedIn Top Voice badge. She now charges clients $5,000 for her formal coaching program.

She is able to balance her time between her various ventures by automating her hosting business as much as possible, spending around 35 hours weekly on content creation and career coaching and five to 10 hours on Airbnb.

Having a backup plan that can't be taken away is crucial

"This journey has shown me that it's possible to turn challenges into opportunities with determination and the right mindset," Caperonis said.

If she could turn back time, she says she would've started building her personal brand on LinkedIn and her business much earlier — and planned her exit from the corporate world sooner.

"I've come to understand that it's essential to create something for yourself that cannot be taken away," Caperonis said. "Since layoffs can happen unexpectedly, having a backup plan is crucial."

Do you have a story to share about life after being laid off? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at [email protected].

• TJ Patel uses the 'door-in-the-face' technique to negotiate higher salaries in software engineering.
• The strategy involves making a high initial request and then a more reasonable follow-up.
• Patel secured offers $10,000 to $30,000 above initial proposals using this method.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with TJ Patel, a 27-year-old software engineer in Austin who asked that BI not name his employers. Business Insider has verified Patel's income and employment with documentation; the negotiations are based on his recollection of conversations during each hiring process. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I was a college senior when I learned the "door-in-the-face" technique from Robert Cialdini's book, "Influence." I used the strategy when I started applying for jobs, and it's helped me secure higher salaries in each job negotiation throughout my career.

I'm a software engineer, but this strategy could work for any industry. You only need data on typical salaries for a specific industry and an idea of the specific company's salary range.

The technique is simple

"Door in the face" is when someone asks for something big or unreasonable in an initial request and then follows up with what they actually want.

I decided to leverage "door in the face" after reading Cialdini's example about organizers asking for donations, where they start by asking for something quite large, which is almost certain to be turned down — the door slamming in your face.

Then they pivot to the smaller — and truly desired — ask, which suddenly seems more reasonable by comparison.

That's when it clicked for me: I could use this same principle in salary negotiations

The "door-in-the-face" strategy has a real risk: If you ask for too much, an employer might decide to walk away altogether.

I realized if I was willing to accept that possibility — and if I asked respectfully and backed up my request with evidence like competing offers or my past performance — then most reasonable employers would at least counter.

My logic was that if they're already at the point of wanting to hire me, they've invested time and resources into the process, so they might be open to adjusting their offer rather than starting over with a new candidate.

'Door in the face' has been crucial in all of my salary negotiations

Since reading "Influence," in every job offer I've gotten, I anchored the negotiation on a number much higher than the lowest I was willing to accept. Once they declined my high number, my follow-up request seemed more moderate, and employers were more willing to meet me in the middle.

Sometimes, I asked for the lower amount on the same call; other times, I'd wait a day to "think about it" before coming back with a more "reasonable" figure.

Either way, the technique helped me secure offers ranging from $10,000 to $30,000 more in total compensation than the employers' original proposal — and more than I expected based on public salary data.

Here's how the offer negotiation process went at each company I've worked at, including two Big Tech companies.

My first job: Junior developer at a staff augmentation firm

The initial offer: $55,000/year

What I asked for: $70,000/year

What I got: $65,000/year

I went through this interview process in December 2018. I was two weeks from my college graduation, so I interviewed with many companies and got several competing offers.

I told my recruiter about a $62,000 competing offer from a consultancy services company and said I wanted $70,000 from the staff augmentation firm.

The firm said $70,000 wasn't possible, so I asked for $65,000 — still $10,000 above their original offer — and they agreed.

My 2nd job: Software engineer at a health benefits company

The initial offer: $65,000/year

What I asked for: $90,000/year

What I got: $80,000/year

In 2019, the staff augmentation firm assigned me to be part of a major health benefits company project as a third-party contractor. After nine months, the manager at the health benefits company wanted to bring me on as a full-time employee.

The manager initially offered me $65,000 to match my current pay. I aimed high and asked for $90,000, emphasizing that I was already working as a team lead and had been recognized as a top performer.

I had data on the company's salary range for that specific job title, which I got by asking full-time employees of the company. They got that information from internal job portals.

The manager said they couldn't do $90,000, but we eventually agreed on $80,000 in total yearly comp — $15,000 above their initial offer.

My 3rd job: Senior software engineer at a compliance company

The initial offer: $88,000/year

What I asked for: $100,000/year

What I got: $100,000/year

In 2021, I received a job offer from a compliance company in Austin for $88,000 a year and another offer from a different company in Cincinnati for $115,000 a year. I told the hiring manager at the compliance company that I wanted to accept their offer, but it wouldn't make sense to reject a $115,000-a-year offer.

I asked them to bump it to at least $100,000 and shared my other offer letter without being asked to ensure there was no doubt about it and save me any potential back-and-forth negotiations.

They agreed, and I took their offer since I wanted to move to Austin.

My 4th job: Senior software engineer at a Magnificent 7 company

The initial offer: $175,000/year

What I asked for: $240,000/ year

What I got: $204,000/year

When I applied at a Magnificent 7 company after a recruiter found me on LinkedIn, I asked for a compensation package of $240,000 yearly. The recruiter said they couldn't go that high since the software engineer pay band for my level didn't allow that.

I interviewed for a higher-level role to get the compensation I wanted, but the hiring manager placed me at a level below that based on my interview performance.

He wanted to hire me, so I asked for the max pay band for that level and a promotion path, which involved completing a series of projects within my first year. He agreed, and that's how I got $204,000.

My current job: Senior member of technical staff at a Big Tech firm

The initial offer: $190,000/ year

What I asked for: $250,000/year

What I got: $223,000/year

During my first communication with a Big Tech firm recruiter in 2024, I asked for $250,000 in total compensation. A few days later, the recruiter returned and said they couldn't do that, and the max was $190,000.

I said I didn't want to proceed with the interview process, and then, a few days later, the recruiter told me they could do $200,000. I accepted that.

In the meantime, I got a verbal offer from a high-growth startup for $250,000. During the final offer process at the Big Tech firm, I asked them to bump the pay to $250,000 since I had a competing offer. I waited for the recruiter to meet me at $250,000 and reiterated my competing offer.

The recruiter followed up with me every several days to see if I would go lower. I held firm. They offered me $223,000, and I accepted since the Big Tech firm was more stable than the startup.

Once you understand 'door in the face,' you can use it in many ways

I've also used this technique in my work life when being asked about project deadlines.

If management pushes an aggressive deadline, I usually counter with something that's 20% longer than I expect it to be. This makes it easier to meet in the middle and align on a deadline. It sounds pretty simple, but I don't see many people using these strategies in the corporate world.

I expect my current Big Tech company to be my last corporate stop. I plan to stay here until the business I'm building in my free time takes off. I'll use these techniques aggressively if I enter the corporate workforce again.

• Jigyasa Grover credits 'The Secret' for leading to her career success in AI and tech roles.
• The book influenced her to set ambitious goals and visualize achieving them.
• Grover emphasizes combining visualization with hard work and collaboration for success.

Twenty-nine-year-old Jigyasa Grover interned at Meta and worked at X for over four years as a senior machine learning engineer. She was hired as a senior data scientist at the San Francisco startup Faire before taking on her current full-time role as the lead of AI and research at Bordo AI.

She's also on Google's Developer Advisory Board and is an AI advisor at Diem. She achieved all this since graduating with her computer science degree in 2018.

Alongside her hard work, Grover told Business Insider that Rhonda Byrne's best-selling 2006 self-help book "The Secret" has influenced her approach toward achieving higher career goals.

Grover read "The Secret" in 10th grade

She said "The Secret" had a "profound impact" on her approach to professional goal setting and overcoming self-doubt.

"It's not about magically manifesting things but about developing a powerful mindset that fuels action," Grover said. "The book was particularly helpful in teaching me to establish specific, realistic goals and then make them a reality."

Here are three strategies Grover leveraged from "The Secret" to improve her mindset and reach big goals on her Big Tech career journey.

1. Focus on far-fetched dreams, not just on what seems realistic

Before reading "The Secret," Grover's approach to goal-setting focused only on what felt "realistic." She said that Byrne's book encouraged her to dream bigger and set goals based on her true desires, even if they initially seemed far-fetched.

In addition to her interest in working with AI and machine learning, Grover had another goal she felt she couldn't reach anytime soon: Writing a book.

In 2019, using techniques she learned from "The Secret," she began "really focusing" on her vision of being a published author. She often thought about it during her daily walks.

"I visualized not just holding the finished book but explaining complex machine-learning concepts in clear, accessible ways," Grover said. "I pictured myself breaking down the data preparation process I'd learned through my work at Twitter and my research at UC San Diego."

After starting this visualization practice, Grover said an opportunity for book publication presented itself much sooner than she expected. She moved from the initial concept to the self-published book "Sculpting Data for ML" in less than a year.

"Since I had this at the forefront of my mind, I was quick to notice and pursue opportunities to author, and the universe truly presented me with a path that I couldn't have imagined," Grover said.

That path involved finding a coauthor with complementary expertise and unexpected time to bring a book project to fruition. While Grover had been contacted by a few publishing houses in 2019 about possible book projects, she lacked the time and bandwidth to pursue the opportunities then.

"When the pandemic hit, the resulting shift in my schedule and circumstances created the perfect window for me to self-publish on my own terms," she said.

2. Visualize yourself already achieving your goals

Grover explained that a critical part of "The Secret" is imagining you've already reached your desired outcome. "Before every project, I make sure I have a strong belief in my ability to deliver the project," she said.

Whenever she's faced with an opportunity, whether in a fast-paced startup environment or a challenging engineering environment at Big Tech, she makes sure to visualize herself performing well in that role. "This really helps to calm my nerves, stay the course, and reach my final goal," Grover said.

She used this Secret-inspired method once during the post-acquisition chaos at X, where she worked from 2019 to 2023.

"This presented a huge challenge: massive layoffs, uncertainty about the future, and key stakeholders were gone, threatening the entire product road map," Grover said. "Seeing my talented teammates go was tough, so to navigate this, I started visualizing myself emerging stronger."

Grover stayed at X for several months after the acquisition and through the bulk of the layoffs. "I saw it as an opportunity to lead through change, support my team during an incredibly difficult time, and prove my resilience," she said.

With a focus on deep breathing and "this too shall pass," Grover pictured leveraging the situation's turbulence: Becoming more adaptable, building stronger relationships with the few remaining teams, and learning to navigate constant curveballs.

She sets aside 15 minutes every night before bed to disconnect from the day's work to focus on a particular challenge, trying to see the bigger picture and envisioning the impact she can make.

She writes down three specific technical or creative challenges she wants to tackle, breaking the large chunk of work into bite-sized pieces. She then visualizes herself solving each one, focusing on the positive impact and celebrating the accomplishment of each milestone.

If doubt creeps in about tricky areas, Grover creates plans to tackle them the next day and reinforces her belief in her plans through her focused vision.

3. Go beyond mere visualization to inspire your efforts

Grover said the secret to maximizing these methods should go beyond visualizing your desired outcome. She suggests you believe things can be done and use your visualization as a springboard to work hard, collaborate well with others, and maintain a strong vision.

"I truly believe it's the combination of the technical expertise — with the mindset to deliver on those skills — that made all of my success possible," Grover said.

Grover believes the balance of practical machine-learning engineering skills — with her unwavering belief in the project's success — ultimately led her to publish her book. She believes that "The Secret" also played an indirect role in landing her current job.

She said that when she applied, Bordo AI was a very early-stage startup building a new type of AI solution."The Secret" inspired her to envision the company succeeding in revolutionizing data analysis with AI. "It helped me cultivate a mindset that allowed me to see opportunities where others might see risks," Grover said.

• Chris Mattmann worked in data science at NASA for nearly 24 years.
• He shares the five warnings he'd give others who want to break into the field.
• Mattmann emphasizes the importance of discipline knowledge, a supportive network, and adapting to AI.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Chris Mattmann, a 44-year-old data scientist from La Canada Flintridge, California, who previously served as NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's chief technology and innovation officer and division manager of artificial intelligence, analytics, and innovation organization. Mattmann spent nearly 24 years at NASA before joining UCLA in June 2024 as chief data and artificial intelligence officer. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I got started in data science long before it was even known as "data science." When I studied at the University of Southern California from 1998 to 2007, I worked on data architecture, data engineering, databases, and data systems. My biggest interest was how they were all interconnected.

I started working at NASA as an academic part-time employee in January 2001. Soon after, I was hired full time as a data engineer and software engineer.

I moved up at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) by working on missions, and had my big break while working on the Orbiting Carbon Observatory Mission, a next-generation earth science instrument. I became JPL's chief technology and innovation officer in 2020.

Here are the 5 things I'd warn anyone who wants to get into data science

1. Study the discipline or data field that you'll be working in.

When I entered the industry, I had a lot of training in software development and engineering.

I saw that people coming out with data degrees were more effective as data scientists than the software developers who took years just to learn what latitude and longitude were; teaching an earth scientist Python was more effective than teaching a software engineering Ph.D. earth science.

Looking back, I wish my first five years were spent learning earth science, planetary science, and more math rather than software development or engineering, which I could've picked up in greater detail later.

I recommend that folks get a discipline science degree rather than a computer or software degree. AI is coming for your software engineering job, but it isn't the best at discipline sciences. Getting a degree in those areas will allow you to have a lengthier career.

2. Early in your career, get some experience with data science and AI operations.

Someone can enter this field in two main ways.

The first is by doing something interesting with open-source tools and data and then putting it on your GitHub for others to review and see, which proves you can do a real-world problem. Kaggle has many challenges like this where you can compete against others.

The second is by working or studying under a mentor or doing an internship, where you make a publicly reviewable contribution to data.

For me, the sweet spot is to carefully navigate both data research and operations; don't just hide in the research domain; instead, actually learn the software engineering necessary to deliver the application of research, data, and AI to customers.

I find operations to be a much more rewarding and less cutthroat field than research and the science publishing community and pipeline. My work in operations has included everything from NASA missions focused on big data for earth science, to software like Apache Hadoop and Apache Tika, which are used around the world by tens of millions of people and companies.

3. To succeed in data science, prepare to be considered "the help" rather than the person driving the domain.

The biggest challenges were preparing myself not to be in the lead, spending time working in the background on data analysis, and having others get most of the credit for the work I enabled.

I often say I'm a "little s" scientist, not a "big S" scientist like the others — mostly because I was made to feel that way. I was constantly put as the second or last author on papers that I was the largest contributor to, so the earth or planetary scientist could get their first author paper at a major conference.

You're an "assistant" in many cases to the actual discipline scientist that you're preparing, analyzing, and working on the data for. You're also now the "help" for fueling AI, which is heavily data-dependent, so you have to humble yourself greatly.

When you have a manager you really trust, you can try to move into data, AI research, and analytics, so you can share the credit without being worried about getting pushed to the side.

4. Build a network of friends to support you through your data science and AI journey.

Community in data science is so important. You need folks around you to lift you up and be interested in what you're doing.

Data science is definitely a team sport. While I did work with some scientists who belittled my work, I overall had a supportive system of people around me, including my family and my peers. If you don't have this and feel isolated, then get involved in data science competitions, go to meet-ups, and build your friend network and community.

Before deciding to pursue a career in data science, consider whether you enjoy analytical tasks or operations work and whether you prefer being a team player or a leader. A mix of both analytical and operations skills tends to lend itself to good leadership in data science.

Be aware you can easily burn out in data science and get bored. This is especially true if you spend your time only in Juptyer Notebooks and data analysis. Having a support network helps to avoid boredom and burnout.

Making sure you have the opportunity to move between both sides of the data science pipeline — operations and research — also helps to avoid this burnout.

5. AI will change the field so much that software engineering will no longer be as important.

Data analysis will be replaced in the next five to 10 years, done better by AI than humans. But training new AI and refining data will still have a big place and you can focus on that.

AI is data-hungry for fuel, and understanding math, statistics, and how to evaluate data science and AI will be much more important than building it.

Understanding the legal and ethical implications of building AI and data models will also become very important. People are so overwhelmed with data and misinformation that you'll have to prepare to tell better data stories and to be a background player in AI.

I'm working toward overcoming these challenges by thinking about how the job market will change. I see where the winds are headed and I'm getting ahead of them.

There's still a high demand for data scientists

Data science across disciplines is certainly something that's been a calling for me.

You can find it nowadays across industry, government, commercial, and academia sectors. And there's still high demand for the skill and profession even in the age of AI because data is the fuel for AI.

Despite the recent DOGE cuts, I wouldn't mind being a data scientist at NASA now. Data science is one of the few fields resilient to the current federal budget pauses and reductions. Being a data scientist positions you well, given this new government direction.

Do you have a tech story to share? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at [email protected].

• Kunal Sonalker transitioned from a government data analyst role to the private sector for better opportunities and pay.
• He leveraged his government experience by showcasing measurable impacts and building a strong network.
• Sonalker highlights differences in work pace, upskilling needs, and experimentation between sectors.

When Kunal Sonalker graduated from the University of Florida in 2017 with a master's degree in computer science, his career aspiration was to be a data scientist at a Big Tech company. But he soon found out it wasn't going to be easy to reach his goal.

"Data science was a growing field then, and there weren't many entry-level roles for data scientists or machine learning engineers," Sonalker told Business Insider. "I almost got no interview callbacks from the bigger firms."

During a career fair, he met some recruiters from a state government agency focused on water resources, landed an interview, and was hired as an entry-level data analyst.

He felt constrained in his government job

While Sonalker found his government job "super interesting" and appreciated the chance to work with brilliant environmental scientists, he felt constrained by the scale of his work.

"I wanted to work on big data systems and large-scale projects, and I wasn't getting a chance to work on that," he said.

Sonalker also felt that despite his employer's desire to leverage technology, budget constraints often limited the government sector's ability to invest in new technologies and software. The compensation was also much lower than that of the private sector, which included company stocks and RSUs.

After just five months in his government role, at age 26, Sonalker decided to pivot to a private-sector job as a data science analyst at a retail healthcare company. His new role also came with a significant pay hike, and within one-and-a-half years, his salary was nearly 50% higher than that of his government job.

After about two-and-a-half years at the healthcare company, he landed a data analytics and machine learning role at a supermarket chain. Today, the 32-year-old is a data scientist at Nordstrom.

3 ways Sonalker marketed himself for the private sector with government sector experience

1. Showing measurable impact

Sonalker translated his government-sector accomplishments into measurable results that demonstrated his impact on efficiency, cost savings, and process improvements.

For example, he worked on several initiatives that improved workflow processes at his government agency, saving his team many manual hours.

"I quantified this project — how much manual effort did we reduce, what were the cost savings associated with this project, how did we use automation tools to improve the existing process — and showcased it in my résumé," he explained.

2. Connecting with people at his target companies to gain potential referrals

His strategy was to search "[company name] + role + LinkedIn" to find people who were working or who had worked in the companies and roles he was interested in.

After sending initial invites to these professionals, he set up a coffee chat and told them about his experiences and what exactly he was looking for in a new role.

"You can build a strong network just by doing this," Sonalker said.

3. Emphasizing his ability to navigate complex systems, adapt to new environments, and lead end-to-end projects

When working in the government agency, Sonalker developed a complete module to automate the agency's reporting system.

"When you highlight these large-scale projects, explaining how you navigated through them and what the tradeoffs and challenges were, it goes a long way with the hiring manager," he said. "These skills are highly valued in the private sector."

3 things he wishes he knew before making the transition

There were also some things Sonalker wished he had known before transitioning out of a government job.

1. The pace of work is significantly different

Sonalker didn't realize that private sector jobs move much faster than government jobs, with a greater emphasis on quick decision-making and rapid implementation of new technologies.

"On the government front, we used to experience this occasionally if there were floods or water issues in a county, but for the most part, it was smooth sailing," he said. "We used to have timelines for our deliverables, but nothing too crazy."

2. You may need to upskill or obtain new certifications to stay competitive

Sonalker quickly discovered that tech jobs require always remaining a student, constantly learning and upskilling yourself — something he personally enjoys and participates in.

"I've been constantly enrolling myself in new courses," Sonalker said, something his manager has been very supportive of.

For example, Sonalker learned Tableau and enrolled himself in certifications from Amazon Web Services, which taught him how to train and host AI models on their cloud platform. He's also recently taken courses on building generative AI applications, finetuning open-source AI models, and deploying these models into production environments.

3. There's significant room for experimentation

In the government sector, if Sonalker's team wanted to try out a new technology, they had to make a very detailed case about why they needed that investment. He found this not to be the case in his non-government jobs.

"The private sector is liberal, and you'll have room to try out new methods — fail faster and succeed sooner," he said.

The private and public sectors both have their pros and cons

Sonalker said he no longer struggles with the problems that government jobs often come with, like limited compensation and salary growth, slow decision-making processes, and inertia to change.

However, he also acknowledged drawbacks of the private sector, such as shaky job security due to ongoing Big Tech layoffs and potentially longer working hours with stricter timelines, whereas government jobs traditionally have offered better work-life balance and a sense of public service.

Sonalker's aspirations to become a data scientist at a Big Tech company have evolved over time, thanks to his work with AI and machine learning methods at Nordstrom. "I feel retail — especially e-commerce — has a ton of applications to leverage some of the recent developments happening in AI," Sonalker said. "Rather than focusing on where I work, I plan to prioritize the kind of work I'm doing."

Sonalker plans to remain in the private sector for the foreseeable future, but he doesn't view this as a permanent departure from public service. "AI can be a game-changer for government efficiency and service delivery," he said, pointing to uses such as optimizing resource allocation and improving citizen engagement.

"Its successful implementation often requires the expertise and resources of the private sector," he said, adding that it's a public-private collaboration he'd be interested in helping facilitate.

Do you have a story to share about transitioning from a government job to the private sector, or vice versa? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at [email protected].

• Janelle Romero quintupled her salary in six years but strategically job-hopping.
• Despite initial skepticism, job-hopping allowed Romero to gain valuable skills and experience.
• Romero's career strategy emphasizes skill-building and salary growth over job satisfaction.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Janelle Romero, a 30-year-old labor and employment law attorney in New York City. It's been edited for length and clarity.

As an employment attorney, I advise people to leave their jobs to make more money. Job-hopping also helped me triple my own salary from five figures to six figures in three years.

Job-hopping is the best way to increase your salary no matter the industry, but you must ensure that the skills and experience you gain in each role contribute to the big picture of the professional you want to be.

After job-hopping for the second half of my 20s, I earn more than $200,000 in my current role.

Everyone told me job-hopping was the worst thing I could do

My father strongly opposed job-hopping and felt it might hurt my career trajectory. I also received negative feedback from many recruiters about the number of jobs I'd held in such a short period, but I had a strategy.

When I graduated from law school at the end of 2018, I intentionally job-hopped to advance my career.

I took my first job out of law school in 2019 at age 24 and worked there for a little over one year. I was hired as a law clerk making $40,000 a year, with a guarantee that I'd be given a raise once I was admitted to the Bar.

Once I got admitted, I was given a raise to $60,000, then $65,000

I realized it would not be easy to make real money if I were only given raises in $5,000 increments.

By the one-year mark, I was already knowledgeable in wage theft cases because my firm involved me heavily in our cases. I noticed our clients often had valid discrimination cases, but we didn't practice discrimination at that firm.

I wasn't yet experienced enough to navigate discrimination cases independently, and I wanted to learn how, so I left for a discrimination firm.

That move took my salary to $85,000

I was also given insurance benefits, a matching 401(k), and payment for attorney, Bar association, and course registration fees.

I stayed at that firm for about six months to gain the experience and knowledge I needed to feel confident navigating the process of filing discrimination claims. The more experience you have in the job, the less time you should take to learn the role in your next job.

I said to my first employer, "You already practice employment law, but you don't do discrimination, and I do. Let me do discrimination here." They hired me back, and I started their discrimination department.

That move increased my salary again to $110,000, plus commission

They were willing to pay me that much more because I returned with specific experience and knowledge to expand the firm's services.

Trying to market and attract discrimination clients led me to TikTok. I made videos explaining the sexual harassment allegations against Andrew Cuomo on my own TikTok account so I could take it with me when I left.

The videos did fairly well. I took those videos to my boss and showed him I could reach thousands of people in just three videos. I even received a few inquiry emails from potential clients.

He agreed and allowed me to market on the app to bring in clients. As my page grew, the number of cases I could bring to the firm grew, and my value increased. I used this to negotiate my commission deal.

Then, I became curious about how businesses handle HR complaints and got a job as the head of labor law at an international startup. I oversaw their HR department, which had over 700 employees and contractors.

The switch to the startup bumped me up to a $130,000 salary

Things moved quickly, and I learned a lot. I helped expand the company to about 27 additional countries in my four months there.

The startup hit some funding roadblocks and had a large round of layoffs, which I was part of in early summer 2022.

I was let go a couple of months before my destination wedding, so in hindsight, the layoff was a blessing in disguise.

In December 2022, I decided to incorporate my own firm

Starting my own firm set me back in salary for my first year — I reinvested profits into my work. Toward the end of 2023, I'd built up a steady enough stream of cases to allow me to expand.

I started exploring the possibility of merging my firm with another and returning to the position of a salaried employee.

In March 2024, I accepted a full-time position as managing associate attorney at Consumer Justice Law Firm. I brought all my retained cases to the new firm for an increased commission rate once they were resolved.

In my current role, I make $225,000 in base salary plus commission and bonuses. At 30, I've more than quintupled my salary by job-hopping.

I'd never have been able to learn and accomplish so much in such a short time without job-hopping

It benefits your career when you job-hop to gain new skills instead of randomly. If I'd job-hopped from a criminal law firm to a personal injury firm to an intellectual property firm, it wouldn't have been effective because that experience wouldn't have compounded on itself.

You don't leave a job just because you don't like it or you're bored, frustrated, or annoyed. You leave a job once you've hit your salary ceiling at the company and gained the experience that the role is supposed to provide you with.

I think it's great for people to enjoy what they do, but I don't think it's important for your job to be your passion. Your life should be your passion — your job should be the thing you do so that you can afford your passions.

Want to share your salary growth story? Email Lauryn Haas at [email protected].

• Akshay Phadké has spent the past decade in tech, from Big Tech to startups.
• He faced countless rejections before four résumé strategies helped him land a job at Microsoft.
• He focused on technical strengths, concise content, visual appeal, and clear communication to stand out.

Akshay Phadké, 32, has spent the last decade climbing the ranks in both Big Tech and startups.

"I aspired to work at such places alongside people who were curious to learn new things, looked at the way things were and thought they could be made better, and wanted to make a difference in people's lives with their work," Phadké told Business Insider.

The Seattle-based senior software engineer at Webflow started his career in tech by landing two consecutive internships at Ericsson while pursuing his master's degree in electrical and computer engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

After graduating from his master's program in 2016, Phadké was hired full-time at Ericsson before working at Microsoft, B2B SAAS fintech startup Vareto, and Webflow.

In addition to landing his offer from Microsoft, Phadké also secured final onsite interview rounds at Meta, Amazon, Dropbox, and Yelp, as well as job offers from 23andMe and Wayfair.

The offers didn't come easily, though.

He said he had "countless interviews" where the outcome wasn't in his favor, and each rejection stung, especially in cases where he'd reached the final stage of the interview loop. When Phadké got the good news of his job offers, he felt "shock mixed with half-disbelief and relief, like I'd just run a marathon."

Four ways to make your résumé stand out

Here's the exact résumé that helped Phadké score these victories, and the four choices he made that he feels helped him stand out from other candidates.

1. Keep a narrow focus on technical strengths

"Listing a lot of technologies — even if someone has used all of them — can hurt more than help," he said, as it could be perceived by hiring teams as inflating your capabilities.

"New grads or early-in-career candidates may feel tempted to include more technologies to make their résumé more competitive, but it only opens them up to more scrutiny," he said. "Tech companies are looking for engineers who've solved meaningful problems at scale. These opportunities require time and effort to build, so for someone with five to seven years of experience, the number of such projects will usually be in the single digits."

Listing too many technologies can also backfire when interviewers probe the candidate's capabilities, Phadké explained.

"A less-than-satisfactory response to a question about a technology one hasn't used recently — even if they're familiar with it — may mean a rejection, especially if a lot of candidates are competing for the same role," he said.

On his résumé, Phadké mentioned only the top technologies — the ones he'd used the most and had the most technical knowledge of — with each role, and rated his own expertise with each technology with a graphic showing his self-assessed skill level between one and five.

"This was an attempt to show my confidence in certain skills rated higher by me, and acknowledge that I had more learning left in other skills rated lower," he said. "I wanted to make it clear that I wasn't claiming expert-level competence in all the skills listed on my resume."

Phadké highlighted his Apache Spark expertise prominently in the description of his last role, which he feels helped him stand out in his Microsoft application, as it was one of the technologies the team was investing in.

When the hiring team asked him deep probing questions about technologies that he had less experience with, Phadké was upfront and honest if he didn't know the answer. "It isn't possible to be an expert in everything, and being honest about not knowing the answer is better, in my opinion, than guesswork," he said.

2. Be concise in all résumé elements

This same "less is more" strategy served Phadké in his overall résumé, which he kept to a lean one-pager.

"Hiring managers dedicate 30 seconds to a minute to review each résumé," Phadké said. "I wanted to ensure that my résumé communicated the most important pieces of information in that timeframe, while also creating a strong hook."

To achieve these goals, in addition to ensuring he didn't add too many technical details, he served up a hook by dedicating two to three lines to describe each of his key projects.

"Because of this, I was able to create a sense of curiosity, and I was consistently able to secure a hiring manager technical screening interview in which the hiring manager wanted to know more about my work," Phadké said.

3. Stand out visually

Even for people without graphic design skills, you can still take steps to make your résumé visually pleasing.

Phadké included company and university logos from his past roles and schools on his résumé to create a strong brand association. He also used a custom sans-serif font over a serif font to create a polished and professional feel and adopted a grayscale color palette instead of a black one for a softer reading experience.

"I've never used Microsoft Word or text editing software to create my résumés," Phadké said. "I feel résumés created this way end up looking generic — especially if you use templates, which almost everyone else does too."

Instead, he's experimented with a few software programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, LaTeX, and Figma to create his résumé.

4. Clearly communicate responsibilities and outcomes

Candidates sometimes blend their own achievements with team achievements on their résumés, which can make it harder for recruiters and hiring teams to determine what work they really did.

To avoid this, Phadké listed only the work he did as an individual — not what his team did collectively — and did so in simple terms without jargon.

"Hiring managers are looking for engineers who can communicate their achievements objectively and clearly understand how their work adds value," he said.

To reveal the full scope of his project areas, Phadké ensured that his résumé emphasized projects in different areas of software engineering, spanning systems engineering, backend web development, and data engineering.

Phadké stressed that demonstrating the ability to adapt to new paradigms and technologies gives hiring managers confidence that they can trust you with projects that are out of your comfort zone.

"The takeaway for the hiring manager was my ability to pick up new technologies and be successful with them," Phadké said.

If you landed a job in Big Tech and would like to share your story, email Jane Zhang at [email protected].

• Red Lobster CEO Damola Adamolekun focuses on leadership and operational improvements.
• Adamolekun emphasizes staying focused, controlling emotions, and taking breaks to be a good leader.
• His leadership tactics aim to enhance productivity, decision-making, and team motivation.

Since becoming Red Lobster's CEO in September 2024, Damola Adamolekun has overseen the launch of a next-generation menu, reintroduced fan favorites, added new dishes, and rolled out happy hour at many restaurants nationwide.

The former CEO of PF Chang told Business Insider that though he's changed companies, his focus as a CEO remains on investing in people, simplifying and improving operations, ensuring a consistently great product, revitalizing marketing efforts, and upgrading technology systems and infrastructure.

Adamolekun was previously a partner at Paulson & Co., headquartered in New York City, and led the transaction to acquire PF Chang's in 2019. He then served as chief strategy officer and company director until being named CEO in May 2020 at only 31 years old; he served in that role until December 2023. Previously, Adamolekun worked in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs and as a private equity associate at TPG Capital.

The Red Lobster CEO shared his top three leadership tactics with BI.

Concentrate on one task at a time

Adamolekun emphasized that effective leaders know the importance of staying present and honing in on the task at hand to eliminate distractions.

"With so many distractions in today's fast-paced world, it can be easy to get sidetracked," Adamolekun said. "By concentrating on one task at a time, you not only increase your own productivity but also set an example for your team."

This focused approach allows him to make thoughtful decisions, maintain clarity, drive initiatives forward, and avoid the mistakes that come from rushing or multitasking.

Practice emotional control

Effective leaders also know how to manage their emotions so they can respond rather than react, according to Adamolekun — especially in challenging situations.

"Practicing emotional control means taking a moment to pause, assess the situation, and respond thoughtfully, rather than reacting impulsively," he said.

Adamolekun explained that this leadership hack helps him maintain calm during crises, make better decisions, and lead with empathy.

"When you model emotional control, you create a stable environment where your team feels supported and motivated, even in the face of adversity," Adamolekun said. "By modeling emotional resilience, you inspire your team to approach adversity with confidence and composure, which helps maintain a positive work environment."

Take a break and step back from duties

This CEO prioritizes recharging and refocusing to facilitate clarity and creativity.

Making time to unplug and disconnect from work allows Adamolekun to recharge, reflect, and gain new perspectives so he can come back to his team with fresh ideas, renewed focus, and a more balanced outlook. He feels this approach ultimately enhances his leadership effectiveness in the long run.

"Leadership can be draining when you're constantly connected," Adamolekun said. "Whether it's taking a run, stepping away from technology and social media, or simply taking a break, stepping back from your duties gives you the mental clarity and energy you need to lead with purpose."

If you're a CEO and would like to share your productivity tips, please email Manseen Logan at [email protected].

• A Gen Z employee landed their dream job as a full-time software engineer at a Magnificent 7 company.
• While they love their job, the fast-paced, high-pressure environment of Big Tech isn't for everyone.
• They emphasized perks and financial gains shouldn't overshadow passion for coding and innovation.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a Gen Z employee at a Magnificent 7 company. The source's name and full employment history are known to Business Insider but are not named to protect their privacy. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I always dreamed of working in Silicon Valley for a Big Tech company, but now that I've experienced working at one of the Magnificent 7, I don't think it's the best career path for everyone.

I advise people considering breaking into Big Tech to self-reflect before deciding if this path is right for them.

I immigrated to the US with the vision of landing a job at a tech behemoth

I wanted to impact millions through lines of code, and I've been working toward getting into a Big Tech company since day one.

I got my bachelor's degree in computer science in the US and became a full-time software engineer when I joined a Big Tech company right after graduation.

My first breakthrough came the summer after my freshman year

I had the opportunity to intern as a software developer.

Mass-applying to Big Tech internships, networking on LinkedIn, researching, and freelancing to build my portfolio got me in the door. I also attended hackathons like TreeHacks, LA Hacks, and Technica and conferences like the Grace Hopper Conference and Afrotech.

I started these efforts while I was still a student, taking on several odd jobs, including working as IT support, doing unpaid work for startups, and teaching assistantships for six core computer science courses in college.

I also started consistently posting on LinkedIn and writing a tech blog.

My second Big Tech breakthrough came when I scored the opportunity to intern at a Big Tech company in Silicon Valley

This helped me land a full-time Big Tech job a year later.

My dream hasn't disappointed me — I love working in Big Tech. The perks are endless: gorgeous offices, free or subsidized food and drinks, high-impact work, great retirement and health insurance benefits, fitness reimbursement, intelligent coworkers, a high paycheck, and more.

That doesn't mean Big Tech is right for everyone. If you fall into one of these five categories, you might not be a good fit for a Big Tech career.

1. You don't like being pressured to work at a fast pace

If you're uncomfortable in a high-pressure environment where working at breakneck speed is essential, Big Tech might not be for you.

Big Tech companies hire people who are not only highly competent but also extremely motivated, often paying top-of-market salaries to attract the best talent. These companies focus on speed and constant innovation to stay ahead of the competition, so you usually need to move fast.

We're encouraged to interact with other parts of the business, which fosters faster decision-making and reduces communication barriers. They also expect high-quality work immediately, even from an intern.

I am OK with working quickly. I learned right away that making a concrete plan of action, setting sub-goals to stay on track, and ensuring I jump into the task immediately instead of procrastinating is helpful.

2. You're not into constant learning and skills updating

The tech industry is fast-paced, which is further amplified when you work for a highly innovative Big Tech company. Candidates for this field must be comfortable adapting quickly to new tools, frameworks, and APIs.

When AI tools are first introduced, many Big Tech companies will immediately encourage their employees to use them to work more efficiently. I've seen a surge in the use of AI tools in my job since the start of 2024.

3. You're not prepared for a high-stress environment

Rapid innovation and results are part and parcel of the tech industry. These demands can cause employees to experience serious pressure — especially those who aren't genuinely passionate about their work.

You must ensure you choose the right team and enjoy your work — otherwise, you'll be stressed out. I handle stress by traveling and taking wellness days off.

4. You're lured by Big Tech perks rather than making a difference

With best-in-class benefits that most people can only dream about, it makes sense that some people are attracted to Big Tech for free food or health and fitness benefits. This is a mistake.

The perks exist to help you perform your best at work. If you join just for the sake of those, they can distract from your work's actual purpose and impact. They might also reduce the drive to improve and adapt, potentially hindering long-term career growth.

Initially, I went through a period where I was distracted by the perks. It was easy for me to keep socializing when eating office free food and then could fall behind on my work. I've learned to stay focused.

5. You're in it just to make a quick buck — not because you love coding and technology

Engaging in work that you don't find meaningful only for the money and benefits can quickly lead to feelings of dissatisfaction and disconnection — the so-called "golden handcuffs."

When your primary motivation is financial, you may miss out on the joy of solving problems or creating innovative solutions. My primary motivation is that I enjoy coding and love that my code is used by and helps billions of people.

I see myself working in Big Tech long-term. I love the impact I can make in this industry, enjoy the benefits and pay, and can envision long-term growth.

• Mike Manalac, a CPA, found audit work boring and unfulfilling, like he was a "glorified box-checker."
• He left public accounting for a more exciting career in Big Tech, as an accounting manager at Google
• Manalac now loves his work and perks at Google but he says Big Tech has some drawbacks.

After eight years as a certified public accountant, Mike Manalac decided to seek a more exciting career path — one in Big Tech.

Manalac, now 39, started his career as an auditor with CohnReznick, a top 20 firm, where he spent eight years. This was followed by a brief contract stint at Big Four firm PwC. From there, he took a path through the Fortune 500 with an accounting role at Walmart before landing an accounting role at Google.

"They say the grass isn't always greener, but in my case, it was," Manalac told Business Insider.

He was happy but found the work boring

For close to a decade, Manalac was happy working at big accounting firms — the business travel, meeting clients, and seeing the inner workings of different companies. "I liked the social events on the company dime, the generous vacation policy, top-notch training, and the team camaraderie that came with working together in the trenches," he said.

However, he found the audit work itself pretty boring — "mind-numbing grunt work," he called it. "I'd go through long periods where I felt like a glorified box-checker," Manalac said.

One of the worst parts of the job was completing timesheets — what he called the "never-ending chore" of tediously recording how he spent every six minutes of his workday.

Since the firms' clients only paid for the audit work because their investors and regulators required it, Manalac found the work unfulfilling. "I'd spend hours reviewing investment and loan documents for my banking clients, which felt like watching paint dry in PDF form," he said. It was even worse during the industry's busy season — January to April.

If Manalac was lucky, he'd get to work on an audit of what he considered to be a cool company, like real estate clients developing entertainment districts or clients that owned train lines and helicopters. But even then, he felt like he was on the outside looking in.

"I eventually realized that I'd be happier if I worked for that [kind of] company instead of auditing it," he said.

Getting a taste of the "cooler side" of accounting

Manalac decided to leave behind traditional accounting firms and instead pursue internal accounting roles in Fortune 500 companies, with the ultimate goal of securing a position in Big Tech.

In 2016, he kicked off his plan with a five-month contract position at PwC in San Francisco, to put himself "at the epicenter of premier job opportunities for when I was ready to change paths," Manalac said.

During that time, Manalac applied to dozens of roles in San Francisco and Silicon Valley — but only at household name companies that he thought "would be cool to work at." His interview list included Salesforce, Uber, and Pandora Media. He eventually accepted an offer to join Walmart's corporate accounting team, supporting the eCommerce business.

"This was the first time in my career where 40-hour workweeks were the norm, and it was glorious," he said. Manalac found the online shopping business "much more relatable" than his audit work.

"The company was on an acquisition spree, which meant a flurry of exciting accounting projects to work on," he said. "I had a sense of pride in my work that I didn't have at the big accounting firms."

With no more dreaded busy seasons or daily timesheets, Manalac was hooked. "At Walmart, I was busy, but everyone still left at 5 p.m. and the work environment was much more chill compared to public accounting," he said. "I'd gotten a taste for the cooler side of accounting and I wanted more.

Both the work and the perks are great

Big Tech was still on Manalac's radar, so he started interviewing for companies like Amazon, Meta, and Google. After a year of applying and messaging recruiters, he finally scored an interview at Google in the summer of 2017.

Two months and five rounds of interviews later, Manalac landed a job at Google, where he is now an accounting manager.

While he still spends his fair share of time in spreadsheets, he spends much of his time doing data analysis, writing SQL scripts, and building workflows to automate manual accounting processes. He spends less time doing repetitive tasks and more time working with cross-functional teams on new business initiatives.

"I get a kick out of working on products like Search, YouTube, and other apps that pepper my phone screen," Manalac said. "My success is no longer measured by billable hours like in public accounting either — it's measured by the impact of my work."

When he needs a break, some of Manalac's favorite on-campus options include hitting the gym, popping into the arcade, booking a massage, or hitting golf balls in the simulator.

Then, there are the extravagant work parties. "Museums are rented out for Christmas, concert venues for Halloween, and I've even had team outings that had me hopping on a plane for a day at Universal Studios," said Manalac.

And while he enjoyed domestic travel as an auditor, it's been overshadowed by his global travel experiences at Google to places like Singapore and Switzerland.

"The big accounting firms have generous PTO, but there are few companies outside of Google that would've allowed my three-month sabbatical to travel Europe with my family like I did in 2024," he said.

Accounting doesn't have to be a boring career path

Going from a Big Four accountant to one in Big Tech does have some drawbacks, though, said Manalac.

"In public accounting, you're almost guaranteed a promotion every few years, which isn't the case in Big Tech and other Fortune 500 companies," he said. "Additionally, when you work for an accounting firm, you're the golden goose that generates revenue for the company, but as an accountant in Big Tech, you're just a cost to the business." This means that accounting teams are "perpetually understaffed," he added.

But no job is perfect, and all things considered, Manalac feels that an accounting role in Big Tech offers one of the best career paths for an accountant.

"Most people think of accounting as a boring career, but that doesn't tell the whole story," he said.

If you landed a Big Tech after working in a different field and would like to share your story, email Jane Zhang at [email protected].

• Nicole Chan Loeb is a 38-year-old photographer, videographer, and mother of two.
• She started her career as a management consultant at Deloitte and quit after two years.
• As a photographer, she's able to be present for her family while doing work that she loves.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nicole Chan Loeb, a 38-year-old former Deloitte management consultant who quit in 2010 and is now a photographer and videographer in Boston. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I've always loved numbers and excelled at math, so I majored in finance in college. In my junior year, I took a business class that involved project-based work, igniting my passion for management consulting. After speaking with Deloitte representatives during an on-campus job fair, I applied and was accepted to an internship for the summer after my junior year.

I enjoyed the internship. I had a great team, lots of support, and a clear progression path within the company. At the end of the summer, I received a return offer, which I accepted.

As a first-generation child of immigrants, I felt like my parents came to the US so I could have these opportunities. I think they were excited and proud of me for studying finance, graduating, and landing a job like this. But that path didn't last for long.

I hated the exhausting hustle culture

I started working at Deloitte full-time in the fall of 2008 after graduating. My job required extremely long hours in what was known as the 3-4-5 program — three nights in a hotel, four days at a client site, and a fifth day back in the office. I flew to a client site every Monday, stayed through Wednesday night, and flew back to Boston on Thursday. It wasn't a good work-life balance.

I worked on three significant projects during my two years at Deloitte. Being between projects was called being "on the beach," which could hurt your utilization ratio, affecting raises and bonuses. We were expected to find projects to stay busy with, so I took on initiatives for the company like volunteering and writing white papers.

It was a hustle, churn-and-burn culture, and it was exhausting. I hated it, but was too shy to raise my concerns.

I overheard senior managers and partners airing their frustrations about lack of time with partners and families. Having a family and balance was something I wanted in the future, but I could see myself getting sucked in for the next 15 to 25 years, feeling financially comfortable but never having time to be home.

I also didn't feel much job satisfaction; despite having a lot of work, my impact felt insignificant. One particularly awful week, I thought to myself, I can't imagine feeling like this for the rest of my life.

I remember sitting in a Thai restaurant and telling my then-boyfriend, now-husband, about it. He said, "You're miserable. You're going to run yourself to the ground. Why don't you just leave?" He encouraged me to pursue photography as a career. Ever since I was young, I've loved photography, and with my Deloitte salary, I'd upgraded my gear and kit, but I'd never considered it as a career.

At first, I shrugged him off, but I started thinking more about it and eventually decided to take the leap. In August 2010, I put in my eight weeks' notice to give the company time to find a replacement and in October 2010, at 24 years old, I left Deloitte.

The fear of having to return to finance motivated me

During my eight-week notice period, I created a website, posted on social media, and gave out business cards at marketing and networking events on the Fridays and Saturdays I was home.

I made soft announcements to friends. Some were supportive and immediately referred me to friends and family, but others warned that I'd wasted my college education and that photography should stay a hobby or a side hustle.

I actually didn't tell my parents for the first couple of years. They'd worked so hard that for me to say, "Hey, I'm going to leave my very comfortable, stable job with benefits and a retirement plan to do my own thing" was terrifying.

I gave myself two years to replace my Deloitte salary. If I couldn't achieve this, I'd return to another corporate job and keep photography as a hobby. The fear of needing to return to finance if I couldn't make this work was a really strong motivator.

It took me several months to get my first clients. To get my name out there, I did free photoshoots and assisted established photographers. I poured kindness and passion into my first clients and asked them to give me honest feedback, and they returned my kindness with referrals.

I found that many skills I'd learned at Deloitte transferred over to my new career — active listening to client concerns, professional client communications, presentation skills, understanding what clients want, both spoken and unspoken, and bridging strategy and creativity.

After the first 18 months, I saw that it could be a sustainable career.

I'd never consider going back

I don't ever miss working in consulting and wouldn't consider returning to that fast-paced life, although I'm not sure if the culture has changed.

Being a wedding photographer allows me to be present for my family while doing work I love. I choose clients who align with my values and structure my schedule to be intentional with my time. I can pick my kids up from school every day, take midweek adventures, and never have to ask for permission to travel.

I love capturing small, unscripted emotions that couples and families will cherish forever. I don't regret anything, and I'm very grateful for my supportive partner who encouraged me to pursue this passion.

I'm thankful for the mentors that I had at Deloitte, who were terrific role models, endlessly brilliant, and supportive. I still use the skills they taught me today in my photography work, and I wouldn't be who I am today without the experience of working there.

I hope that the humility and kindness that drove my career forward haven't gone away. It's really cool that I can make a comfortable living by taking pictures, and I don't take that for granted.

Deloitte representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

If you quit a Big Four consulting firm to pursue a different career and would like to share your story, email Jane Zhang at [email protected].

• Keith Anderson transitioned from teaching to Big Tech in 2016 and boosted his salary significantly.
• He faced burnout in academia but soon learned Big Tech roles included some of the same challenges.
• Anderson learned to advocate for himself and manage his stress, and he now runs Career Alchemy.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Keith Anderson, a 36-year-old former English teacher and Big Tech worker who's now the founder of Career Alchemy in Greater Boston. It's been edited for length and clarity.

Within seven years, I transitioned from teaching English to working at Google, Uber, YouTube, Meta, DoorDash, and the weight-loss startup Calibrate. I was an individual contributor at Uber and Google, in design leadership roles at Meta and DoorDash, and in senior leadership at Calibrate.

As a university lecturer at the start of my career, I faced relentless anxiety about job insecurity and low pay. My passion for educating the next generation kept me going.

Once I moved into tech, my salary rose to seven times what I made as a teacher — from $30,000 to more than $200,000 a year, plus $150,000 in equity in one of my leadership positions — but at the cost of my mental health.

In 2015, I'd been teaching English for 8 years and was burned out

I became so burned out that I developed pneumonia, mainly due to exhaustion. While in the ICU, the university I worked for asked when I would be returning. This was a wake-up call, and I didn't return.

If I had continued teaching, I would also have had limited career growth. My salary wouldn't have increased much, and I would probably have needed to continue living in my rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco and would never have been able to buy my own place. That wasn't the life I wanted for myself.

I learned web development and graphic design to pivot to a new career

I attended a front-end-coding boot camp called Thinkful and took graphic-design classes at the Academy of Art University to hone a new skill set. I finally shifted to a new job in 2016: a contract position at Google.

A recruiter reached out about the opportunity, and both the recruiter and Google's hiring manager were impressed by my portfolio. My teaching background was also seen as an asset for a role with the customer-education team.

I stepped into a world of innovation and speed. I remember thinking, "This is it, I've made it," but I soon realized the pace at Google was a different beast.

Starting at Google was a rude awakening

Before I started, I'd seen this video about the resort-like experience Google employees had every day. It looked like heaven, and I dreamed of being a part of it.

I soon learned the resort-like experience I'd dreamed about was only a small part of Google culture. I hadn't considered that transitioning from academia to tech would require a major mindset shift.

The stress was familiar, but the context was entirely new. In academia, an average project typically lasted two to three months, which allowed time for thorough research and planning. At Google, a similar-sized project needed to be completed within a week. The focus shifted from perfection to effective execution, which was challenging but vital to success in the tech industry.

Also, before joining, I thought Big Tech companies were innovators not just in their products but also in their operations. When I saw it all up close, I realized that these organizations had many growing pains, like what I experienced in higher education. All of this stressed me out, just like higher education did.

From 2016 to 2018, I moved from Google to Uber to YouTube. From 2019 to 2021, I worked as a learning-design manager at Meta.

I had an epiphany during my time at Meta

During my time at Meta — amid the intensity of high-profile speaking opportunities at conferences and strategic planning — I had an epiphany: No matter what your job is, handling stress and anxiety in the workplace is within your control. The key is how you navigate and tackle it.

This realization changed everything for me. I began to advocate for myself more strongly at work, understanding that my happiness and mental well-being were in my own hands, not dictated by the prestige of my job or the company.

My approach to work transformed when I observed successful colleagues' behaviors. They would strategically evaluate requests and weren't afraid to say no when appropriate, always linking their decisions to key business metrics like revenue generation, cost savings, or efficiency improvements. This insight helped me shift from a people pleaser working 60-plus hours weekly to a strategic team player focused on impact.

Success isn't just about what you achieve but how you manage the journey

Stress is a part of any job, but it doesn't have to define your experience. My teaching and corporate roles taught me the importance of prioritization and built my resilience.

For those moving into tech, remember your unique background is an asset. You, not the company, can define what you do. Your health is more important than the bottom line of a large tech company like Meta or Google, and you need to prioritize it.

Last February, I left DoorDash and Big Tech entirely to focus on my career-coaching company I started working on part time in May 2022. While launching my business brought new challenges, my varied background equipped me well.

I'm now privileged to support hundreds of professionals through their career journeys. Every step of my journey, including the challenges, has contributed to who I am today.

Want to share your Big Tech experience? Email Lauryn Haas at [email protected].

• Elvi Caperonis overcame over 100 rejections to secure a role at a Big Tech company.
• She feels that her strong résumé played a major part in finally landing the role.
• She shares her advice for crafting a strong résumé, such as by highlighting metrics and technical skills.

Elvi Caperonis always wanted to work in Big Tech.

She graduated with a computer science degree in 2005, followed by a master's degree in software engineering, and she was drawn to the allure of having a job that was both challenging and financially rewarding — not to mention the enviable perks and prestige that came along with Big Tech companies.

"I aimed to work with intelligent people to build technologies that could positively impact the world," she told Business Insider. "I was very excited about the opportunity to learn about cutting-edge technologies like AI and machine learning."

In 2017, after six years of tech consulting work and over three years at Harvard University as a techno-functional reporting analyst, Caperonis landed a full-time job as a business intelligence engineer at a top-tier tech company — one of the Magnificent 7.

But landing the job was far from easy, and the process was highly competitive. "I faced many rejections that allowed me to grow and learn how to make it happen," said Caperonis, whose employment history has been verified by Business Insider.

Dealing with rejection after rejection

The disappointment began in 2012 when Caperonis applied for a job at a Fortune 500 company. With two degrees and several years of relevant experience, she believed she was an overqualified candidate and a perfect fit for the opportunity.

But when it came time to answer technical questions, "My mind went blank," said Caperonis, who spoke little English before moving to the US in 2011. "I knew the answers and could even picture the scenarios in which I'd used the technology, but I struggled to articulate my thoughts in English back then."

She was rejected.

As she persisted in her job search, Caperonis endured a series of rejections from prominent companies, including Stripe, Meta, Twitter, Oracle, Akamai Technologies, and many others in the tech industry. She estimates that over the course of five years of trying to land a Big Tech job, she received over 100 rejections.

"The rejections hurt a lot," she said. "Each one felt like a deep wound, momentarily leaving me heartbroken and hopeless."

What Caperonis found even more painful was often being ghosted by employers after submitting an application or even having an interview.

She never thought about giving up, though. "The weight of disappointment became a catalyst for growth," she said. She treated each application and interview as a way to gain insights about how to approach future opportunities.

She thought she failed again

Her job interview with one top tech company lasted about eight hours and included multiple rounds of behavioral questions. By the end of the day, she felt completely exhausted and feared she'd failed.

But the tides had turned. "When the recruiter called me with the good news, I could hardly believe it — I was so excited and happy," Caperonis said. "I realized my life was about to change."

She recommends that anyone interested in Big Tech be very prepared to showcase their accomplishments and proficiency through their résumé.

Here's the one she used, which she feels played a major part in landing the job:

A strong Big Tech résumé: Her 3 tips

1. Create a gateway to your brand

The professional profile summary at the top of the résumé is the first thing a recruiter will see, and it should be a carefully crafted gateway to your brand, said Caperonis. She noted it can "make or break your first impression."

"With just five seconds to capture a recruiter's attention, this section should be your unique value proposition — a chance to showcase your skills, experiences, and what sets you apart from other candidates," she said.

In her case, Caperonis highlighted her ScrumMaster certification, nearly a decade of experience, and principles of honesty, discretion, loyalty, and sincerity through which she could help a company achieve its goals.

2. Validate your capabilities

Caperonis believes that the work experience section of the résumé is the most important element for Big Tech, and she incorporated results and metrics to make hers more compelling.

Throughout this section, Caperonis added details to quantify her achievements — such as "designed over 300 reports" — to make the scope and impact of her work more tangible.

3. Create a platform to demonstrate your competence

The next most important section of your résumé is the technical skills section, in her opinion.

"I've seen that tech recruiters quickly skim through your résumé to see if you have the work experience required for the job, after they quickly review your 'tech stack' — the technologies and tools required for the job."

Caperonis's technical skills section for her Big Tech application included programming languages, project management tools, data analysis techniques, and interpersonal skills crucial for collaboration and communication within a team.

"My proficiency in business intelligence tools, such as Oracle Business Intelligence, and my prior work experience at Harvard University as a techno-functional reporting analyst were critical factors," in ultimately securing her role, she said.

What she'd do differently

Looking back, Caperonis believes she did a great job highlighting her experience and technical skills in her résumé. But if she were to revise it today, she'd showcase her accomplishments and proficiency better.

"I'd include more metrics that showcase the impact of my work in terms of money, time, and resources that I have helped companies save, instead of just plain statements about my responsibilities," she said.

She also regrets not being more meticulous about proofreading before submission, as her résumé ended up containing a few grammatical errors. "In this competitive market, candidates must ensure their résumés are polished and free of grammatical mistakes," she said.

To create a résumé that will help you stand out as a tech candidate, Caperonis said it's wise to use AI tools to analyze job descriptions, suggest relevant keywords, and format your résumé — but stressed the importance of having a person, such as a career coach, give your résumé a once-over before you submit it.

"I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to have the résumé reviewed and personalized by a real human," she said.

• Business Insider asked three software engineers to share key industry slang newcomers need to learn.
• Understanding tech slang helps new software engineers fit into their company's culture.
• Terms like rubber ducking and zero-day are crucial for effective communication in tech.

Software engineering has its own slang terms only heard in the industry. Business Insider polled three IT experts with computer and software engineering experience and/or education who collectively bring two decades of industry experience for a list of phrases newbies should familiarize themselves with before they join the industry.

Burak Özdemir, a software engineer with a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and a master's in informatics, has navigated plenty of tech lingo during his seven years in the industry.

"In our field, we use a vibrant mix of industry-specific terms and slang," Özdemir, the founder of the Character Calculator, told Business Insider. "These terms often capture complex concepts, tools, or experiences in a concise and sometimes amusing manner."

Özdemir said that for anyone aspiring to become a software engineer, knowing key terms and buzzwords not only helps in understanding conversations and documentation but also signifies you're part of the tribe, comfortable with its culture, and more likely to fit in:

1. Rubber ducking

Özdemir describes rubber ducking as "a surprisingly useful problem-solving method where you explain your code line by line to a rubber duck (or any inanimate object)."

He said this act of vocalization helps uncover flaws in logic that weren't apparent while working silently.

2. Bikeshedding, aka The Law of Triviality

"This refers to the phenomenon where disproportionate attention is given to trivial issues in software development, while more complex or crucial issues are overlooked," Özdemir said.

"It comes from the idea that people will debate the color of a bike shed while ignoring the design of the nuclear power plant it's meant to house."

3. Boilerplate

Boilerplate refers to sections of code that have to be included in many places with little or no alteration. "It's often seen as a necessary evil and a potential place for future optimization," Özdemir said.

4. Spaghetti code

Özdemir described spaghetti code as a disparaging term for software with a complex and tangled control structure — especially one using many GOTO statements, exceptions, threads, or other unstructured branching constructs. "It's a nightmare to read, debug, and maintain," he said.

5. Easter egg

An Easter egg in software engineering refers to a hidden feature or novelty the programmers have put in their software.

6. Refactoring

The process of rewriting existing code to improve its readability, structure, or performance without changing its behavior is known as refactoring.

"It's like tidying up your room," Özdemir said. "It doesn't make it any bigger, but it does make it easier to navigate."

Komal Fatima has a BS in computer software engineering and a master's in computer software technology. She currently works at Gaper, which hires remote software engineers, as a senior SEO manager. Although she is fairly new to the tech industry, with three years under her belt, she's had a crash course in the lingo.

Fatima's list includes rubber duck and bikeshedding as well, and she added these three industry slang terms and definitions:

7. Code smell

Code smell is poorly written or structured code that may contain bugs or inefficiencies.

8. Yak shaving

Getting sidetracked by unrelated tasks before addressing the original problem is also known as yak shaving.

9. Legacy code

Older, often outdated, software that requires maintenance and lacks proper documentation is called legacy code.

"There are so many slang terms which are specific to the software industry, I think it's impossible to exhaustively list them all," said Abhinav Upadhya, a seasoned engineer with expertise in robotics and automation who has a decade of industry experience and is currently a senior engineer at L&T Technology Services Limited.

Upadhyay founded the podcast search engine DrPawd and writes about programming in the newsletter Confessions of a Code Addict.

His list of terms for software industry newbies includes:

10. Duck typing

Also called dynamically typed languages, duck typing refers to a class of programming languages that don't have strict typing. "Basically, this means that if an object behaves like a duck, then it is probably a duck, but the language will not ensure or enforce that it is actually a duck," Upadhyay said.

"Such loose requirements make it easier to churn out code, however, at the cost of potential bugs and code readability." He added that many companies use these languages, such as Python, Ruby, and JavaScript, to name a few.

11. Bare metal

Bare metal, according to Upadhyay, usually refers to running the code directly on the hardware without using any virtualization or abstraction layers between the code and the hardware.

"It's commonly used in the embedded systems world, and if you decide to work in that domain, you should know this," he said.

12. RTFM

RTFM stands for "Read the Fucking Manual." "This is an old acronym, and you'll hear old-timers using this to point newcomers toward reading the documentation before asking questions," Upadhyay said.

13. KISS

Software engineers use another common acronym — KISS, for "Keep it Simple, Stupid" — as a guiding principle when designing code.

"The idea is that the design should be kept as simple as possible and delay introducing complexity as late as possible," Upadhyay said.

14. Magic numbers

People often need to use hard-coded numbers as parameters in their code — Upadhyay said software engineers refer to these as magic numbers.

"They usually use trial and error or guessing to arrive at good values for these numbers," he said. "However, they don't have a good explanation for why those work. Such hard-coded numbers in the code are usually called magic numbers because they work like magic as no one understands how they work."

He added that you may read the phrase magic number in industry textbooks or documentation and hear it used by other engineers.

15. Zero-day

The term zero-day refers to a security vulnerability that's unknown to the software vendor or developer.

"It's called zero-day because it's being actively exploited in the wild by the attackers before the developers have had zero days to fix it," Upadhyay said. "If working in the computer security area, this is a must-know term."