That's not what I got from the story -- he mentions how he got warm referrals (the "who you know") to employers that went tepid quickly after the interview ... but then the same ones suddenly wanted him once he claimed (truthfully, though without proof) that he had standing, big offers from other employers.
"In the end, I didn’t get a single offer through a raw application. Every single offer came through a referral of some kind. (This I did not expect, and strongly influences the advice I’d give to a job-seeker.)"
" Haseeb Qureshi says:
04/23/2016 at 9:53 am
I’ll be writing more about this in my subsequent blog post. But if you have no connections at all in SV, then I might say that if you’re set on SV as a place to work (sounds like you’re on the fence?) I’d recommend mass applying, and also moving here to start interacting with folks and getting to know people. Building a network is so, so valuable for getting a foot in the door."
Unless this guy is some type of programming prodigy, who in only two years of self learning, somehow blew away all top companies, only to be turned down, then what happened was that he has friends in high places that helped sway their decision.
To be completely honest, the entire article smells like a marketing campaign for TripleByte and AppAcademy. Google wanting to put him on the C++ team, after two years coding in Rails? Get the hell out of here.
Ah, right, I forgot about that part. Even so, the point remains that it isn't only about who you know, because he had those connections and leads still went stale, until he gamed the system.
But I would agree that it reveals how confused and manipulation-prone the hiring process is; if they're hiring someone for critical, technical C++ work after only two years experience on mostly-Rails, they really don't know what they want. Ditto for upping their offers so significantly based on things that shouldn't matter that much.
I'm likewise skeptical about how Airbnb would tolerate him revealing sensitive details of a negotiation like that in ways that reflect very badly on them and weakens their bargaining position on future hires. Sure, you don't want to fire an employee just for disclosing his compensation (major legal issues there), but his post went way beyond that.
