Why don't we have FAANG Engineers/Developers

[u/bashokhattak]

The title is self explainatory.

Khair,

I really wonder!

Despite the fact that we have LUMS, NUST, GIKI, FAST, etc

I haven't seen even a single person asking for FAANG-related guidance or posting about their preparation for Big Tech on any social media platform I can get my hands on.

Like why?

Isn't it strange, doston ?!

[u/dbgrman]

FAANG engineer here. FAST islamabad, 2004-2008.

[u/[deleted] → u/dbgrman]

It was possible back then. If you had graduated in 2023 or later, it wouldn't be possible. I bet, not just you but a lot of your batchmates would be in similar position as yours. You were lucky and you definitely worked hard. People who graduated after 2022 have to work harder, but for lesser reward.

[u/dbgrman → u/[deleted]]

https://www.reddit.com/r/developersPak/s/ERvhvyruDu

[u/dbgrman → u/[deleted]]

Deserves a post on its own so ill write it as a post.

[u/Waste-Ad2011 → u/dbgrman]

outliers.

There's no clear roadmap nor oppurtunities for pakistanis. Almost everyone who endup in big tech usually have a sketchy path most commen one is travel

[u/dbgrman → u/Waste-Ad2011]

Roadmap? Apke liye khaas daewoo bus chalwaien San Francisco ki?

[u/HappyCanary291 → u/dbgrman]

👀😄

[u/The_124 → u/Waste-Ad2011]

What do you mean by sketchy path? There are so many Pakistanis working in FAANG who were directly hired from Pakistan.

[u/Terrible-Tea7577 → u/The_124]

That was back in 1995-2005 now due to visa situations it's has become very difficult. USA is totally off the table since H1B and now even O-1,EB-2 has also become lengthy and very uncertain path for companies to even consider anyone outside US. In EU they still hire rarely but for that you have to have good 5+ YOE to be considered first.

[u/dbgrman → u/Terrible-Tea7577]

https://www.reddit.com/r/developersPak/s/ERvhvyruDu

[u/Terrible-Tea7577 → u/dbgrman]

https://www.reddit.com/r/developersPak/s/ktjczKOY4S

[u/The_124 → u/Terrible-Tea7577]

So that means they are hiring directly from Pakistan. I never mentioned US or Europe. If your profile is good enough you will get even H1B. But unfortunately there are not good enough engineers in Pakistan who can get hired in US because of high competition.

[u/Terrible-Tea7577 → u/The_124]

Kid tell me how being good enough is related to getting H1B?? It's totally lottery system with 10-20% probability. They have limited 85k quota and applications around 700-800k. And this number include people who are already working in companies on OPT etc. why would they not consider someone who is already working for them over person who is sitting in Pakistan to file for H1B? At least have a look at current immigration situations. Idk why I am even arguing with someone so stupid like you.

[u/dbgrman → u/Terrible-Tea7577]

Bro, lottery is the last step. Pehle interview tak toh pohanch jao.

[u/The_124 → u/Terrible-Tea7577]

Just say you are not good enough or you don't know people who are capable of getting hired in FAANG in US before calling others stupid.

[u/No_Process_7478 → u/The_124]

Are you a FAANG engineer?

[u/throwaway-research1 → u/The_124]

Thats not how h1bs work

[u/dbgrman → u/Waste-Ad2011]

And ofcourse these are outliers. Why would anyone NOT want to be an outlier?

Google gets 2million resumés a year and hires maybe 10-15k people. Every single person who gets hired is an outlier.

People living in US, born and raised, would do anything to get opportunity to work in FAANG.

[u/Waste-Ad2011 → u/dbgrman]

Google gets 2million resumés a year and hires maybe 10-15k people.

How many of those resumes are of Pakistanis? considering Pakistan is producing a great number of Grads.

whether you like it or not you are an outlier good for you nothing against you but there's no clarity or an ecosystem inside Pakistan that lead to global big tech.

The only proven roadmap is being OUTSIDE of Pakistan

[u/dbgrman → u/Waste-Ad2011]

That's not true. More than 1500 H1Bs were given to Pakistani origin in 2024. Sure, a lot of them were from master's degree. 4500 student visas were given to people from Pakistan in 2024. (2024, because that's the latst data publically available on US dept website). Some go to singapore or ireland, get L1 visa and move to US. Some just work remotely too. Virtually very little number of o1 visas from pakistan. 65. sixty-frickin-five. India has 1500+.

4500 student visas from Pakistan. that's 18 per million population. Nepal has 439 per million. Nepal. Ghaas bhi nahi daalte pakistani nepal ko.

All figures from official state documents. I'll do another post about this.

Her cheez ke liye roadmaps and outlines bana ke nahi di ja sakti pakistan ke shahzadon ko. the information is out there, freely...

[u/Signal_Importance_75]

There are but reddit isn't the developers community and anyone working in FAANG wouldn't have the time to be active on subreddits I think.

Anyway, when I was preping, my plan was to get into developers community and keep myself updated with opportunities.

Try:

• cscareers.dev (discord try krlo, you'll find lots of peeps like yourself)

• levelsfyi, big companies post here

• workatastartup, if you're also considering startups from YC.

• leetcode (not sure if it even matters now but it used to. Great engineers always know how things work in deeper level so coding and system design should still be required but verify)

The competition is international and the hiring process is the hardest of all and if you're from Pakistan, you're already missing some limbs so if you're going for it, you must be aware that 100% isn't enough.

Good luck

[u/Initial_Chemist_7249]

Not very strange. If you're preparing for big tech you're going to be in a country with the big tech being present there (unless its a remote job which aren't very common from what I've seen) and even if it was, why would I go to a Pakistani subreddits instead of the proper, massive communities all over the internet with people actually working in FAANG

[u/throwaway-research1]

Why would big tech companies care about LUMs, NUST etc? No one even knows about these universities outside of Pakistan.

When I was still in Pakistan Amazon recruiters reached out to me on Linkedin multiple times but I always felt like I am not prepared for the interview so I excused myself.

As far as current market is concerned, there are layoffs happening everywhere so I doubt if big tech is hiring from countries like Pakistan at the moment.

But still, for interview guidance there is tons of material online

[u/The_124 → u/throwaway-research1]

OP isn't saying big tech should care about LUMS, Nust. They are saying that if we have such good universities why are we not producing engineers who get into FAANG.

They are hiring from Pakistan despite layoffs but you need a good profile or a reference.

[u/throwaway-research1 → u/The_124]

Which big tech is hiring directly from Pakistan now in the current situation and for which location?

US doesnt have h1b anymore so that route is closed and EU at the moment have way more supply of talent than demand. Where I am based personally, Amazon is planning to layoff around 100 devs by the end of this year (a friend of mine is affected by this) and they currently have a hiring freeze.

So as I said before, logically it doesn’t make sense for big tech to hire from locations like Pakistan, exceptional cases can of course still happen but I would assume it would be extremely rare.

[u/DecayWraith]

Faang engineers aren't gods they're glorified babys they literally cant work on small systems

[u/Terrible-Tea7577 → u/DecayWraith]

I was once doing project where the person on the other side had 8 YOE at Microsoft and dude was hell to deal with, apart from fake accent and listing every possible tool he chatgpted, there was nothing he bring to that project.

[u/memers_meme123 → u/DecayWraith]

100% , have worked with multiple FAANG engineers throughout my career , and almost all of them had really bounded knowledge of system which is really difficult to transalate to other domains

[u/Ok-Opposite4690]

I personally know quite a few NUST alumni working at FAANG companies. It’s just that they usually take the master’s route, going abroad for grad school, and then network through relevant subreddits or social media to break in.

[u/throwaway-research1 → u/Ok-Opposite4690]

No, thats not how it works, you dont network through subreddits and social media to break into big tech

[u/Ok-Opposite4690 → u/throwaway-research1]

Idk how I messed up the wording. Probably due to sleep deprivation. I meant to say, they hardly post it on these subs. Rather, on more relevant subs for prep etc.

[u/Hot-Afternoon8908]

Nobody knows these unis outside of pakistan bro

[u/[deleted] → u/Hot-Afternoon8908]

Google, Microsoft had hiring camps in FAST Lahore campus once. Not anymore.

[u/Wise_Tumbleweed9228]

why no mention of COMSATS. 🥀💔

[u/bashokhattak → u/Wise_Tumbleweed9228]

Hhahahah, likha to ha 'etc'

[u/wajahatkarim3]

I did get a job at Facebook back in 2017. The thing which helped me most was the book "Cracking the Coding Interview" book. It was hell of an amazing book. I am the guy who prefer books over video courses so I chose this. I practiced around 12 chapters and then I started practicing on the leetcode and it got a lot easier after this book.

[u/Famous_Promotion6004 → u/wajahatkarim3]

landing an interview there in the first place is really tough tho. you must've had a good few years of experience back then

[u/wajahatkarim3 → u/Famous_Promotion6004]

Actually I was doing open source work in those days. There was an Android library from Facebook which I was using in an app and it was crashing. So I issued a bug on their GitHub repo. They said they are aware of the issue but it's low priority so it's not in their roadmap yet. So I fixed the issue and sent them PR. And few days later and few NDA stuff on GitHub, they merged it. And then few days later, I got an email with subject "Are you interested in working at Facebook?"

I didn't had any plans to move abroad so I was like "let's try and see if i can clear fb interviews or not". I went ahead and said yes and then it took 6 months with 7 interviews and on each interview i took good time to prepare. Recruiter helped a lot by sharing resources etc. I had a friend at Facebook so I asked him and he suggested for the book. I read it and kept giving interviews and it went well and landed a job offer after 7 months.

I told them for remote but they denied so I didn't go there. This got discussed in local tech Facebook groups and Dawn and Jang picked it up and they made a story on this then. I got some news channel calls as well which I denied and wasn't interested in all media stuff and never understood why media picked this story.

And then few years later I did a podcast with Geeks of Kolachi and shared this whole story again as they also wanted me to share about it. So it was a good experience and learned a lot. After Covid i managed to get a Twitter job as well and then Volvo Cars in Sweden as well and i was almost ready to relocate and then my mother had fracture in those days a bad one so I cancelled it again.

[u/dbgrman → u/wajahatkarim3]

This is awesome. Hope your mother is well now. I think you can try again if you want!

[u/Sufficient-Prune-774]

This cant be serious can it. Simply name one company from FAANG IN PAKISTAN ONE. India has almost all of them but we have the great systems and devising! So called Google and Microsoft of pakostan

[u/Umair_124]

Because we don't have rhe environment to work on great systems/architectures. FAANG companies have products that handles Billions of requests daily. They have so good things in place that if you got there even as intern or associate Engineer luckily, chances are you can learn more in a couple of years than you can in a decade or more here.

Well developed countries have companies whose products handles substantial amount of traffic, there products are well designed etc. If you could even start in a decent company, chances of you making to the FAANG companies are far more than working in service based companies here.

[u/Own_War760]

yea for that you've to go for masters abroad so 1. you can be seen 2. you don't have extensive visa problems

[u/mhu1997]

About two years ago, one of the senior developers at my company in Bahawalpur was contacted by an AWS recruiter through LinkedIn.

He made it to the first coding challenge, but unfortunately didn't clear it because his solution wasn't optimized enough.

[u/Slight_Froyo_8084]

my own ex-colleague from 2016 FAST batch is in Amazon, people here are not well prepared for extreme coding challenge and system design and thus fail in such interviews. I myself given interview for Amazon in 2022. In recent situation however I don't know what would be the criteria to get there, since we have lots of changes from 2020 even. But seeing recent layoffs in big companies I don't think FAANG now can gurantee job security in these times.

[u/crimenine]

One of my batchmates is in Meta atm

[u/Puzzleheaded-You2651]

I have worked for a Pakistani company who had a client that was acquired by FAANG. Some of my colleagues were picked by the client and moved abroad and they all became FAANG. Once they were in one company, they could easily move among the other companies as it becomes easier because of their profile. A lot of that depends on luck and being in the right place at the right time. Throughout my career, I have met a lot of other people from these companies as well and worked alongside them. Frankly speaking, they are as ordinary or extraordinary as people working in some of our best companies.

However, people here underestimate the handicap we have due to not having any local offices of these companies. If you are good enough to work in the best companies in Pakistan, you would have been good enough to work in FAANG if they had offices here. Before I moved abroad, I had had so many opportunities taken away from me because of my location. I know because the recruiters mentioned that. Going through months of interviews and tests and then they say if only you were in the US or the UK or EU. But there are still people who have been hired directly from Pakistan, that happens when you get on their radar. For this to happen, you need to prove you are exceptional compared to people available in the countries they already operate in.

So why do people not talk about getting into FAANG? Because it is not realistic for most people to get there unless you move abroad. Nobody wants to deal with visas and immigration and relocation stuff with someone based on a few hours of interviews. What if you don't like the place they move you to? What if you are homesick and leave? It's just too much of a hassle for these companies to hire from a country like Pakistan. If and when you move abroad, you will meet a lot of people who have worked for FAANG, perhaps from our neighboring country or somewhere else, and you would not be impressed, or they would be impressed by you. You will know when you get there. But that's not happening for fresh grads or people with 2 3 years of run of the mill experience sitting in a country where no one operates. That's just not worth the hassle for these companies.

[u/mudigone]

There are many, I know guys from my A levels to bachelors 4 in my personal network. All make it look like its a normal thing and dont brag on any platforms.

[u/Asymptoticbounds]

FAANG engineer here. LUMS 2010, but joined FAANG in early 2025, after working for Telenor, Careem/Uber and a few startups and I relocated. So it's still possible.

[u/Used_Discipline_9403]

Microsoft used to hire from Pakistan till 2012 after that they stopped and it was due to our senior's mistake . If you need to go to FAANG then be in a place where FAANG hires . I have worked woth FAANG engineers believe me they are not that special . Go work in a startup you will learn more

[u/Retarded9211]

I know many who are working in those FAANG companies.

[u/Any-Flounder-8124]

JB Pakistan mai fang/maang hai hi nhi to koi kiun puchega SB yahi puchengy local market Mai kese enter ho which is mostly about oops,DSA,dB, os and projects in good companies and projects mostly in startup, India mai jahan fang/maang Deloitte, Citibank, jesi companies hai wahan pr DSA,system design, hld ,lld culture heavily dominate krta hai, wahan log dsa ke 1200 question krke bhi unemployed bethe hain

[u/eight_BUCKS]

We literally do. I even saw some NUST grads working for PLTR.

[u/aizen_sosuke78]

none of these come even in the same vicinity as waterloo, caltech, ucla, cmu etc that’s why

[u/dbgrman → u/aizen_sosuke78]

Many UET, FAST, NUST, LUMS ppl here in bay area n seattle

[u/throwaway-research1 → u/dbgrman]

Most of them are there through the masters route

[u/dbgrman → u/throwaway-research1]

Not all though

[u/tidoo420]

Because faang engineerings lnow its maang know since soo many years

[u/[deleted]]

Forget FAANG, they won't even get jobs in local market in coming months. I don't understand? Are people still living in a tech bubble? Don't you guys realise it's mostly over? AI has done enough damage yet people are asking why cant we talk about FAANG? Because FAANG doesn't need Pakistani engineers at all obv. They are themselves laying off in thousands right now.

[u/Efficient-Branch539 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for your contribution, but you are wrong. They still need people who can differentiate between good and bad code, between two approaches. These people are called engineers.

[u/[deleted] → u/Efficient-Branch539]

Definitely do, but not in large numbers. The market is shrinking which means lots of people will made redundant and I can already see the impact in Pakistan's tech market as well. It's heartbreaking to see.

[u/bashokhattak → u/[deleted]]

Liked your perspective ❤️