My (deeply stressful) big tech interview grind
A survival guide for the tech job market in 2026
“Interview grind? Huh?”, I hear you say from your screen, in the future, “I thought you were going independent?!”
Yeah, I thought so too.
Today’s post is one part life update, seven parts survival guide.
I’ll give a recap of where I got on my independence journey.
Next, I’ll share my experience working through 50 interviews in one month, and offer you practical advice for maximising your chances at passing each stage of the big tech interview process.
My Going Indie Scorecard
Before I tell you what’s new, let’s put together a scorecard of my 100 days as an independent creator:
My initial approach to shipping content: all bangers, all the time.
My first month of independence was spent artisnally crafting each new article over a full 5 working days. Each one of these pieces of content was a killer, growing my paid subcount by over a dozen apiece. Content Score: A+.
Riding high, I deigned to actually do a budget.
And… f*ck.
You’d think a digital services business would have phenomenal margins, but costs like EU VAT, transaction fees, blog hosting fees, and income tax added up quickly.
Break even would be tough. Optimistically, maybe in 8 months, if my growth rate stayed at the maximum. Maybe I could do this before running out of money. But this is kind of a dumb risk when I have a wife, a mortgage, and 2 young kids.
War Stories landed me some great content, and was a brilliant excuse to connect to other prolific creators. You should definitely read my interviews if you haven’t had the chance! I will definitely continue to do more of these.
My Creator Spotlights collab with fatbobman also went ahead, and netted some nice cross-pollination with our mutual readership of iOS devs.
These collaborations produced some solid content, and allowed me to share some very fun war stories. My strategy, however, was about growing my free subscriber base significantly, and unfortunately I was not able to move the needle enough for this to bootstrap my independence. Collaboration Score: B-.
My experiment with paid acquisition was a big success in terms of scaling my readership, with my cost-per-acquisition down to (something like) $2 per inorganic free subscriber. These have translated into exactly zero paid subscribers (since I fixed my UTM tags last month). Paid Acquisition Score: C.
Tavern Tools™, my beautiful vision for a dev tools suite, was aborted before I began. I realised it was a giant distraction from growing my free base. My paid conversion rate was already sitting pretty at over 5%, so I didn’t need to create extra incentives here. DevTools Score: D for “dunno”, as I never showed up to the exam.
One bright spot in my scorecard was netting a sponsorship deal (perhaps more? Watch this space!) to advertise on my blog with my friends at RevenueCat. However, it turns out that in the incredibly mature world of dev tools marketing, budgets can be tight for a new entrant. Sponsorship Score: B+.
Overall Grade: B. Must try harder.
In the crushing wake of my budget, I realised what I had to do. I had to find my white whale. And what is an employer, if not just one really big paid subscriber?
My Job Application Journey
Thus began my first foray into job applications since 2015.
My previous 3 job moves were through recruiters, and I’ve never had the luxury of treating the application process as a full-time job before.
The grind I underwent in December has given me insight into the state of the market, and finally given me the space to properly get ready for the tough interview loops that big tech companies apply to candidates.
Here’s my full stats: 26 applications. 2 offers.
For my kings and queens who write native iOS for a living: the market isn’t as bad as the startup winter of 2022. It’s healthy. There are a ton of well-capitalised AI startups hiring native iOS engineers, despite the narrative that cross-platform is eating our lunch. There are a lot of established companies growing their teams too.
That said, unless you live in an American city, there are not many FAANG jobs to go around. In London, the only “big” big tech co’s hiring for iOS at the end of 2025 were Snap (I got to the panel) and Meta (who ghosted me).
I’m kind of in a privileged position. I know the average engineer (who doesn’t run a popular blog) isn’t getting a >50% hit rate on the CV screening. But I can share a lot of useful knowledge from my interview grind that can help you out with every step of the process.
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