5 Resume Mistakes That Get Software Engineers Rejected at FAANG Companies

February 23, 2026

After 12+ years at Meta and reviewing thousands of engineering resumes, I can tell you that most rejections happen for predictable, fixable reasons. Here are the five mistakes I saw over and over.

1. Leading with Responsibilities Instead of Impact

Wrong: “Responsible for maintaining the payments microservice.”

Right: “Reduced payment processing latency by 40% by migrating from synchronous to event-driven architecture, handling 2M+ daily transactions.”

The first version tells me what your job was. The second tells me what you did. Hiring managers care about the second one.

2. No Numbers, No Proof

If your resume doesn’t have numbers, it doesn’t have proof. Everything is a claim until you quantify it.

• Users impacted
• Revenue generated or saved
• Performance improvements (latency, throughput)
• Scale (requests/second, data volume)
• Team size you led or mentored

No numbers = “trust me bro.” That doesn’t work at FAANG.

3. Technology Laundry Lists

Wrong: “Technologies: Java, Python, Go, Rust, C++, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Angular, Vue, Node.js, Django, Flask, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, RabbitMQ, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, Azure, Terraform…”

Nobody believes you’re an expert in 25+ technologies. Pick the ones relevant to the role and show depth, not breadth.

4. Burying the Lead

Your most impressive work should be immediately visible — top of the resume, first bullet under each role. Recruiters spend 6-10 seconds on initial screening. If your best stuff is buried in bullet #4 of your third role, it might as well not exist.

5. Generic Objective Statements

“Seeking a challenging role where I can leverage my skills…” — straight to the rejection pile.

Either write a compelling summary that positions your specific value proposition, or skip it entirely. Generic is worse than nothing.

The Fix

Every bullet on your resume should pass the “So what?” test. Read it out loud. If the natural response is “so what?” — rewrite it until the impact is obvious.

Your resume isn’t a job description. It’s a highlight reel. Make every word earn its place.

Want a complete system for building a resume that actually gets interviews? Check out the Software Engineer’s Resume System.