The memo, which surfaced on Reddit two days ago, outlined stringent preferences, favouring graduates from elite universities while explicitly rejecting candidates from major tech firms and certain backgrounds.

The leaked guidelines

It states that ideal candidates should have a “Bachelors or Masters of Computer Science from a top CS program” and specifically lists institutions such as MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, Caltech, UIUC, and the University of Waterloo. It notes that "special exceptions" could be made for graduates from other schools, but only if they had a 4.0 GPA.

Additionally, the document emphasises hiring candidates with “4-10 years of software development experience,” expertise in modern JavaScript (TypeScript, NodeJS, ReactJS), and AI/LLMs, while discouraging applicants from big companies unless they had startup experience. It also explicitly rejects “job hoppers” and candidates from consulting backgrounds.

Blacklisted companies

The memo included a blacklist of employees from major companies, stating: “Candidates who have ever worked at the following companies are not the right fit.”

The list included Intel, Cisco, HP, TCS, Tata, Mahindra, Infosys, Capgemini, Dell, Cognizant, and Wipro.

The memo also made it clear that there would be “absolutely no visa sponsorships,” restricting applications to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and Canadians.

The Redditor who shared the memo expressed frustration, despite meeting much of the listed criteria.

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He wrote, “the sheer pretentiousness and elitism kinda pissed me off ngl. And I'm someone who meets a lot of this criteria, which is why the recruiter contacted me, but it still pisses me off.”

Take a look at the post:

The post quickly went viral, sparking widespread debate on social media. Many criticised the hiring guidelines as elitist and exclusionary.

One user commented, “This is true. I work for a big company and I’ve been trying to move internally to tech for years. They flat out told me they only hire students from certain universities for those jobs.”

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A user reshared the post with the caption, "Founder and ex-L7 Facebook engineer said he believes strongly that it's real and that "top tier CS schools are the primary path to early career jobs [in software]"!"

On the memo's authenticity

Some raised doubts about the post's authenticity, claiming that the Reddit user had made up the guidelines and shared a fake screenshot on the “codingbootcamp” subreddit.

However, the subreddit's moderator, Michael Novati, clarified that the user had personally sent him more details that suggest the memo is authentic.

Novati, who worked at Facebook for eight years, wrote: "Regard allegations of fake screenshots. OP sent more evidence confidentially.

“It's impossible to 100% prove an email is authentic over Reddit, but the evidence adds more credibility to the original post. I can't rule out an elaborate Reddit-fraud scheme, but as far as a coin toss I would guess more likely real than not real.”