I was auto rejected from a publicly traded company through internal referral because I applied to a remote position. My friend told me the recruiter told her that position wasn’t available to SF residents, only engineers in LCOL areas.

My experience is completely the opposite, every quick hire is a referral, jobs constantly ask for and bonus for referrals. The higher up the position the more it matters that you have a warm introduction.

Agree. The big public traded companies might be different but if a business owner thinks you can solve their problem and that will gain them more money than you ask for it is very easy to get hired

I’ve seen the complete opposite and have gotten my current role from a referral which the company took very seriously (guaranteed first interview).

Just saying "referrals are worthless" or "referrals are useful" doesn't mean much without specifying the type of referral. Obviously if you're talking directly to a hiring manager who's willing to bypass HR, it's much likelier you'll end up with a job than if you're talking to someone who sees an open position on another team and says he'll flag your resume on their ATS if you apply.

> I've literally seen people being autorejected after being referred by team-leads these days.

Yes. But not always. Getting an internal referral helps somewhere between not at all and a lot. And it is pretty random, nothing to do with you. Just a matter of timing and attention span and where other candidates are in the queue.

However, it never hurts. So overall, don't expect networking and referrals will get you the job, but do expect it to help every now and then. So it is worth spending some time on that.