I decided pretty early in my career that I wasn't going to concentrate on figuring out how to get hired to what folks consider the top tech companies in the world.
I decided to take a different route. Take the decent-paying, but average job at an average-ish company, which will require immersive experience in all aspects of running a web infrastructure.
The reason for this, I didn't see "getting a job at Google" as the pinnacle for me and my achievements. I saw "creating my own successful company" as the end goal.
Sooo many benefits to this I think. You'll get the IMPORTANT experiences and knowledge, which will benefit you regardless of whether you are able to achieve the end goal of creating a successful business. The ceiling in terms of compensation is SOOO much higher. And in this scenario you're ALWAYS doing the most important things. In my experience working for large corporations you will typically be doing things that are far less important and in most cases your job will not push your limits. You will be a cog in a wheel using maybe 20% of your capacity to do amazing things.
Worst case you go back to doing what you love making a decent living. Best case you far exceed anything any of the FAANG companies could ever offer you.
The only way you are going to exceed FAANG compensation at an average-ish company is if you go into senior management at that company, which is a completely different career track.
You make it sound like being a web developer at a non-FAANG is somehow different than being a web develiper at a FAANG. Regardless, you are going to be working on some permutation of a CRUD app.
I decided to take a different route. Take the decent-paying, but average job at an average-ish company, which will require immersive experience in all aspects of running a web infrastructure.
The reason for this, I didn't see "getting a job at Google" as the pinnacle for me and my achievements. I saw "creating my own successful company" as the end goal.
Sooo many benefits to this I think. You'll get the IMPORTANT experiences and knowledge, which will benefit you regardless of whether you are able to achieve the end goal of creating a successful business. The ceiling in terms of compensation is SOOO much higher. And in this scenario you're ALWAYS doing the most important things. In my experience working for large corporations you will typically be doing things that are far less important and in most cases your job will not push your limits. You will be a cog in a wheel using maybe 20% of your capacity to do amazing things.
Worst case you go back to doing what you love making a decent living. Best case you far exceed anything any of the FAANG companies could ever offer you.