I'm the author! I've had tons of corroborating experience, and many readers with it, but I will say that there are two extreme exceptions.
I have two readers with no FAANG experience that consistently find jobs with their CVs at serious companies with no trouble. Both are outside the U.S but in the first world. When asked, neither of them knows why they have such luck, and we've looked at their CVs together and been unable to see anything that distinguishes them, other than obviously being competent and some open source contributions.
I'm curious if there are some people out there with corroborating or conflicting experience.