As engineer no 1 at an early stage startup, you don't need ths same skills that are needed at FAANG. I may be wrong, but you are constantly iterating and mostly

As engineer no 1 at an early stage startup, you don't need ths same skills that are needed at FAANG. I may be wrong, but you are constantly iterating and mostly building software that has a shelf life of may be 3-6 months. You are not building for reliability or scale. You are building mostly ad-hoc and to fulfil an immediate market need (which may or may not exist 2 months from now). Where as at FAANG you are by design building for reliability and scale from day 1. Very different skills. I can't comment which skill is more valuable. They are somewhat orthogonal to each other right ? The better you get at software engineering the more process oriented you become. Hopefully an early startup gives you that kind of progression, but very unlikely, since the progression is directly correlated to the startup's scale and success. If someone desires to put good software engineering into practice from day 1, then engineer #1 at an early stage startup is not the right choice. This is all based on anecdotal experiences so am happy to stand corrected.