This sounds very much like you've dealt with some middle class snobbishness. Old money types in the UK seldom work at FAANG, they typically saturate the ownersh

This sounds very much like you've dealt with some middle class snobbishness. Old money types in the UK seldom work at FAANG, they typically saturate the ownership level of startups of varying quality, or exist within the folds of the financial services that sustain them. Upwardly-mobile middle class people (who would love for you to think they are old money) are the types who end up in FAANG. They are highly competitive and hard-working, and nearly always entirely fuelled on the pursuit of being better than everyone else. You sometimes get a variety of them who seem to have left wing values, don't be fooled - this is simply another competition, this time of moral superiority. Often they achieve these positions due to an absolute mastery of political and interpersonal mechanics, which british education and society seems to do a much better job of producing than lots of brilliant engineers.