FAANG has a fairly high floor for engineers. You certainly find brilliant people on par with the best of FAANG at all types and kinds of companies. However man

FAANG has a fairly high floor for engineers. You certainly find brilliant people on par with the best of FAANG at all types and kinds of companies. However many companies also have absolutely morons slip through the cracks, people who can barely code. FAANG does a pretty good job filtering those people out. So I agree that FAANG isn’t a great signal of brilliance but it is a good sign of “decently competent”.