I spent a long, long time in startups before moving to larger companies, and eventually a FAANG. The folks I worked with at the FAANG were incredibly smart, mo

I spent a long, long time in startups before moving to larger companies, and eventually a FAANG. The folks I worked with at the FAANG were incredibly smart, motivated, and collaborative, but a huge percentage of them had no experience outside of the FAANG. They were able to use the in-house systems for build, deploy, data storage, etc. but had never actually had to design and/or build or even think too much about how such things work. It's a great luxury that lets them focus on the product they're building vs. foundational infra, but it's a huge detriment when looking to go outside of those things. It's ironic, because the System Design interview is a major delineator between lower and higher level Engineers when they interview at these companies, yet many of the tenured people would do very poorly because many of the questions and considerations of the problems presented in such interviews are effectively solved problems in their daily work that they've never had to think about.