During covid my partner urged me to get a "real job" and put my name in at FB (where she then worked herself) as well as had some friends put my name in at a co

During covid my partner urged me to get a "real job" and put my name in at FB (where she then worked herself) as well as had some friends put my name in at a couple of other FAANG companies where she had previously worked. I was just noodling with some friends on a couple of projects so I thought "why not" -- I haven't worked at a big company in decades. The gain mismatch between HR and me was immediately visible in each case. Two (!!) different recruiters asked me the same question: "Looking at your resume I can't see the narrative. Could you explain it to me?" They must tell you in HR school to find the narrative. This actually makes sense: when a company gets to a certain size they really are hiring to fill a specific gap. It's best to quickly find the narrowest match to fill that gap and then move on to the next case. The exception is some of the very high level, "wide span" roles like CTO (real CTO, not the usual abuse of the term) something like that, but people who can do those jobs well will have long experience in these big organizations, which I can't stand the idea of. The only way I could get hired by FAANG or any big company is if someone I knew well specifically brought me in for some problem they had in their group. And TBH I wonder how well I could execute in such an environment -- only if they group were well enough insulated from the big company's corporate environment that I really only had to think about the group's objectives. By "group" I mean 3-100 people.