My experience is opposite to what you described. I got into faang with minimal leetcode grind and didn't have to jump many hoops. The career move not only removed the unnecessary bureaucracy from my daily activities and tools, but also finally gave me actually challenging problems to work on. I suppose it's always a matter of perspective, but I'd wager 90% of work at 90% of startups doesn't equate rocket science. When looking for a startup to work for, you have to filter out a lot of bad ones and the balance between difficult and impossible can be hard to strike. If you have a good idea and a decent skillset founding can be impressive, but generally I've found faang engineers to seem more apt than most people I've met at/seen in startups, with the exception of 1-2 superstars per startup.
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