I have indeed

Ymmv in FAANG of course. They're different from each other and they're huge companies which vary from team to team.

By the sounds of it, you're a good dev.

I've worked at a variety of companies, and have found that for every good dev there are a half dozen who spend their time in meaningless side-quests, doing the bare minimum and then blaming the PM when the project flops, or making mistakes that would be obvious if they'd tried to understand their user's point of view.

Very often I hear people talk about the minimal amount of work they perceive software devs as doing. Can't say I blame them. But I've never worked harder than as a lead dev for a small company, where the product succeeded or failed based on my work. Those who only ever work at FAANG type companies often never learn what that's like.

That's a great analogy!

"In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you ever thought they'd be able to"