After working at mediocre companies and failed startups for the first 20 years of my career I got a job at a smaller company that is famous for being highly selective and achieving amazing engineering feats and worked there for several years, then followed the wave of coworkers to FAANG when I wanted to hang out with my kids and work less than 85 hours a week. Having several ex-coworkers that trusted me at the FAANG def helped getting in. I can't answer most grindy Leetcode questions at an interview.