I recently made a transition from a company focused on scrum to a FAANG working the way above. A lot of comments here are saying that engineers in this system can just do whatever they want without constraint.

I think what people are missing is the focus on documentation that FAANG have in contrast to the focus on in person meetings in scrum.

Things like sizing and planning get done in the initial stages of a project. The design docs and plans are peer reviewed and only once it has been signed off on does the actual implementation start. During implementation you have much autonomy but this is because most of the details have already been ironed out. The code is almost an afterthought.

This has been my experience so far but also at a lower than senior level. So take it with a grain of salt.

Also deadlines feel looser. Things regularly get pushed back quarters because of dependencies on other teams. Because there is no real fear of the company collapsing. It's okay we just work on something else.