I strongly recommend working for a FAANG. Even a few years are going to give you lasting benefits:

- You make significantly more money at a FAANG than most of the rest of the industry

- The klout of a FAANG on your resume will open a lot of doors to more interesting, higher paying, or more prestigious jobs

- You will gain a professional network that will be useful for the entire rest of your career

- Most SWE teams at any FAANG are using state-of-the-art tech, tooling, and patterns, which will be very useful experience to draw from in future jobs, even if not applied in exactly the same way

There's plenty of downsides to working at a FAANG, which every blog post can tell you. But in my experience those downsides are exaggerated and it's rarely so intolerable you can't last at least a few years.

So even if you have a terrible time, those lasting benefits are worth a lot of trouble. It could be a life-changing career move, and if you hate it, you can always quit whenever you want.

A relevant Dan Luu post: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/