Well, in my opinion, it remains to be seen whether big tech compensation for this style of work is sustainable long-term. Of course, if you're already pulling 800k/y in TC at Google/Amazon/whatever, great, you did wonderfully. If you're a brand new engineer starting your career, are there going to be a lot of those 800k jobs that offer you free daycare, dry cleaning, lunch and massages? I wouldn't bet on it. I say this as someone that has also not taken this path, but have nothing but respect for people who make a great living that have.
Otherwise, I think this is exactly how big companies succeed - they build career paths, tools and workflows to bring context to large groups of smart people to get them moving in the same direction. Ultimately there still have to be people to create the bridge, but the lever you get is massive when you have 1000s of talented engineers. You can't expect them all to understand how $x works, but you can pepper teams with extremely smart and talented experts and professional managers who collectively get them working on the impactful parts of the problem.
TL;DR there isn't a linear path, my advice is mainly for people thinking about how to be able to build value. If you can do that, you'll always be able to get a job.