By the way, some engineers are dream with working at FAANG, others to create a million dollars startup. My dreams was always something like this: work on a niche piece of software that solves a problem for a subset of people. Give them a something that avoids a headache for them, deliver value, and get paid. You aren't going tonbe millionaire, but it's going to be a nice ride.
So, jobs of this kind are rather scarce.
Also, in a tiny business, the founder will usually be super-efficient and productive. Most employees are not. There is an impedance mismatch: a hired programmer will talk about the latest and greatest JavaScript framework and the need to rewrite everything in YaddaOfYadda, because that's what the World is doing these days, while the founder will think about the benefit for the users (usually none) and the immense costs (in terms of money, bugs, and time wasted).
Because of all this, it's not very probable that you'll find a job at a niche company like this.
I tried to create some modernized software at that company with a License Plate Inventory application product using C#, VB .Net, SQL Server, SQLCE (for Windows XP Embedded) and ActiveSync. We sold a hundred copies of it.
Pick an interest that young white men have. You'll probably find loads of software that caters to it. Pick an interest that an equal number of retired women have. You will almost certainly find a lot less software that caters to it. It is simply because people write software for markets they understand. Most programmers (in my experience) are young white men. A lot less retired women have the skills or motivation to write software.
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/8nzz23/pe...
El camino es mejor que la posada.