[throw8383833jj]

Working for FAANG simply isn't sustainable. First of all, it's very difficult to get a job there as an engineer. And even if you did, most people don't last very long: I think the average is like 2 years. And, even if you somehow manage to stay longer than 2 years, you're going to keep getting abused with high pressure work environment: I've heard several first hand accounts of this. and you can find evidence of the same, all over glass door if you read the reviews.

[comp_throw7]

It's not that difficult, FAANG (literally just those 5 companies) employ probably at least 5% of the SWEs in the country; add in all the other companies that pay comparable money and you're probably at 8-10%. Something that 10% of engineers can do (and, realistically, much more than 10% - how many engineers have never even tried to get in? At least half?) is, by definition, not "very difficult", relatively to the baseline level of difficulty inherent in the job.

I don't know why you think the average tenure across FAANGs is 2 years but it no doubt varies heavily by company. As another comment mentioned, Google has notoriously good WLB, and any individual team will be more predictive than the company as a whole. You'll hear plenty of "first-hand accounts" of high-pressure work environments because hundreds of thousands of engineers work at those companies!

[burntoutfire]

There's also plenty of people who refer to Google as a retirement home. It's a huge company, individual experiences will vary.