[I_AM_A_SMURF]

meh. I make a little bit more than that at a FAANG and my job is vastly different than a one man show contractor. My work (and any Staff-level job really) is a lot more talking to other engineers and help them being productive, steer the product in the right direction and some high impact coding.

For the OP it's probably a lot more dealing with clients and building stuff from the ground up which you don't tend to do at FAANG at all. I'm not saying it's not as important, it's just very different skill wise.