[zeptonaut22]

Basically, I mistakenly thought "I'm working at Google, not a startup: this advice isn't relevant to me".

What I didn't realize was that the startup world has lots and lots of info for figuring out how to build new things that matter while minimizing waste. Beyond senior SWE at most FAANG companies, you have to start thinking about how much your work matters as opposed to just how complex of projects you're able to handle. It was the "...that matter" suffix that really blindsided me, and I focused too much on "becoming a better SWE" through better coding, more interviews, etc. instead of building up the entirely new skillsets of things like customer discovery, soliciting customer feedback, etc.