[tough]

How reasonable is for a non-us based developer to even try?

FAANG positions in Europe are OK-ish but not such a deal breaker to me to dedicate so much time to -useless- stuff, I'd rather build cool shit

[itronitron]

The people I know (US-based developers) hired by FAANG were all very recently out of college, graduate school, or academia. Everyone else is focusing their time on diving deep into the technical issues they are faced with...