There's a flaw in your reasoning: you did not consider that a lot of the projects at FANGS are completely unnecessary and exist only because these companies massively over-hire. Ideal working environment is when there are a lot of worthwhile projects and not enough people. That's when you get a choice of what to work on, that's when the company really values the employees, etc. That's how Google was 15+ years ago. That is absolutely not how it is now, at any of these companies. There are way too many people and not enough work. The less ambitious employees deal with this by hiding and doing next to nothing. The more ambitious ones fight each other for scraps of meaningful work that are not yet being done by someone they can't fight. It's not a dignified place to be either way.