Your values are likely different than mine. You cannot trust what I've written, because it goes against your values. This is fair. I write what I write to express my values, and let those of a similar mettle and spiritual composition get more usable info to navigate their careers. A good example of this is Ludicity. He has values that aren't popular on HN, but that doesn't mean what he's written is untrustworthy or wrong or that his generalizations don't "click" for people who think like them.
Here's what I value: getting shit done, being surrounded by intelligent, hard-working, and perceptive people, not being treated like a peon and gaslit to work to the bone. With that in mind, Meta and Netflix are the only ones that satisfy those conditions. Microsoft is working on some very cool stuff, but those are all in their research orgs, while the rest are effectively the same people that would work at Intel: lifers. Not even coasters, but people who don't care that much at all about tech, and are putting in their hours and moving on with their lives. Nothing wrong with that if that's your value system, but it's not mine. Amazon is a neo-feudalist code mill, no different than Infosys. The people there are better than most devs out in the wild, but that's not a high bar. Google lost its touch when Sundar hopped in around 2015. It's not cool. And Apple I've already lambasted. Netflix's and Meta's engineering cultures are great; I like the people; and I like how none of the people I know there are stressed to the core. Though the problems they're working on aren't interesting to me.
I never admitted to not getting in, that's a conclusion you made yourself. I received offers from all of these companies at various points, but chose not to accept.