I think this is great advice (having worked in "big tech" for over a decade).
It reminds me of this old Spolsky article I read yesterday on "the development abstraction layer". Replace Microsoft with FANG and I suspect it still largely applies.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/11/the-development-ab...
Management’s primary responsibility to create the illusion that a software company can be run by writing code, because that’s what programmers do. And while it would be great to have programmers who are also great at sales, graphic design, system administration, and cooking, it’s unrealistic. Like teaching a pig to sing, it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.
Microsoft does such a good job at creating this abstraction that Microsoft alumni have a notoriously hard time starting companies. They simply can’t believe how much went on below decks and they have no idea how to reproduce it.
Basically your work environment at big tech companies is shaped by their network effects and the corresponding profits, which (almost) none of us had any hand in creating. So yes being on the outside is very different.
Though, in retrospect I worked in Big Tech when I was young, and before it was called "big tech" (e.g. before Joel even wrote that post). So just learning to code at that level was a challenge, let alone do all the other stuff.