I work in one of the top tech companies that is not FAANG, and the sentiment is the same. They hire only PhDs for a big chunk of the company and they pay relatively well - most of the people who complain about this cannot get a better paying job.
A friend of mine even said to his boss 6 months after he was hired "Why did you hire a PhD like me for this job? This work is not even close to requiring a PhD".
While I feel for him, my counter is "OK. Where would you rather work where you will do work worthy of a PhD?" They'll usually name the same few places, and not realize that those places are already "full". And they all pay less.
The reality is that there are many more qualified people than positions for the interesting work. If my company decided that yes, you're right, we don't need to hire PhDs for the job and we'll just hire MS folks, then the very people complaining would be in another company, getting paid less, and complaining about the same thing.
Politics does not have to be a zero sum game but often those who view it that way and are absolutely ruthless rise to the top. Perhaps that's just the human condition.
I think we have a bit of a meta-false-dichotomy here. I agree it's a mistake to think of it as a zero-sum game. I also would say it's a mistake to think your advice will reliably work.
I've often sat in career advice talks and they often give the same advice you gave. Invariably during Q/A someone will point out they followed that exact advice and got screwed. The responses by the panelist fall into two categories:
1. I don't believe it and there must be more to the story.
2. You're in a poor organization. I suggest you find a better place to work.
So yes, the advice is good, but only when it works :-)
As a company gets bigger, the likelihood of faulty incentives existing goes up. The likelihood that what's good for my team + boss is bad for the company goes up.
Personally, I don't have illusions. I've worked in jobs where the advice you gave won't work. And I side with the second answer. Instead of playing bad politics, it's just a lot better to find an organization that is worthy of me/you. The advice people who had been in the org gave me was consistently "Forget about what's good for the bigger picture and the company. Make your boss look good even if it's a bad solution and will waste others' time and money." I didn't follow that advice and I paid for it. At the same time, my time and effort is valuable - I'd rather use it for something better than this. Either I work to change the organization's culture, or I leave.
It's a mistake to think that it's not a zero sum game.
If there are 5 people and one available spot for promotion, you can get selected by bolstering your appearance or by tearing the other 4 down. Either one works.
And yeah, the best tactic is usually "make my boss look good".
You say this like it's a bad thing. You should be making your boss, your team, and your teammates look good. If you are doing those things, you are probably also making the company look good.
It's thinking about the long vs. short term. Focusing only on your own optics may work okay in the short term, but they cap out fairly quickly.
Think about how it looks from the outside. Employee A is only focused on themselves. It is recognized that A is good, but any team A is on still struggles. Employee B makes the whole team look good. It becomes recognized that B not only does well, but any team B ends up on does well. Who do you think advances the farthest long term?
I certainly don't think it's a bad thing to make your teammates look good, but in general it's more effective to give the lion's share of the credit to the boss rather than them. And credit is a limited resource.
I say that like it's a bad thing because it kind of is.
I believe there are some companies where coworkers rather than management decide promotions and this tactic would not work but they are few and far between.
This also has nothing to do with a just world fallacy. This is thinking long term. Rarely can someone politic all the way to the top. In order to lead, you need the support of your team. You get that by being a great team member yourself.
/rant
Finally, I'm tired of hearing how awesome people are, but their team sucks or their boss sucks (doubly so for people working at FAANG, because the low bar is so much higher). If they are so awesome, then get out there and help the team improve. Instead it's I'm so smart, but everyone is holding me back. I'm stuck on a crappy team, etc... Grow up.
/rant over
If you want to succeed as a SWE at a FAANG company you'll have to be an exceptional engineer, or have other skills (leadership, pm, ...). You can't just weasle up the ladder by playing "political games".
Though, most of my colleagues don't even care about their career - most of us just want to work on cool projects which immediately affect billions of people.
I worked at one the FAANG and I found in my team and some of the neighboring teams the most insecure, unfriendly, back-stabbing, conspiratorial bunch of technically semi-competent losers I ever had the displeasure of working with. Other people were competent, trustworthy, confident in themselves and thus enjoyable.
I also interviewed at other FAANGs and maybe the interviewers were all wonderful people, but I had a mixed experience. Some appeared to be ok, some definitely not. Very different experience from the parent's.
I think a lot of people would enjoy a blog post elaborating on that experience (possibly under a pseudonym to protect you from vengeance).
Wonder what the false negative rate is?
Google's culture and hiring process is so well documented at this point, I suspect any suitably talented individual could appropriate some cultural fit.
Of the (current and former) googlers I know personally, they are a mixed bag but there are some traits that are more common. Self assurance and the uncanny ability to never be seen to be demonstrably incorrect are prevalent tbh - but that applies equally to most of the industry.
I think that may be very easy to do, just state that everything you say is just a theory or your opinion... but this is just a theory.
Google hired him to be a salesperson.
I definitely wonder if he could be happy in that role. I understand that it's important to have technically adept salespeople, but I can't see him being happy in that long term.
The bigger the company, the smaller your role's coverage. You get well-compensated and aren't worked too hard, but your job might effectively be "you're responsible for these two screens of this one component of this particular application". The conflict is that the bigger the company, the higher the bar for entry. So you end up with a bunch of really bright, challenge-loving people cooped up working day in day out on very specific cogs of the giant machine, and that's not an ideal lifestyle for all of those people.