I mean, as someone who has yet to crack one FAANG (or similar level company) offer, a FAANG engineer is someone that I look up to. But my friends and ex-colleagues who did crack FAANG did so with difficulty, and they got rejected from all but the one company that did extend an offer. They all say if they were to re-interview at their companies (or another FAANG), odds are they'd be rejected.

So someone who can get offers from multiple FAANGs is someone that I would seriously consider to be on a whole another level, i.e. a wizard, for lack of a better term.

If you work at a top-tier company, you'll meet lots of people who can get multiple offers from top-tier companies. They are bright, but usually not geniuses. And they are often a bit obsessed with puzzles :)

FAANG interviewing has nothing to do with your skill as an engineer. FAANG interviews only evaluate how good you are at jumping through the specific hoops they require for their special interview process. For Amazon, it's all about how well you can bullshit your way around the LPs.

It's the professional equivalent of "being good at taking multiple choice exams". But just because someone got 100s on every biology exam in high school doesn't mean they are an expert in biology, just that they are a good test taker.

If you want to look up to someone because they are actually a good engineer, then that's great. But don't look up to someone just because they are a good test taker. And don't look down on yourself just because you are a bad test taker. Taking tests has so little relevance to how good you actually are as an engineer. Amazon is chock-full of completely mediocre engineers, and also rejects plenty of actual engineering wizards.

I'd argue FAANG offers are like college admissions, probably a good 40% of the applicant pool likely qualifies for the role and can succeed in it, but only 3-4% of the pool gets the offer

You can argue the numbers and there's probably a top tier of people who are no brainers. But, yeah, in general at least for elite university admissions, they could probably toss most or all of the admitted pile in the trash, figure out who to admit from the rest of the pile, and the world would keep on turning just fine.