No FAANG experience, only worked at 2-3 (very) small startups. I have basic JS / Web dev skills. Total of 6 YoE. I created a profile on dice.com and have gotten probably 20+ hiring manager-stage interviews so far.

What industry / YoE / skillset combination do you have? Seems like full stack engineers are writing their checks these days.

Mostly ecommerce, but varied. 6 yoe. Backend/Python.

I have applied to hundreds of places, grinded leetcode, studied advanced system design, and am near giving up. Becoming a famous actor is probably easier than this.

It's clearly not hot enough to remove leetcode interviews as part of the screening process. I changed jobs almost a year ago and almost every company I applied to had a leetcode section.

And the leetcode isn't easy either, even for regular / non high tech companies. I barely passed the test, and I'm confident that I'm at least around top 20-30% of programmer skill-wise with tons of free time and passion to program during my university.

I can't imagine if my peers that's less fortunate or less passionate with programming to be able to pass.