In what universe is getting a 300k FAANG job more accessible than starting a local plumbing business?

That wasn't the question, the question was a 500K faang job vs. a local plumbing business making a comparable amount of money.

I think it's very easy to start a failing plumbing business. I think it far less accessible to start a plumbing business that competes with a FAANG salary.

Put another way: how many people do you know who started their own a consumer-facing, bootstrapped business, of any kind and who take home $3-500,000 as CEO? My answer is, like, two and they're both lawyers who didn't start making that kind of income until their mid thirties.

I worked with a guy who went to a public university - not a top 25 public university but in the ballpark. He was hard-working, smart and "got it", but he wasn't at the level of some super-geniuses I met coming out of school. He worked with us (Fortune 100, non-FAANG, non-tech, non-big metro) as a junior SWE for a year and did not get promoted as he desired. He jumped ship for a FAANG-adjacent company after a year working for us, and his TC jumped from <$100k to over $200k. Two years later he was promoted to senior and his TC is now over $300k.

He is smart but not a genius. He kind of knows what is going on though, he "gets it". Probably even more motivated than smart, but not insanely motivated. Motivated enough to learn how to get features done at a brisk pace, take ownership of his team's work, and to study for interviews. Didn't go to a top tier CS program, didn't come out of FAANG or FAANG adjacent, and probably took a detour working for us, but three years later his TC is over $300k. He also had the luck to jump ship before the FAANG layoffs of late 2022.

That’s basically what I did, it’s not particular unusual.