I am not a programmer but a coder, what should I do?

Reality check: Most of those at FAANG companies are writing CRUD apps or fixing trivial bugs or improving the performance of selling ads by .1%. Yes, the code is deployed widely, but most of what people are doing is still menial. Additionally, if you follow HN news, you might realize that while FAANGs are having a "real impact on the world", that impact is largely negative.

I wouldn't build your life satisfaction on your job/career. Do what makes you money, clock in your time and get your check. Then put your real mental investment into a side project that intrigues you. And if you're lucky, someday someone will pay you for it.

There's a cynical joke at Google that's something along the lines of "we're mostly calling other services and moving protocol buffers around."

I think most people at FAANG companies probably end up doing the same. For every Jeff Dean doing something cutting edge there are probably like a 1000 engineers working on things that really aren't that glamorous, like iterative product improvements and integration.

I would hesitate to label yourself with those ambiguous terms, especially if it's in any negative light. It's like trying to differentiate between "software engineer", "developer", "programmer", etc. It's mostly made up, and the points don't matter.

If you're interested in joining one of the FAANG companies (if only to dispel the myth that it's all real impact), a strong computer science foundation is very helpful. Unfortunately, success in their interviewing processes is more reflective of your ability to solve algorithm problems on a whiteboard rather than your ability to get work done, but the good news is that like anything else, it's doable with a good foundation and practice.

The next question is what to do once you make it to one of those companies and find yourself stitching programs again, but that exercise is left to the reader.

I think the simplest way is to just pick a side project to work on. You have full control over what you create. I always encourage my team to do this if they have the time.

I have done it myself to learn new things.

> I envy those working in startups on cutting edge tech. Those at FAANG making real impact on the world.

Startups don't work on cutting edge tech. FAANG employees aren't making any more of an impact than you're making wherever you're working.

I am in exact same situation as you and been looking for ways to get out of it. I'm looking for answers too here so not much to suggest but my approach is to learn a different tech/role that I find interesting and try to get job there, in my case machine learning. Try doing that and slowly overtime you will gain the skills and hopefully a job that makes some impact

What do you mean by carving your own path?