My advice to newcomers: if you have the passion and skill, persevere. The hype will settle, and solid engineers and techies will always be needed.

For me, "giving up" would be less about leaving tech and more about re-prioritizing towards other passions.

Best of luck!

If it has to be FAANG give up already. If you’re willing to work for some place that is not so famous than you should never give up.

The market comes and goes and so does your personal value in a long career. I’ve had job hunts that lasted a year, I’ve had some that lasted one day.

Caveat: I did sysadmin/jack-of-all-trades work, with an emphasis on sendmail and friends that opened some doors, but not others where it was the prime qualification. Why?

At some point, you are going to fail the age test at FAANG+, with emphasis on the "A". I interviewed at one startup and absolutely aced the interview and "exam". They hired a couple of kids, so when the systems crashed on a weekend, they were partying in Tahoe, but you know what? Nobody cared. They were bought out by a two-letter company. I aced a LOT of interviews, to no avail.

OK, you're then into consulting gigs with really small startups who have no "HR" department, so they goof and actually hire qualified people. But at that point, it really 100% depends on your networking (It may be so for all jobs these days with AI-driven recruiters and AI-driven applicants (out of necessity, if not by choice)).

Build and maintain a large and strong network, and at some point, that might get you past the "gray hair recognition" system.