Similar story for me. Although I wont go so far as saying I am a rockstar I do have a reputation for building solid, maintainable, reliable code that works even though I have struggled in the high-pressure whiteboarding interviews (I'm currently at a company that is well-known/infamous for whiteboarding interviews too).
There are different roles other than "software engineer" that are programming based, even at FANG-style companies (in my personal experience). At my current employer although I spend my entire day designing/writing/debugging code using the same tools, infrastructure, programming languages, and expectations on code-standards/quality etc I am not a "software engineer" as far as my job role goes. My role still has "engineer" in the title, but the expectations for the purest CS knowledge were slightly lower and the interviews were basically a chat about work I had done elsewhere and a few general questions around experience and knowledge (salary/total comp is about ~85% what a software engineer gets)
tl;dr - you dont have to be a "software engineer" to program for a living
Another +1 here. I got so sick of programming interviews that I went freelance. If at any time a potential client suggests I need to do a whiteboard style interview, I decline and offer to work for them for a week at half price.
Similar story for me. Although I wont go so far as saying I am a rockstar I do have a reputation for building solid, maintainable, reliable code that works even though I have struggled in the high-pressure whiteboarding interviews (I'm currently at a company that is well-known/infamous for whiteboarding interviews too).
There are different roles other than "software engineer" that are programming based, even at FANG-style companies (in my personal experience). At my current employer although I spend my entire day designing/writing/debugging code using the same tools, infrastructure, programming languages, and expectations on code-standards/quality etc I am not a "software engineer" as far as my job role goes. My role still has "engineer" in the title, but the expectations for the purest CS knowledge were slightly lower and the interviews were basically a chat about work I had done elsewhere and a few general questions around experience and knowledge (salary/total comp is about ~85% what a software engineer gets)
tl;dr - you dont have to be a "software engineer" to program for a living