This, starting out at a startup. When you later go onto a big company. They'd be surprised by your ability to build a product end to end, from design to implementation to infrastructure.
The only part that's missing is handling the enterprise processes, multiple stakeholders, chains of approvals etc. But those are easier to learn than building something from scratch.
My gut reaction is, lots of people can build a product themselves from end to end. That someone has done this is no actually no surprise. Startups and big companies are not so isolated from one another that the denizens of big companies are ignorant about what's possible. Within just my part of the organization are people who have worked in quite diverse environments, including startups, academia, government, and even bigger companies.
I went from a startup to a big company, 25+ years ago. We buy startups. I'm kind of a jack-of-all trades. One of my roles is to serve on the technical side of taking a small company apart and figuring out how it works, so that it can at least be kept in production when the technical founders move on. Most of those products don't have a known theory of operation, until I write one for them. The term "house of cards" is overheard in the cubicles when the products have to be maintained.
I've seen the innards of those products. I've built those products, for my own side business. Being at a big company gives me a perspective from both sides, about what those products really look like when someone other than the founder has to build and maintain them.
I'm not touting the big company experience as idyllic. Most creative people bristle at bureaucracy, and can see through processes that are unnecessarily constipated. On the other hand, I think the biggest adjustment is just getting used to someone else being able to say "no" to your idea, without having a really great reason that you agree with. Over and over again. Keeping your creativity under those circumstances is hard.
I think my biggest issue with the corporate bureaucracy is that they have a lot of self inflicted issues that they keep saying they want to fix (e.g. we want to be fast and agile like a startup), only to keep repeating the same damn mistakes all over again (e.g. lets write a 300 page spec document before we begin, and start this project with a 30man team, even though there’s work for only 3 at the moment).
It’s kind of depressing when people do not want to listen to you because you don’t have the right title though.
Yes, I know how to optimize a database. Yes, I know how to build infra. Yes, I also know how to build a system used by 30k people daily.
Yes, I’m fairly certain that our system that serves 3k people does not need to cost us $30k/month when I could do 30k for $1000/month.
But nobody wants to hear that. They’re all secure in their little fiefdoms, and your boss will certainly not be rewarded for replacing their 30 people team with three of you.
The only part that's missing is handling the enterprise processes, multiple stakeholders, chains of approvals etc. But those are easier to learn than building something from scratch.