The perception these companies has created is totally bullshit and you are self selecting yourself out.

Although these companies create artificially high barriers, most of the work is pretty ordinary and my colleagues are pretty ordinary too. That's totally OK because people would be very unsatisfied and leave if they were working too long below their ability/aspiration.

Sure, there are the big throbbing brains here and there but that's maybe a few percent. Most SWEs are just stringing APIs together, doing boring YAML work or whiling away their days in meetings.

Wow, that's a bingo on my day today. Literally started with a meeting, did some API integration work, and fiddled with YAML a bit. Just a run of the mill small healthcare software company, but there's work to do and the people/leadership are pretty good, so I can't complain.