alt Hacker News> Fighting from the inside for the behavior you want to see gives you an outsized influence on the outcomes you want to see
A lot of people say this, while collecting 6-7 figure cheques. I've not seen that much evidence that it is correct - certainly, I might as well have been pissing into the wind, for all the effect my influence had on the direction of various FAANG
If you are just a lower level IC, your influence is small. However if you can climb to higher level 7+ or enter management you will have a lot of control of roadmaps you own. If you're trying to influence organizations you're not in you're also going to have quite limited influence, but participating in dogfooding programs and filing bugs is still more influence than you would have externally.
I do agree that it's not easy even given the correct conditions.