Public speaking at FAANG

At Capital One, selling (public speaking, putting anything you do in the recognition slack channels, conferences, etc.) matters more than actual engineering by a large margin. There is a ton of vaporware and entire management chains are completely disconnected from the work their teams are doing if they aren’t presented in a 20 min demo/speech. Whoever does the presentation gets a bulk of the credit. An engineer on my team that is nice, but completely incompetent is being promoted and it drives me mad. Is it like this at tech companies?

I’m not good at public speaking. I have pretty bad anxiety around it when it’s formalized in a PowerPoint monologue type thing. I want to join toastmasters, but to be honest, I’m a little scared of even that. I’ve been leetcoding like crazy to get into FAANG and I think I’m almost ready technically, but I’m wondering if constantly speaking in front of large groups is required of engineers and if my inability to do so would get me PIP’d/fired quickly. I have no qualms about any other part of the job. I’m confident in my engineering ability, relationships with teammates and manager, communication skills in smaller meetings, etc, but when I’m in front of large groups (say 25+) I somehow manage to say things I don’t mean or blank out or get visibly nervous or talk fast, etc.

It’s embarrassing and I get frustrated at myself, but at the same time I feel like I’m getting a raw deal because I’m an engineer not a sales/business person. Why is this what determines my rating when I’ve delivered great work all year and communicated well in all other forums as needed. Appreciate any insight.