Friends trivializing my next career move — but are they right?

After 7 yoe at larger tech companies, I'm looking for something else and signed with a startup. I'm not expecting to make much money, and am mostly doing it for the learning experience. I'll be in the senior most band (but not CTO) and I'll be responsible for hiring and overseeing the other engineers etc, though I will still be doing IC work as well. My goal is to be there a couple of years and then take my learnings elsewhere. For some other context I had an offer from Netflix as well (Sr SDE — I know they only hire senior though), but I turned it down because I felt too emotional drained by Amazon and didn't feel like I would be setting myself up for success at a company like Netflix by coming in on an emotional low. They have said the door is open in the future, though.

I've started telling my friends about my pending move and the reactions have made me second guess my decision, and I feel so sad and scared. It's not overtly negative, but it's like "good for you! You're chasing what makes you happy and not career success, that's so brave", the underlying message being that they're all aiming for VP/CVP positions and there's no way I can ever achieve that now that I'm taken myself out of the FAANG circuit. They're also pretty weirded out by my decision to turn down Netflix, and a couple of them acted like I might have been dishonest about my offer (cuz who doesn't take that sweet TC, right???). Of course, not all my friends have reacted this way, but it still hurts.

But the reason I'm here is not because it hurts — I'm just worried that they may be right? I do want to be successful and aim for positions like that in the long term, but I also don't want to be at Microsoft or Amazon for like a decade in order to get there... but now that I've been observing many of the existing VPs at both companies, seems like that's been the trend?

What do you guys think?