100% certain that interns at amazon and google are given a lot of responsibility (probably without any hand holding either).

Youre probably mixing up "responsibility" for "hand holding"... your small company was probably welcoming and more like a family, they do try their best to help you grow and give you some meaningful work.

But don't get it confused... top tier jobs almost always have huge amounts of responsibility and accountability. First yrs and interns at google and amazon are routinely given assignments as vague as "heres some data, present it in 2 months to management. Heres your desk, good luck." And thats it.

Tbh those assignments and projects are close in difficulty to your senior managers work at a small shop.

Thats why first yrs at top tier companies make 100k. Managers at google make 350k. VP is over 500k..

At a start up, its more like 60k to start and 100k to manage. 500k is like a CEO salary.

You'd be a fool if you think the pay/prestige doesn't match the responsibility/accountability .. they r directly correlated