I am confused seniors, help out your brother

I am a 2024 CS graduate from one of the top 3 IITs. To be honest, I messed up my placement interviews, not because I’m bad at problem solving. In fact, I cleared almost all the technical rounds in the interviews I gave during placements. What I struggled with were the HR and behavioral rounds. My communication skills aren’t that great either.

Eventually, I joined a company with decent ctc(tbh very low compared to all the company interviews I have given), but I had no real interest in it from the beginning. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any other options at the time. For the past two months, the work pressure has been extremely high, and I’m not enjoying the work. It's started to affect my mental health, so I’m planning to resign within the next two months. By then, I’ll have around one year and 2-3 months of experience.

I’m aiming for companies like FAANG, Stripe, or Uber. I’ve seen many of my seniors get promoted to SDE-2 after 1 year 10 months or 2 years of experience.

So, my question is: Would it be better for me to switch now as an SDE-1, or wait until I gain around 2 years of experience and directly apply for SDE-2 roles?

Here are my thoughts:

1. If I switch now, I might get a better salary than I’m currently getting. But since my notice period is 2 months, and if I resign after 2 months, I’ll be joining a new company with around 1 year 5 months of experience. In that case, is it possible to get promoted to SDE-2 within the next 6 months at the new company? Or would I still need to wait at least a year?

2. If I wait and switch later directly to an SDE-2 role, I’m worried that my current low CTC might limit the hike I can get. I’m already underpaid compared to other CS grads from my college.

So, could you please help me decide what might be the best path forward? Do you know anyone who got promoted within 6–7 months after switching companies? I really want to switch now, but I’d love to hear some perspectives from YOU seniors before making a final decision.