EDIT: I did not work for a startup - I worked for a team that was once a startup, aquired in 2012, and which had mostly its original startup members, with startup problems in culture and tech quality. It effectivley "looks" like I did a 7 month stint at a FAANG and I have no idea how to justify it.
I worked for Microsoft for three years as a software developer. Then, I took a job with a famous company in Silicon Valley that you have heard of. I landed on a strange and bad team – I didn't know this when I signed, but it was a startup the SV company had acquired and had culture / tech quality issues reflecting this. I also disliked Silicon Valley strongly, and wanted to move back to Seattle. After 7 months I quit.
I am now working at a job that is fine but doesn't really align with my passions – it's a web development job, but I want to get back to what I was doing at Microsoft, working on cloud services. I took my current job to get out of a bad situation, not because it's what I really want to be doing. I will be applying for roles again in a year or so.
Should I take my 7 month stint off of my resume? I did some impressive design and implementation work I could talk about, but I passed it off to another developer before shipping it. On the whole, it was a negative experience. I'd certainly love to go the rest of my life pretending it never happened, and as such may have a difficult time talking about it in an interview.