The PhD stipend is well above starvation levels and you can go to internships during summer to earn more money and accumulate experience. I have seen many, many people in FAANG with PhDs in SDE/DS roles and they can relatively quickly reach senior levels as well.
I don't know your situation but I while there are certainly ultra-competitive CS programs (e.g., Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, CMU), there are many research-focused universities in the US (R1) that are totally good-enough for doing research and getting a recognized degree. In a lot of less competitive universities, there is no admission committee per se; you just email the faculty you're interested in and if he wants to recruit you, then it's basically done.
There are good research universities in the R2 list as well (RIT, IIT, etc.)
The PhD stipend is well above starvation levels and you can go to internships during summer to earn more money and accumulate experience. I have seen many, many people in FAANG with PhDs in SDE/DS roles and they can relatively quickly reach senior levels as well.