[kyralis]

As someone who has participated in quite a few interviews for one of those big companies, it's doubtful that you're being pigeonholed because of your experience. However, one thing that I do see fairly frequently is candidates whose resumes look strong but, upon interviewing, show pretty strong evidence of "big fish, small pond" syndrome. That is, they performed well enough amidst their peers, but their peer group wasn't challenging them -- and they stagnated as a result, thinking that they knew more than they did. This often comes out during interviews when candidates speak confidently about solutions that are clearly sub-optimal without much apparent awareness of weakness, alternatives, and tradeoffs.

This has been a tough one in the past-interview discussion on many of the interview panels that I've been on. Given a bigger pond, would the candidate jump at the new opportunities and learn? Whether or not we decide to go that route often depends on a number of factors, both from the candidate and the current team dynamics (what's our internal junior/senior team ratio and what's our current mentoring needs/bandwidth?)

I have no way of knowing if this describes you, of course, but might at least be worth ensuring that during the interview you're not giving the above impression.

[itronitron]

It sounds like your interview team is projecting their own biases onto the interview candidates. I have a hard time believing that you were able to unroll enough of the candidates' work experiences to arrive at your conclusions objectively.

[dbt00]

I know this candidate too, and I've struggled with this hiring decision -- and I always tried to remain unbiased by reading as little as possible about the candidate before interviewing them (as in, don't even look at the resume). There's a certain lack of humility with always being the smartest person in the room in every conversation for several years that causes problems. Hell, I've been that guy in past lives.

FWIW, I've interviewed hundreds of people at major silicon valley companies. I wouldn't presume to diagnose someone's hiring biases (we all have them) without more data than you can find in a single HN comment.