[phlowbieuq]

Firebase is probably a bit of an edge case on this one, because it was a paradigm-shifting developer product before dev products were cool.

If you were a top-tier developer, there was a >0% chance that you would be super excited about the product because you realized the pain point that it would solve for you if you were building a real-time product at another company. And that excitement or lack thereof was a useful litmus test for Firebase specifically.

I agree that "excited about our company" is not something you get up front if you are interviewing at a company that is building an on-demand AI marketplace for ML-optimized scooter rental office spaces.