[paulcole]

> I'm convinced I'm probably smart enough for at least a handful of roles there

There's a scene in Zero Dark Thirty where the CIA chief asks a subordinate for an assessment of another agent. "She's smart," he says. The chief shakes his had and replies, "We're all smart here."

Google has 0 need for more smart people to apply. They have all the smart people they need and then some. What they want are people who will do whatever it takes to work at Google, regardless of the hassles of applying. Then they find the smart people in that group and hire them.

[downerending]

A part of their research, geneticists give flies mutagens and then screen (filter) them for desired properties. A famous one opined that if you push a screen hard enough, you'll always get what you asked for, just not what you wanted.

That thought has stuck with me, and I think it applies to this sort of interviewing as well. FAANG-style interviews push their screens extremely hard for a few traits. They get what they ask for, but in my experience, the resulting pool can be quite poor on a lot of other traits that turn out to be quite important. Some of these people can be truly miserable to work with and strikingly unproductive.

[eq_sd_]

This comment will stick with me. This is how I have been thinking of it. Google et al are not looking for a person like me.