[TheKarateKid]

This. Their interview process selects people who have hundreds of hours to blow to practice on stupid competitive coding, aka LeetCode. These aren't people who are innovative, they're ones that know how to grind.

Same process used by Amazon, Meta, etc. And then they wonder why there's no more innovation at any of these places.

[hiptobecubic]

Googles strategy is to find innovative people who can code well, but it's way easier and faster to determine the latter. So they hire a TON of people with these interviews and then wait for the sharp and innovative ones to float up while the not so innovative ones stay at L4.

Whether that is working or not is harder to say, but i can at least say that high level googlers have all been quite good in my experience

[TheKarateKid]

Unfortunately they also have the problem that the very innovative higher level Googlers leave from boredom and/or glass ceilings at the company.