I used to recruit for Google SRE, I can confirm that this is pretty much exactly the process and that bombing a single interview will often be a death sentence.
By "death sentence", are you suggesting that the candidate will never again be considered for a role at Google, or are you just saying that they're not going to space today?
Thanks. I've turned down a couple interviews knowing I'd bomb at least one, didn't want that on my perm Google Record. It's nice to know it's not just me, and also there's redemption.
This is a bad strategy. One thing that actually helps you tremendously is evidence of growth. The easiest way for the hiring committee to see this is for you to show improvement from a previous interview.
I guess it'd be possible to game this signal, but that's a lot of effort and still just one signal.
My real point is that it absolutely does not count against you.
Fair enough, and I agree to an extent. But when I got that packet of prep material, I froze. I may go down that road again in the near future, but I want to be mindful of thresholds.