>It's hard to square that with the whole 10x engineer thing.
That's because Google doesn't particularly ascribe to this idea. With good infra, tooling, and environment (management, mentorship, etc.) anyone can be "10X".
>manage out inadevertantly hired incompetent people, because no hiring proccess is perfect.
I'm not sure I've ever met an engineer at Google who I would call incompetent. Certainly some who are less competent than me, certainly some who are more. Certainly some who have made singular technical decisions are think are wrong or bad, but none who are incompetent. The hiring process is the system you describe.
If they keep screening out A level candidates and are forced to hire C level candidates because they studied the prescreen questions and are the only group left. You will find competent employees but you are not getting the best anymore.
Why are A level candidates incapable of studying the questions?
Someone who's A level in my book knows how to get the tasks in front of them done. If half the steps to getting them done are beneath them, they do so anyway. If one of the steps is stupid political nonsense, they do so anyway. Someone who is amazing at hard technical problems and refuses to do anything else on principle is not a worthwhile hire.
That matches my observations from dealing with Googlers: So far I've met quite a few very nice and clever people and none that made me questions their competence. Quite the opposite.
That's because Google doesn't particularly ascribe to this idea. With good infra, tooling, and environment (management, mentorship, etc.) anyone can be "10X".
>manage out inadevertantly hired incompetent people, because no hiring proccess is perfect.
I'm not sure I've ever met an engineer at Google who I would call incompetent. Certainly some who are less competent than me, certainly some who are more. Certainly some who have made singular technical decisions are think are wrong or bad, but none who are incompetent. The hiring process is the system you describe.