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
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