The company is a big one, a named one, but with some age on it. As absurd as it sounds, the candidate is hired for a hotly sought after position, that supposedly requires production ready coding skills AND battle tested machine learning skills. Yet the candidate comes with no knowledge of Python or Linux.
And, if your claim is that this doesn't happen: I have to say, I've seen people hired for many reasons. Because they're related to X (perhaps including that they can't find a job otherwise). Because they or someone in their immediate environment is disabled (which gets your boss a tax advantage). Because ...
So I would argue in Europe, it's almost the opposite. People are really treated as interchangeable, and hiring for ability is really more the exception in many companies. Hiring to make the boss look good, hiring fox tax reasons, ...
And before you say "that doesn't happen at fancy FANG company", I would like to remind you that all of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook have LARGE Irish offices, and I've visited the Facebook one: not many Irish (like 30% of the office at most, and they apologize during the interview for trying to get you to Ireland, so it's not like they like it. I'd bet good money the other companies are similar).
How much do you want to bet that the "dutch Irish sandwich" tax avoidance scheme requires a minimum headcount in Ireland ?
So let's just state this as a fact: ALL the FANG companies hire less competent people because of location (this must be the tradeoff) in trade for tax advantages in Europe.
Every last one of them.
Every last one.
And if they do it, which are these mythical companies that hire because of the bar, wherever ? We complain a lot, but when it comes to employees, nobody really doubts that FB, GOOG, MSFT, AMZN are the top, la creme de la creme. Who is this mythical company that does not lower the bar ? And if they do lower the bar, why would they not lower it below whatever you consider a reasonable level, especially for positions where they can't really hire well anyway ?