Unfortunately, that's not how big company recruitment processes work: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en
I think that citing this example every time "hiring at Google/Big tech" is discussed on HN is useless.
We know that there are a lot of false negative and and lot of chance in the hiring process (so many things can fail in a process involving so many steps and people).
There are also legitimate rejections, like hm, bold statements ("90% of your engineers use my software"), fingerpointing or not being able to seek for assistance when you don't know something.
I discussed interviews with many people, and I'm convinced that solving the problem with the theoretically-optimal solution is not the only way to get a positive review. Being open about things I didn't know helped me: for instance "Hm, I'm not sure about how to do this exact thing, I'll use the function do_this_thing() and implement it later if I still have time, if that's OK for you" buys you time and allows to keep the discussion focused on the main problem.
I think both you and your parent are in violent agreement.
It's not as if many people who were in FAANG haven't admitted there are serious issues with the interview process. Even advocates of the process are open about it.
No one has found an interview process that lacks serious issues. Hiring people solely on the basis of major contributions to software has its own serious issues.
In both cases he bypassed the recruiter and leetcode stages which are common steps before the on-site interview at most companies.
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...