I don't think so, to me an internship is temporary by nature and does not have a "guaranteed" job at the end based on good performance.
>you would have a major adverse selection problem where the better candidates would never pick a “probationary” job with second-class status over a normal job
The selection process is so competitive right now that I think plenty of people would be happy for such a change if it meant a more reasonable interview process. Plenty of strong candidates are being thrown away over arbitrary metrics right now anyway.
Personally I'd take a non-leetcode non-white board interview with a probationary period over the typical grueling 2-5 round FAANG process, and I'm sure I'm not the only competent developer who expects to have trouble with the typical FAANG process.
If you do a great job in a FAANG internship then you will get a full time offer at the end. Does the probationary period you propose have a lower performance bar than is applied post-internship? If so then it seems it wouldn’t achieve FAANG’s standards.
> The selection process is so competitive right now that I think plenty of people would be happy for such a change if it meant a more reasonable interview process. Plenty of strong candidates are being thrown away over arbitrary metrics right now anyway.
FAANG doesn’t need to attract more weaker candidates who can’t pass the interview, they are more concerned about getting strong candidates who have multiple offers to pick them. For less competitive candidates there are contract positions.