Based in Germany, but worked as a contractor and employee for US companies and companies based in the EU.
It's all a social game. In the last 10 years I worked in various different companies (due to freelancing a lot more), and it all boils down to: Does the person opposite of you like you or can see you fit well within the team or company. It might seem like you need to be "good enough" for a job. But that's not the case. If you somehow managed to have worked 10 months for Google, you get hired elsewhere because of your social status now, and people make themselves believe you are good, and see everything you do through the lens of "this person must know what they are doing". I got rejected from jobs which claimed I don't have enough expirience, just to be hired by a company which paid more and looked for the exact experience. I did not vibe at all with the people from the interview, every mistake I made in the challenge was seen as weak, whereas with the other company I had a good connection, so they asked about why I chose x instead of y, and didn't really consider my lack of experience in some areas as a barrier for me to join.
Skill, behind the scenes, just means you have seen more than the person they also consider for the job. Noone is re-inventing the wheel in a job which earns up to 300k a year, or is not a researcher of some sort. Which means, the more you have seen, the more you know, the more "proficient" you look. Coding challenges are not a challenge, but just: Have you seen this before? If not, you will not pass. If yes, you do it in the right amount of time.
This is fundamentally why hiring is so broken. People play charades and tell themselves they can remove bias by putting a test out there and just hire by skill. But none of the tests actually test how fast can you learn and how well can you communicate within the company. Instead of just saying: We like your past, now we have to like you and then you are hired (2 steps), they say: Let's test these things "objectively" for 5 rounds and still hire the one they like the most.