>I tried to join Google in that era, unsuccessfully. (I got surprised by a weird whiteboard interview, with an interviewer who seemed to implicitly assume they were better than me, and came off as dismissive.)

>In hindsight, I wonder whether I would've 100% liked a company driven by software engineers (other than the apparent aspect of recent grads with senior-sized egos).

The same thing happened to me and left feeling the same in the early 2010s.

(Great experience however and any interview after that was a walk in the park)