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I am sure there are many capable people working at Google, but the exaggerating of their skill level needs to stop. Some leet coder doesn't necessarily deliver better designed systems than any another engineer. And with that, the cult of believing in whiteboard coding interviews also needs to go away.

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I’ve worked there. They certainly aren’t all geniuses. But there are a huge number of brilliant engineers there - many of whom spend their lives schleping protobufs around for a fat paycheck.

It’s not the whiteboard interviews that makes that possible. It’s the prestige (especially from a few years ago), job security and salary. And the opportunity to work with other smart people. Google has an excellent talent pool.

Breaking up Google would likely result in many great new businesses being built if that talent pool was shoved out of their comfort zones.

The current crop of googlers are largely normal and it’s hard to find exceptionally talented engineers until you meet an l7 and up. The faang engineers as exceptional engineers is largely marketing to attract experienced engineers to join faang at below average market rates.

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