>"Us mere mortals are willing to do whatever it takes to get our dream gigs."

How do you know it is you "dream gig" until you have actually worked there? Have you never been excited to accept an offer from a company only to get there and realize its just the same old bag of petty politics, egos, kool-aid drinking and grunt work?

Google, Facebook and the rest of the big SV companies that "only hire the best" are no different than any other big corporation. Also not everyone that works at these big SV companies gets to work on the really interesting and sexy projects.

There seems to be this myth that if you can just pass the Google or FB white board interview you will have it made and your "dream job" awaits. The propagation of this myth has given life to a whole cottage industry of prep courses and books on how to pass them.

I also think you have misunderstood the OPs position, I don't think they were saying that they were a programming god who can't dictate where they work, quite the opposite.