Being on the technical interviewer side of the table it was a bit disconcerting to see people get to me who really should have been filtered out at an earlier stage. Still, for the type of lies that are most damaging, I still ask the question "what's the easiest way to uncover the lie?" Hence, FizzBuzz and FizzBuzz style questions work just fine if the lie is "can program". Why stress people out with trivia quizzes on language minutia or implementations of algorithms that CS students usually get at least a week to do (or typically never do)? Why let a too-strong fear of a lying false positive, which isn't that hard to deal with as a big company, become a strong false negative filter negatively selecting for types of experienced candidates you might want who won't put up with your clown nose "everyone is doing it" rituals? It's also easier to grade if you keep things relatively simple.

I have to do a little more to satisfy the process, of course, but I'd be more satisfied if more interviewers didn't just accept the process (as you kind of have to do as an interviewee if you want certain jobs) and continuously asked themselves how they can make things better within their own influence. I could only throw up my hands and sigh when a coworker asked me for interviewer advice, we had a big discussion about interviews, and in the end he just grabbed a random problem off some interview problems site that he hadn't even tested if he could solve himself in the time limit and gave that.

   too-strong fear of a 
   lying false positive

You might be a bit optimistic here: it's not always easy to deal with "lying false positives". Depending on the legislation it may be difficult to fire somebody, and involve going to court, sometimes going on over several years. Vindictive personalities may engage in sabotaging the company, the team, their (former) co-workers, as a retaliation for being fired. (Anecdote: I have witnessed all of the above in my work.)

Summary: the cost of a false positive almost always outweighs the cost of a false negative.

I don't think there's any state in the US where lying on your resume/CV is not legal grounds for immediate termination.

And any company that has thought about their hiring process for more than 30 minutes will have a probationary period of 30 or 60 days or so, after which employment can be terminated if the employee is not able to do the work.

Are you not in the US? I've never ever come across such a thing - probably because US companies can theoretically fire you on the spot for almost any reason except specifically disallowed discrimination, and most definitely for being unable to do the work.

Many people interviewing there are already among the most highly paid people in the world (lots of them are just moving around within that group) so that argument is pretty irrelevant.

I assume Google is looking for people who absolutely want to work at Google. Making the process cumbersome allows them to get candidates who stay at the company even if they have to do work that they don't like.

If that's what they're aiming for, evidence suggests that it isn't working - https://hackerlife.co/blog/san-francisco-large-corporation-e...

Many (as in 10-30% at best) perhaps. Not even close to half or majority though, so I fail to understand how the argument could be irrelevant.

At the beginning of 2017, ~12,000 of Google's current ~72,000 employees had previously worked at other big tech companies, and most of them were probably in their R+D headcount of only 27,000. I wouldn't be at all surprised if half of their engineering interviewees came from similar paying jobs, and a the majority of the remainder were college hires.

https://www.alphr.com/business/1005261/silicon-valley-swipin...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-ti...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/219333/number-of-google-...

> Professions like laywers and doctors need to go through significantly longer hazing rituals

At least for doctors this isn't universally true. There's continuing education/certification, (which you have to do every $period) there's public reputation, there's lots of networking. From what I've seen the interviews take few hours in one day and people usually already know each other.

The hazing the doctors go through is during residency, where they spend years, working like horses, for no money.

I'd much rather deal with whiteboard interview bullshit a few times in my life, then go through residency in the medical field.

I'd honestly rather have the "bulletproof tenure" that doctors then acquire after they get through the hazing. Getting laid off every time a spreadsheet jockey in accounting makes a bad projection, is pretty disruptive. (as are the times when a competitor buys your employer just to shut them down, and etc: plenty of scenarios where you lose a job due to no fault of your own are rather the rule than the exception) - Most competent engineers can always get another job. But in that process, you end up with a different commute, or even having to relocate, deal with setbacks in financial plans, and etc. The instability some of us experience is kind of not worth the other perks. And after 20+ years, it's kind of annoying to have to apply as if I'm fresh out of school when I have a solid work record on my resume, verifiable by contacting my former co-workers and managers I've provide as references.

> Getting laid off every time a spreadsheet jockey in accounting makes a bad projection, is pretty disruptive.

This has nothing to do with how programmers are hired, and everything to do with the business cases that building software serves. Even if programmers were hired like doctors, they'd still be cyclically losing their jobs, because their jobs are closely tied to the willingness of the economy to spend large amounts of money on custom software.

If you want a job for life, then you want to be in a profession that does something unconditionally useful. Healthcare, garbage pickup, teaching, farming, being a janitor. We're going to need people doing all that long after <insert Silicon Valley fad of the month> is dead and buried.

Yes, but before that you need years of low-paid jobs and networking to come close to well paid positions. Applying at FAANG requires significantly less.