no its not. I know ppl who quit MS and reapply later to get placed into a higher tier after they interviewed there again. Jumping jobs into a higher tier is easier way to get a raise than grinding at the same job.
It’s called salary compression or even worse salary inversion.
I've only ever worked as a programmer, so I'm genuinely curious - how does interviewing work for every other job that's out there?
Typically the interviews are more conversational, with an emphasis on behavioral questions, job history, and relevant skills. Academia and government have their own formats.
The blog post mentions in passing that their interview.io site gives users a choice between practicing traditional "synthetic"/algorithmic questions and a different approach focused on "systems design". I'm not entirely sure what the latter involves, but it seems like it could strike quite a bit closer to the generalist knowledge that would be required in "day to day work", while preserving a desirable problem-solving component.
One might even imagine using both approaches in combination, e.g. using algorithmic puzzles as a sort of tie-breaker to choose among candidates who seem about equally strong in the 'systems design' domain.
The article did raise more questions than answers, but that was by design. A lot of the assumptions that go into most tech interview processes don't withstand scrutiny. Interviewing is a hard problem to solve, but we shouldn't be satisfied with the status quo.