> Half the engineers working for FB, Google etc would not get hired today.

I think this is actually getting at why people ignore work history and what projects a candidate was involved in.

When you get into these places you realize how little that name brand means. There are a lot of not particularly bright people at those places. Or more charitably, maybe bright people but not particularly skilled at software engineering, for some definition thereof. Sometimes those people can attach themselves to a well known project name. But what did they do for that project? Were they constructive or not? You can't really tell based on their word alone. Maybe they can charm their way out of that discussion. It's also not unheard of that they could be taking some credit from peers.

So people come up with the quizzes and IQ tests, however flawed, as a way to "verify".

>Half the engineers working for FB, Google etc would not get hired today.

I thought people jump around a lot these days.

Good people may. But if you work at FB or Google, and you realize that you're less talented than many of the others there, but they're willing to keep paying you FB or Google salaries... you probably don't leave.

That doesn’t invalidate the idea that half, or some other portion, don’t.

don’t =/= can’t.

If they prepared, why wouldn't they be hired? Unless there is rampant ageism.