It's absolutely not true, these companies have tens of thousands of developers, there aren't enough graduates from top universities for that to be the bar. That was maybe the case 15 years ago.
If you’re a new college grad, it’s definitely easier coming from those schools. It’s also almost impossible to get a FTE job after college without interning, and they recruit heavily from the top schools.
If you have experience already, where you went to school gets dramatically less important the more experience you have. I went to a decent (but definitely not top tier) state school and have 15 years experience, had no trouble getting interviews at FAANG companies and passed interviews at a few.
My experience (went to a small liberal school that nobody recruits at) is that it makes things easier for your first job, but doesn't matter at all after that. Even then, grads from my college end up at Google/Apple/Facebook pretty regularly.
This is at all relevant only for getting into the interview process, which is something that is largely handled by recruiting. Once a candidate makes it to a phone screen with someone like me, where they went to school has no bearing on whether they move forward in the process.
I know for a while the rumors were basically that if you hadn't gone to a place like Stanford, you weren't getting a job, at least at Google (Maybe Facebook too?)
Is this still the case? (Was it ever the case, or were things a more flexible?)