Not sure that I agree it is understandable but I definitely am glad they make this bad decision. I dodged the bullet on interviewing with a FAANG and failing on one question (the recruiter told me it was the answer on a single question that kept me from getting an offer) after doing an onsite in SV.

I did not know what I was worth and would've felt compelled to accept an offer that would've been 30-50% less than I could command at the time and I would've had to move somewhere with 4-5x the cost of a home than where I live now. I didn't get that offer, and after a little bit more time I got an offer somewhere where I earn 2-3x as much as I originally said I was worth to the FAANG (based on places like glassdoor, etc.).

The culture is better, I can work wherever and whenever I want, and would have to go out of my way to not make impactful decisions that go to prod for millions of customers multiple times a week. It'd take 2-4x my base salary to get me to walk, which I could possibly command, but I don't feel any desire to look because I didn't fall into the FAANG trap and enter a cycle of pretending consultants selling quiz books know what software engineering is and jumping to be able to survive in SV.

I messed up something on a whiteboard with an apathetic interviewer about a special tree inversion or something - who gives a shit - and I have been extremely happy that happened every day since.

[0] on the level of "here's a list of strings that are names in Lastname, Firstname format, turn them into a list of Firstname Lastname", or something dead simple that's designed to definitively rule candidates out

Uh, what lol? Is this really what it's like to have HN brain? Not everyone in the tech industry is just working their way up to a FAANG.