Google seems to want to give their employees the popularity contest atmosphere of an undergrad school so that the elite can feel smug and superior as they slave away in an effort to get the rest of us to click on more ads.
Yes, caste system. If you don't resemble the right sort of person at hiring time, you don't get the SWE flavored job. Managers will tell you there's no difference, but they are clearly missing the point.
If you ever want to transfer out of SRE, most of the jobs there are SWE positions. As a SWE-SRE, you're set. As a SA-SRE, you're screwed. See the problem now?
One secret I found working in Silicon Valley is that the SRE/SA types often got looked down upon by the developers, but were making more money.
Incidentally, I later found out they were underpaying me by as much as 20% compared to other folks in my area at the same level. That might mean that my no-op ladder change was an anomaly.
A developer might a good fit somewhere in the company, but that doesn't mean they'll do well everywhere.
I speak from experience: my SA-SRE limbo involved leaving SRE and landing in a role expected to bridge the kernel team to prod, by making their tests work on the things which involve Lots Of Machines (tm). That was a SWE job through and through but it did not give me the ability to transfer out of it until I went through the process last year.
Note that nobody was willing to pull rank and Just Fix Things. That was a sign to me that things had turned pretty bad -- forcing people to jump through hoops like that? Come on.
BTW, for SRE, the interviews are supposed to hit a range of things: sysadmin stuff, coding stuff, debugging/troubleshooting, and so on. At least, the ~100 or so I gave over the years I was there certainly did.
Note that none of the things I asked were "round manhole" type questions. I hate that stuff.
P.S. This is one reason why I'm glad they don't ask sysadmin questions to SWEs. I'm a really shitty sysadmin.