I just find there are say 10000 jobs to look at on job sites and maybe a handful of companies through connections so dragnetting searches give more opportunities than seeing who colleagues work for.
And then even if someone who thinks you are great works at Google you still need to leet code etc. Not sure what advantage you get. Other than some inside knowledge of if it is worth applying to and what the interviews are like.
I don’t think I am a top coder, certainly not commercially but I am OK. But the networking aspect seems like an orthogonal concern/effort to the being good at what you do.
"I was in the same company as this person at the same time, we either talked about work stuff or I heard good things by other people I trust" - true for many more, but does that really help?
True for the top performers you've worked with perhaps?