Can you leetcode? Can you design stuff on a whiteboard to scale to 18 billion users? Can you do it very fast? You're hired.

I'd expect that somebody that can do that is doing the hiring, possibly as a founder?

Founders never put themselves through the hoop jumping they put their employees through. Most wouldn't even meet the bar at their own companies.

It's been brought up that people who do the hiring or serve on the hiring committee would not be hired themselves based on their own hiring criteria and bar.

Possibly why As hire Bs and Bs hire Cs. If the interviewers aren't good enough to be hired, they certainly aren't good enough to interview.

Everyone has a price. If you want upward of 60 - 70 hours a week from me at any given point, great. We're gonna double that comp package right? There will still be some boundaries, but we'll get that in the contract.

Believe me, I understand as well as anyone how being a salaried employee can turn into abuse, but it shouldn't be a crime for someone to need the unicorn, rockstar, 10x leetcode ninja to really crank for months on end.... so long as they're appropriately compensated! That said, I'll never, ever do that again UNLESS it's my company.