Get hired. Go through onboarding. Collect your hiring bonus. Get a few weeks for your first project and fail at it. It gets written off as "they're just new here". Use some "unlimited" vacation time. Get more projects and keep failing at them. Get put on a new team because the eng director wants to give you another chance, and repeat the whole process. Eventually get put on a PIP. Show no improvement at the end of it. Accept a severance in exchange for "resigning" and signing an NDA/liability waiver.

At a large company it is possible for this entire process to draw out for 3-6 months, and you collecting >$100K in in that period.

Signing bonuses almost always have clawback provisions, and I've never heard of someone getting severance from being fired for cause (performance). The only way I can see your scenario playing out is if the employee has some kind of real leverage over the company (e.g., family connections, political backing, etc.).

> Signing bonuses almost always have clawback provisions

Written on a piece of paper, yes, but no company is actually going to sue you in court to recover it. It will cost them more than the value of the bonus to do so. And they know you have already spent the money.

> I've never heard of someone getting severance from being fired for cause (performance)

At large tech companies it is standard for people going through the PIP process to get the option of taking a severance and walking away (and waiving their right to sue the company) instead of waiting for their manager and HR to draw up the paperwork to fire them.

Most places have such chaotic onboarding that it would take a few months to truly get signal that the employee knew nothing.

If it’s remote, sometimes they’ll pay someone else to do the work and pocket the difference. And/or the job may just be a ruse to get credentials in the org because it’s an espionage target or to use as a launch point to go after an espionage target.

That's assuming the interview process tests for job performance with any sort of accuracy.

The reality is that most developers are bad at their jobs.

Also, there's the "fake it till you make it" thinking.

In my ten years I’ve never worked at a place where pairing was the norm. I would love to experience that kind of culture

Agreed, I've worked in a dozen firms now in many different teams and never seen anyone pairing.

In most cases in corporations you are not interviewed by people you will be working with. Interview stage is a generic assessment by random people. Yo simply need to pass them. Also they are usually asking questions not related to the real job.

You're making the (large) assumption that the interviews are actually relevant to the position.