As a lead engineer at a non-tech company as least as big as many of the FAANG companies I am responsible for things that make 8 and 9 figures annually (mobile), but I never had an interview anything like this here at all, because I was hired based on personal reputation at a previous employer. I bet I would fail miserably at these kinds of interviews because I would not prepare in any way; I know what it takes to ship things in all sorts of ridiculous circumstances, with too few people and enormous continuous changes under challenges that you would never see in a big tech company. I am not sure there is fair way to tell from an interview what I am capable of but my present org knows what I can do and counts on me doing it every time.
I wonder how many people are missed in interviews who would make a big contribution to an employer but are lost in the interview process. Often skills needed for shipping quality applications are likely not visible if people only focus on raw programming ability. Maybe it's simply too hard to identify in interview form so everyone just looks at how you write code.
I am in the same boat. Got my current job just by reference by people that know me and I didn't have an interview at all.
On regular basis I am faced with challenging technical problems related to things that I haven't done before and then with careful research, planning and execution I solve them and our product is going forward and the company is growing so I assume we are doing the correct things most of the time.
And then when I hear from friends stories from their interviews I really get scared that if I apply today I would fail...
I wonder how many people are missed in interviews who would make a big contribution to an employer but are lost in the interview process. Often skills needed for shipping quality applications are likely not visible if people only focus on raw programming ability. Maybe it's simply too hard to identify in interview form so everyone just looks at how you write code.