Earlier quoted context omitted.
At this point I'm pretty sure FAANG hiring is just a random walk. Every now again someone happens to have looked at all the questions they ask recently for that particular interview cycle (or avoid the trap ones like that) and that person gets hired (and then put on the ad targeting team or whatever).
100%, speaking as someone who's been both sides of the equation in FAANG hiring. Part of the problem is the sheer scale of hiring, but I think most of the problem comes down to the lack of feedback or evaluation mechanisms on the interviewing side. They train you up, half a days worth, training tells you not to be an arsehole, not to ask stupid questions, not to have unreasonable demands of candidates, not to be bias…
1. We trained 4-5 times on each type of question. The first few were shadows, and then we did reverse shadows where someone watched us give the interview and gave feedback later. In one category I asked for and was allowed to reverse shadow an extra 1-2 interviews.
2. There was auditing. In debriefs where you discussed the candidate and reviewed notes, the debrief lead was supposed to closely examine what questions you asked and how you conducted the interview, with the explicit goal of making sure that the interview was conducted within spec and your recommendation made sense given performance. Shortly after I was certified to do interviews, a debrief leader (correctly) identified a major issue in an interview that I had conducted. That candidate was given another interview in the same category. Although I didn't face any official sanctions, it was definitely an embarrassing experience and made me handle future interviews more thoughtfully.
Overall, I was fairly comfortable with the rigor of the process that I saw. I'm certainly not saying the process is perfect but my experience did not align with yours.