The philosophy at Google is that the hiring bar is high enough that anyone who passes it should theoretically be able to fill any open position at their level.

The philosophy at Google is that the hiring bar is high enough that anyone who passes it should theoretically be able to fill any open position at their level. This is somewhat less true for higher levels, but it is also much harder to pass the bar at those levels. There are typically a lot of unfilled positions, because there just aren't enough people who pass the hiring bar (so there is plenty of demand for people). You don't really expect any new hire SWE to be able to do the job on day 1 - Google has so much bespoke internal technology that it takes months to become productive. So the fit conversations aren't really just another round of interviews - they are more of a "mutual fit" assessment (interests and background). Often it's more of a sales pitch ("here's why you should join our team").