I find the idea that just because someone is an excellent software engineer they are therefore guaranteed to be a good fit for a particular role at Google a bit

I find the idea that just because someone is an excellent software engineer they are therefore guaranteed to be a good fit for a particular role at Google a bit weird I'd say that if Linus applied to be a software engineer at Google they should be prepared to invert binary trees or do $generic_leetcode type things because that's the expectation for that role If they applied to be Google Fellow or some other lofty position then I wouldn't expect them to need to do any coding at all in the interview