Someone I know who works at Microsoft interviewed for a position at Google. This person is at a moderately senior level position at MSFT. He was recommended by

Someone I know who works at Microsoft interviewed for a position at Google. This person is at a moderately senior level position at MSFT. He was recommended by his old manager who is currently at Google. Apparently, you can refuse the phone screen and you would be called on-site automatically. This person hasn't really written any code that I know of for years, but was able to get an ex-manager to fight on his behalf even after being (correctly) rejected by the Google interview process. Now I'm not sure how many have sneaked in..