True enough, but I wouldn't single out the FAANG companies myself in terms of being anything special in terms of technology - they're just bigger in my book and as such have more weight to throw around in the hiring industry.

I find the whole rote learning just to pass a technical test idea ridiculous - you want creative thinking then offer a challenging real world problem and not the reversing of a list or something else that's easily referenced.

I would tend to agree about the retention rates, add to that that the environment is often disproportionally pressured and designed to extract blood, sweat, and tears .