This is unsurprising, the network of trust I'm describing at Google isn't large while the company is huge (~27,000 engineers). Additionally, bypassing the interviews expends cultural capital, so you'd expect those who can make it happen to not usually do so. If I haven't been lied to, at least one person in the last few years joined as an IC without the standard interview process because someone near the very top of the org chart said they absolutely needed him on their team ASAP.