Actually if you have been really looking at Google's management, just the opposite has happened.
Eric Schmidt, who is an exceptionally rare talent understanding engineering, business and politics at the same time was changed to a person who just want to show more ads (the product that makes money) with 0 engineering background.
And it’s disgusting, the amount of ads on YouTube now is gross. I recently wasn’t logged in and saw how many ads I had to watch to see a minute long video. I wouldn’t use the service if it wasn’t for YouTube Premium.
Do you find it is worth the money? It costs twice what most streaming services costs, and there are no bundles: I pay for Google One and Google Music, but that counts for nothing.
I think you're both right. Change comes from above and reflects from below. "We hire the best" has become "we hire the best at passing a generic set of tests" because they want hiring to be a thoughtless, automated process.
I have been there and seen the destruction (all meetings were about political correctness, we weren't able to discuss anything that was really important).
The best are / were there before they quit to create companies, like OpenAI because it was easier than changing management.
Also I bet Sam Altman would be able to reverse a binary tree (it's a trivial recursion) even if he was never at Google: it's just part of being a professional programmer.
Eric Schmidt, who is an exceptionally rare talent understanding engineering, business and politics at the same time was changed to a person who just want to show more ads (the product that makes money) with 0 engineering background.