Disclaimer: I don't work at a FAANG. However this is my observations from interviewing at FAANGs.
Seems random to be honest. Some of my interviewers have been older people. Some of the people waiting with me at lobbies prior to interview have been older people. I'm 38 FYI.
Seems your ability to pass the leetcode problems is the most important factor, so long as you don't torpedo yourself with odd behavior during the non-technical portions.
For more experienced candidates like yourself and I, I hear the system design round is also important. But your success in that is more difficult to gauge, whereas you kind of know whether you bombed an leetcode round or not.
Depressing is that your multiple decades of experience might be absolutely worthless as far as passing leetcode rounds go. Your experience may or may not be useful for the system design round. It's useful if your experience with systems matches that with what the company is looking for. It's useless if not. I've noticed the systems at many non-tech enterprise companies don't exactly align with the systems at newer tech companies.
