Google employs thousands of developers. They can't be that strict about who they hire as a 5-people startup. So they sure have lot of less-than-spectacular developers and they don't care. You need talented people as architects (or whatever), not your code monkeys.
This is definitely true of large firms, but it still surprises me that the likes of Google could have developers that could get through the Google interview process, but would probably struggle with a take-home test from a company looking for someone to demonstrate an ability to be able to build something.
