I have had the exact opposite experience.

The first thing I was asked when I interviewed with Microsoft was what I wanted to do and what I wanted to avoid. I said, no frontend, something related to distributed systems and they put me up for interviews with an Azure team.

With Google, it was like "interview first, accept the offer before knowing where you are going to be placed, and we will put you in some team".

That's a really interesting comparison. I've worked at Microsoft and got an offer from Google and found the opposite to be true. I was first offered by the team I interned with, whom I liked, and accepted, so I knew where I was going.

On the Google case, even being an industry hire, it was like pulling teeth to figure out where the offer actually was, and who I would be working for, and being able to actually speak with them (as your manager is key to success). I was also told during the interview that they just interview you in general at Google, not for a particular team, which was also unsettling.

I worked full time as a software engineer before I finished my CS degree, but I wasn't really happy with my situation and wanted to do something else. As I was interviewing with companies through the my university's Career Services department, I recall being complimented by several interviewers on how specific I was regarding my goals and desired position. I wanted to work on a specific OS/platform with specific languages.

I guess I was lucky because I'd already had relevant experience, so I knew exactly what I did and did not want to do. Luckily, the offer I went with was up-front and I ended up doing exactly what I wanted to do.

Playing devils advocate, could it be a lack of experience that is the issue with new hires?