You can’t hire a bunch of people without lowering the bar. This is a big part of the reason why big tech doesn’t appeal to me. “We’ve got tens of thousands of the best of the best” sounds like weird delusional fetishism and I’d like to think that we are mostly past that now thank God. I see communication skills as a core competency, end of story. When you hire like crazy, standards slip, or you might forego one standard in favour of “engineering” capability, or whatever.

Hiring committee never meets the candidate.

It's on the interviewer to mark communication difficulties. And I assume bad interviewers don't see English proficiency as important.