What are you trying to say about the engineers at those companies?
What a bunch of navel gazing, elitist douchebags you are. Do you think actually think working a Zynga or Facebook makes you a good dev. Get a grip. In any sufficiently large set of individuals you will have everything from poseur to star. Facebook, Zynga and others are not immnune to this like you would have us believe.
I was around during the previous tech bubble. Paid my dues in the trenches and earned my stripes. The last startup I was at I was a team lead. It is still around and growing but I guess since I didn't go a fancy school I don't exist. That's ok, keep promoting the hiring of greenhorns who think everything they dream up is new and then proceed to reinvent the wheel. Education does not make you smart, just educated.
BTW: In case your wondering. I'm happily employed making 6 figures for less hours than your screened employers would expect.
Epic. Fail.
(Note: I have neither a CS degree (or even a high school diploma) nor have I worked for any of the companies mentioned.)
I would have partnered with a company that already had peoples' code and some experience using it to find who the good coders are. My recruiting experiences with coding-test sites were not very positive (as with dating, the sites were fine, it's the needle-haystack problem because there were few good ones and they got lots of attention) but Kaggle (which focuses on data science) might have greener pastures.
