"compared to their peers"
Clearly not. There peers were rejected outright. The fact that they are put through a year-long Google bootcamp in the hopes that they can come up to speed makes it clear that they are in no way the peers of people who received a normal offer. What's more, given the politics at G, they would have had the system for promotions & raises explained to them ad nausium. I mentioned before that G runs experiments on their hiring processes. Looks like this one did not work.