

The Most Innovative Employees at Google Aren’t grads with Perfect SATs - 147
http://blog.idonethis.com/post/50579439215/the-most-innovative-employees-at-google-arent

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jaytaylor
I am quite familiar with the current engineering hiring practices at Google,
and what the story claims is completely different than what I've heard from
actual engineers who perform the interviews.

The process is highly technical and if anyone marks you as a "B", you are
unlikely to be hired.

~~~
mdwrigh2
I don't this contradicts the article, as I'd fully agree with both the article
_and_ you. The article just says that SAT scores and GPAs don't matter so much
-- technical chops still do.

~~~
purplelobster
I'd say getting a high SAT score and GPA requires pretty much the same skill
set as technical code-on-the-whiteboard interviews. Actually, technical
interviews are even more narrow, and probably weed out very many highly
creative, motivated people that "have a mission".

~~~
Retric
The top students often dont't have an overly high GPA because they take a
difficult courslanded for them and go beyond there classes and end up
prioritizing more than just a 4.0. Also I find highly technical interviews
have limited value beyond a simple pass\fail because the poorly represent an
actual working environment.

If you really want the best have them walk you through a project they are
proud of. It takes a lot more effort and you need to let go of the ego boost
of knowing all the answers as you go over the same problems with everyone.
However, you can dig a lot further into how they think.

PS: It's important to reolise Google is way to large to be all that picky
though. Lucky the vast majority of Google projects are not really that
difficult or important. But, if you need the 'best' there are people out there
that will blow your mind.

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coloneltcb
This post is really light on the references and methodology, but I'll take it
at face value.

I think it's great that they've let go of this obsession for Ivies.

But what they don't even talk about in this post is how the Ivy-only policy
poisoned their company culture. To quote a friend from mine from a top
startup: "All the assholes at my company come from Google."

~~~
michaelochurch
_To quote a friend from mine from a top startup: "All the assholes at my
company come from Google."_

My personal experience is that the engineers at Google are really decent,
capable people. I miss that crowd, actually. They were pretty solid. It's the
rest of the company (including tech management) that's fucked up.

When you have a company that believes engineering is for smart people and
everything else (people management, product direction) is Dumb People Work,
well... who ends up fulfilling those (actually important) duties? Exactly.

However, my only gripe with Google engineers is that they tend to be closed-
minded about "weird" programming languages like Haskell and Clojure.

~~~
coloneltcb
Yea, to be fair, I think she was referencing mostly middle management and
upper management folks, not engineers.

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trustfundbaby
I think that article is a bit content free, the real gold is in the article it
links to by the NY Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/technology/big-
data-trying...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/technology/big-data-trying-
to-build-better-workers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&);

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Kurinys
It took analytics to show that people born into an elite status may not always
be better employees than people who've had to work twice as hard to balance
self-development and making ends meet?

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losvedir
I wonder about sampling bias. If Google has a preference towards MIT/Stanford
with perfect SATs, then wouldn't the employees that don't meet that profile
have to be a little bit more distinguished to begin with?

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mietek
What is this blog post based on?

~~~
rhizome
Begging the question.

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MisterBastahrd
Imagine that creativity doesn't necessarily come from spending a few grand on
test prep classes.

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clubhi
I have always considered SAT scores to be highly correlated with how good of
parents you have.

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smountcastle
So how do you determine, during an interview, if the candidate has a strong
sense of mission about their work and also feel that they have much personal
autonomy? Perhaps the second piece happens after they're hired when you give
them the autonomy, but it seems like a strong sense of mission isn't enough --
they need to be able to execute on it either through their own actions or by
influencing others. And, of course, you need to find some whose mission aligns
with the needs of your company.

~~~
wsc981
Can any developer feel a strong sense of mission about a project when the
project isn't their child? Personally, I don't think I can. If it's not my
child project, then to me it's just a 9 to 5 job. At least I've decided it
will be since last year, since any extra work I put in wasn't noticed /
rewarded.

So I'd say autonomy is great, but will probably only give great results if the
project itself is a pet project by the developer.

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grandalf
I'd estimate that a greater percentage of HN readers than Google employees
have perfect SATs.

~~~
Who828
I have been trying to use probability in real life occurrence like this
whenever I can, so let's get started back of the envelop style

according to this site <http://research.collegeboard.org/content/sat-data-
tables>

Roughly 1.53 million students take up SAT every year and of which 10k students
get perfect SAT score in Math (let's just focus on math for now)

so that's 0.67% (rounded) people getting a perfect score out of the total.

According to this data set, [http://blog.rjmetrics.com/surprising-hacker-news-
data-analys...](http://blog.rjmetrics.com/surprising-hacker-news-data-
analysis/)

It says there are roughly 31k active users on HN, considering that I have
personally seen many google employee's responding to a query/commenting on HN,
let's assume a higher number of 2.5k.

so, 2.5k * 0.0067 which is about 17 people, so there are 17 active google
employees on HN which have perfect SAT score in Math.

So that was my attempt, can someone provide a better probabilistic model?
(maybe I will learn something new and exciting)

~~~
sejordan
I think it'd be a fair assumption that the percentage of Google employees with
a perfect SAT score is higher than the national average. Just like the
percentage of students at MIT with perfect SAT scores is higher than the
national average.

Google employees aren't representative of the entire population.

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michaelochurch
This is nonsense.

 _“All people decisions at Google are based on data and analytics,” according
to Kathryn Dekas, a manager in Google’s “people analytics” team._

Calibration scores are not fucking data, not any more than bathroom graffiti
contains reliable information. Data-driven my ass.

(She may have been only talking about hiring, but she said "all people
decisions", and that's incorrect.)

 _Google discovered that its most innovative workers “are those who have a
strong sense of mission about their work and who also feel that they have much
personal autonomy.”_

Bullshit. Take that attitude to work at a place like Google and you'll be on a
PIP as soon as your boss catches wind that you have ambitions other than
serving his specific career goals. Google hasn't valued "personal autonomy"
since I was in high school.

~~~
jmduke
Michael, I don't mean to be disrespectful -- I've enjoyed your comments a lot
on HN, and find them to be incredibly insightful -- but I feel like you're
beating a dead horse with your Google vitriol.

~~~
michaelochurch
My work isn't done yet. Our industry is still hellish and there are trillions
of dollars of value to be added to society by fixing it.

Programmer Autonomy is a $1 Trillion Issue:
[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/programmer-
au...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/programmer-autonomy-
is-a-1-trillion-issue/)

The cultural war on closed allocation is the only trillion-dollar problem in
the world that I have any power whatsoever to influence (not much, but I have
a voice). Attacking Google-- exposing its closed allocation as a catastrophe
that destroyed what could have been an amazing company-- is part of the
campaign.

How to structure a software workplace properly is _the_ only trillion-dollar
issue on which I'm a world-class expert, and probably the only such one in my
life. So yes, I do tend to be a bit overfocused on that problem domain.

~~~
tokenadult
_I'm a world-class expert_

What is the evidence that you are a world-class expert on that or on any other
issue?

~~~
michaelochurch
Let's start with the fact that open allocation (not a concept I invented, but
one that I've advocated with extreme vigor and, to a large degree,
popularized; and I did come up with the term "open allocation") is in force or
under active exploration at pretty much every company where the talented
engineers want to work, and that closed-allocation companies fall into
mediocrity and develop retention problems through a process that I've
discovered and documented with extreme precision, including on my blog.

I'm sure there are a couple people who know more than I do-- perhaps the CEO
of Valve and that company's chief economist-- but it's pretty obvious that I'm
on the short list right now. When it comes to setting up the culture for a
technology company, I'm one of the few people who actually knows how to do it
right.

~~~
codex
Is the best culture for a startup one of hubris and poor emotional
intelligence?

