George Dinwiddie pointed me this post, I got rejected by Google – woe is me. Read through the comments; they are as illuminating as the post. Here's the stated Google hiring strategy, Hiring: The Lake Wobegon Strategy.
I don't see Google's stated practice of hiring above the mean as congruent with what's happening in practice. It looks as if their strategy as implemented only looks for specific functional skills–not domain expertise or the interpersonal skills that really make an environment work. Sure, they may be hiring above the mean in some small ways, but they're creating a mono-culture.
Whether or not my conclusions are correct about Google and their hiring strategy, the one thing you can learn from this is to make sure your hiring strategy does not create a mono-culture. If you look for people who can work all hours of the day and night for months on end, you will hire young people, some of whom do not have the maturity to know when they're creating technical debt. If you ask theoretical computation questions, you'll get people who aced their Theory of Computation classes, but may not know how to release software. The riskier the work, the more diverse a team you need–not a mono-culture. (I discuss this in Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management.)
We'll have to watch Google (and other companies that hire narrowly), to see what happens. Be aware that the more narrowly you define “smart” for your environment, the more likely you are to build a mono-culture.
Labels: culture, hiring strategy
I had a similar experience very recently with Microsoft. They had contacted me on a recommendation of their employee, my former coworker and asked if I would interview for a position of a team lead for one of their new products. I’m relatively happily employed, but, heck I though, why not.
I have to say a few words about myself. I’ve been programming since I was 15 (I’m 34). Before turning 30, programming was my life, my livelihood and my hobby. Basically, I’m a computer geek. These days, I like architectures, I work as a solution architect, but also interested in processes and methodologies and meddle in management. I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough management experience for the job.
I knew I blew the interview when they let me loose early in the afternoon and thought it was because of my weak management background. Imagine my surprise (and relief) a few days later when the recruiter called and told me they thought I was weak on the tech side. I really had to try hard not to laugh when she said that. “On some of the questions we gave you,” she said, “you were very slow coming up with answers.” Notice that she didn’t say that I couldn’t answer them, just that I was slow. “We had similar questions we give to recent college grads, and they do much better.” This was getting even more surreal. I felt like I was put on “Are You Smarter Than a Sixth Grader.” I politely pointed out that I’m by far not a recent graduate and inquired if they ever had bothered to ask recent grads “other” questions that I was given, for example about management, software processes, architecture, security. She said, “It’s our companies philosophy that our employees have to be at least as good as college graduates.” At this point I just had to respectfully disagree with the entire premise and thank her for the time.
Being a big, famous and rich company, I suppose Microsoft can afford to put these requirements on their candidates. I know there are people like that out there. Not many, but they do exist. I’m not one of them and I happily concede to that. Still, to me the whole excercise smells of throwing the baby with the bath water.
I agree. I simply don’t understand why companies would want to limit their focus on “who remembers the college curriculum best”.
Anyone can refresh a theory they memorized at college if they need to.