you are missing the point. the article was only criticizing hiring process at google.
when google makes an acquisition, they'll also gain people who built that technology/product too. these people usually went through completely different hiring process and it's entirely possible that early employees who made let's say youtube, would probably never make it through those tricky interview questions at google...
heck, most startup founders here wouldn't make it into google through their standard interview process. then google ends up buying their companies for millions. go figure.
Who says that it's wrong to have a two-tiered hiring system: the standard "interview then hire" system (though done more rigorously---thus all the "how many golf balls in a schoolbus" questions); and the "let the market see how they do, then hire them at market value" startup acquisition approach. You can't have everyone at an organization as big as google go through the second process, so the first one fills out the engineering ranks.
Comments
you are missing the point. the article was only criticizing hiring process at google.
when google makes an acquisition, they'll also gain people who built that technology/product too. these people usually went through completely different hiring process and it's entirely possible that early employees who made let's say youtube, would probably never make it through those tricky interview questions at google...
heck, most startup founders here wouldn't make it into google through their standard interview process. then google ends up buying their companies for millions. go figure.
Who says that it's wrong to have a two-tiered hiring system: the standard "interview then hire" system (though done more rigorously---thus all the "how many golf balls in a schoolbus" questions); and the "let the market see how they do, then hire them at market value" startup acquisition approach. You can't have everyone at an organization as big as google go through the second process, so the first one fills out the engineering ranks.
See also: http://paulgraham.com/hiring.html