No, I must of misrepresented my thoughts. I stated that that was one way, not the way. It seems that with the size of Google today, and their notoriously strict hiring guidelines; based upon my observations, Google hires high-profile developers or they are acquired through a startup.

> based upon my observations, Google hires high-profile developers or they are acquired through a startup

Sorry but I dont think that's even close to being accurate. Google makes thousands of hires each year, a vast majority of them will be through normal hiring processes (from their competitors or college) and definitely not acquisitions or high profile. You only hear about the acquisitions and high profile hires because normal non-high profile devs hires do not make good news/blog articles. Creating a startup in hope of getting bought out by Google is like wishing to win the lottery.

You are undoubtedly correct on both of your points. Again, I stated that this was based upon my observations.

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that you thought that, you did not misrepresent your thoughts: it was my post that was confusing. Nonetheless you do present starting a start-up as a serious option to consider for people who want to work at Google.

This is a classic example of observation bias. We literally only observe the prominent cases, but forget that the vast majority of Google hires (and there are thousands of them) are NOT "high-profile" developers or startup founders.