Also, even if I am right, real-world competence may involve more bluffing, less high quality knowledge of algorithms, than I would like.
I’ve met plenty of “smart people” who couldn’t get things done to save their lives partially because they couldn’t communicate well or play well with others.
This has been a source of angst for friends of mine at google for over 15 years, which is almost 3/4 of google’s existence. The hiring process is just random.
Part of it is due to measures put in to avoid certain unconscious biases (hire your friends, regardless of how good they are; hire only people like yourself, etc). So I have some sympathy.
But only some.
There's no question that Google is happy to have false-negatives in interviews.
> I believe they purposefully taret the type of people who think working at Google makes you a fundamentally better person than anyone else
why would they do this? And, if they do this, how are they generally speaking so successful? (this is also an amusing comment because the only group I find more critical of Google than HN is Googlers)
When a company has a lot of money coming in, they can be successful despite decision X, rather than because of decision X.
Microsoft can interview people asking about filling airliners with golf balls. Valve can just not bother with Half-Life 3. Google can have zero support and a self-driving car division that keeps avoiding chances to release anything.
That the companies are successful doesn't mean all their actions are smart - sometimes it's that their successes are big enough the occasional bad decision doesn't hurt them.
They have almost complete monopoly on online search, web ads, online video, on phone OS, on browsers. And they are not afraid to abuse those to get more, and are getting away with this.
You don't need to do anything right when you rent-seek most of the online world.
'Rent seeking' doesn't refer to the same kind of 'rent', of course, but I think the analogy holds up pretty well. All Google has to do is turn a few screws, and the rest of us will have no choice but to sing whatever tune they call.
The usual recipe for success in tech: competitors who are even less competent.
See also: how Microsoft dominated personal computing back in the day.
Again I think this whole line of thinking is nonsense, but even if you take it at face value, it still doesn't make sense.
However, as a University lecturer I know a lot of people Google have employed. In my opinion, they have rejected some of the greatest students I have ever taught, and accepted some idiots who know how to speak well.
While they have employed some good people, I believe they purposefully taret the type of people who think working at Google makes you a fundamentally better person than anyone else, rather than the best programmers/researchers/AI/whatever.