That does seem to be their line of thought in most things, but in what universe is calculus in any way a measure of your ability to manage a product, even as a proxy? It's barking mad. I could be great at calculus but terrible as a PM, I could be a great PM yet terrible at math, and so on. I can see the point if I was applying to be PM for Mathcad or the like, but otherwise....

Working in this industry is just distressing. There are so many really clever people in this industry that cannot reason in any practical way (absolutely not calling you out, bubbleRefuge!!!) I work with a team that cannot figure source control out. People ask interview questions which a seconds introspection reveals will not measure real world performance. It goes on and on.

Sorry. I think I just realized I need a vacation. I deleted a much longer string of absurdities at the end of the paragraph above. My non-ranty point is that clever!=smart, and clever != job performance. Google has admitted in the press that their recommendations from interviews perform no better than chance. I don't get why that was hard to forsee. If you aren't measuring what you are trying to assess, chances are your results will be noise. "I wonder if this person is creative and can think up new product ideas. How will I determine that? Think, Roger, think. I know, I guess I'll ask him the math behind Cauchy distributions, and follow up with a problem in Hilbert space. That makes sense!" ;)

Roge, you are a 100% right. It all begs the question, why are we so obsessed with working at big box companies? The reason this inefficiency in hiring exists is because Google can get away with it. If the short-term survival of G's business depended on hiring, they would have to do a better job.