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<p>Google has clearly become less ‘elitist’ (if that is the right word) over the last few years, for several reasons. First off, that article I cited was published in 2003, which, crucially, was before the 2004 IPO, and getting into Google in the pre-IPO days would have basically meant becoming an instant millionaire on IPO day, and everybody knew it. But you probably won’t get rich by joining Google now. Hence, for that one reason alone, clearly Google is not as desirable of a place to work as it used to be.</p>
<p>Secondly, the fact is, Google couldn’t be as selective as it used to be even if it wanted to be, simply because of the Law of Large Numbers. Google has been growing its employee base so quickly (now nearly 17k employees) that it has to be less selective. As a case in point, I was talking to a guy who served a summer internship at Google and he said that Google actually offers an inhouse software application to its employees that calculates your seniority (basically, how much more time you have over others) within the company. By the time his summer internship ended - hence, with just three months of time at Google - he already had greater seniority than a full 13% of the employees. In other words, on the day his internship ended, 13% of the employees at Google had been hired only after his internship had started. One of the guys he worked with, who had only been in Google for a few years, was already considered to be one of the “old men” of the company. Google’s appetite for hiring has been nothing less than voracious. </p>
<p>If there is one company that has now replaced Google as the ‘cool tech employer of choice’, it’s now almost certainly Facebook. A lot of tech cognoscenti - including many of Google’s best people - are now working for Facebook, and I have heard of some even saying that what attracted them is that the Facebook working environment is what Google used to be. Plus, of course, there is the considerable attraction of getting in on the ground floor of a white-hot pre-IPO company. Facebook’s hiring is, if anything, just as elitist as any elite consulting or banking firm. Just try getting an offer from Facebook coming from a low-ranked school, see how well you do.</p>