<p>This should reassure a lot of students who didn't get into their "reach" schools.</p>
<p>Despite beliefs on these forums to the contrary, it is old news that Google recruits widely as far as colleges and universities are concerned (but can be rather picky among candidates within the large pool).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I love this and IMO a huge benefit of a Liberal Arts Education that teaches kids to do just this, to mesh disciplines and not be micro-focused on a specific subject. Like the author said, it is not always about how many tennis balls fit into a tennis court</p>
<p>This is pretty much a laugh riot coming from a company that used to advertise that all positions, including receptionist be candidates from “top flight” universities. And who spawned a cottage industry in books on interview brain teasers and how to ace the technical interview and who until very recently required 14 interviews and used brain teasers and I am still not convinced these extremely recent changes’ have filtered through. I will have to ask someone who just went through the one day 4 interview session.</p>
<p>It is nice to hear. But read the underlying linked NY Times article which a little fuller and not so sound-bite-ey.</p>
<p>And while it is interesting to note that they are claiming 14% no college, my daughter who has interned there twice told me that they say they hire 1/3rd BS, 1/3rd MS and 1/3rd PhD.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The New York Times article says “as high as 14 percent on some teams.” So maybe there is a team of seven where one member is brilliantly self-educated in CS without needing to attend college. That is a lot different from the implication that 14% overall are not college graduates.</p>
<p>ahh yes, I see, thank you–that does not imply an overall 14% of the company.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>BrownParent, you’re not suggesting that graduates of “top-flight” universities are more likely to ace technical interviews and brain teasers, are you? </p>
<p>What I think the article is saying is that Google prizes certain attributes–cognitive ability, leadership, humility, collaboration–over others, such as pedigree or “expertise.” I doubt they ever turn away graduates of prestigious schools who have these traits. But it sounds as though they DO pass them up over applicants from “lesser” colleges when those from the latter group have more of the traits they desire.</p>
<p>This approach is similar to that of the biggest tech company in my area. It is known for hiring LAC graduates even for semi-technical positions. Hiring managers seek out candidates with good critical thinking skills but, interestingly, also like to see both college and high school transcripts.</p>
<p>My nephew was hired by Google 3 years ago and he just went to a mid-tier UC. </p>
<p>Not everyone desires to work for Google. Some people want to work for smaller start-up companies instead of working for a large establishment like Google. Some groups in Google have interesting work, but some groups could be very boring and provide less mobility for career advancement.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe they found this did not work for them. I have always felt some kids pursue HYPs strictly for the name brand education and lay their hopes that the name on the diploma will land them a job. For some they don’t realize they have to work to keep it.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-confess-the-worst-things-about-working-at-google-2013-11[/url]”>Google Employees Confess the Worst Things About Google;
<p><a href=“http://www.indiatimes.com/technology/enterprise/top-5-reasons-to-not-work-at-google-110247.html[/url]”>http://www.indiatimes.com/technology/enterprise/top-5-reasons-to-not-work-at-google-110247.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/ricardogeromel/2012/06/28/why-recent-graduates-should-not-work-for-google/[/url]”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/ricardogeromel/2012/06/28/why-recent-graduates-should-not-work-for-google/</a></p>
<p>Google is more the exception than the rule, in that Google has a history of hiring a disproportionate amount of employees from top CS colleges and focusing on college grades, policies which they have been changing, likely based on evaluations showing Google has been doing a poor job at choosing quality employees (<a href=“http://www.hire-intelligence.com/2013/06/good-hiring-feel-bad-google/”>http://www.hire-intelligence.com/2013/06/good-hiring-feel-bad-google/</a> ). If you look at other tech companies most new grads find desirable, the most obvious factor in hiring is location, rather than anything related to name of college, ranking, or prestige. For example, Apple has more employees on LinkedIn who attended San Jose State than any other school. San Jose State is not ranked as a national university at USNWR. Instead it gets a lot of hires because it’s located ~10 miles from Apple headquarters. At Microsoft, Washington is the most represented college, which is again located near headquarters. None of the ivies appear anywhere towards top at either company or at Google since they are centered thousands of miles from the northeast (and many ivies are not strong in engineering). If you look at high revenue engineering companies that are not quite as desirable, then there appears to be little relationship between employment and college selectivity. For example, the top 5 for “engineer” job titles at HP are OSU, CSU, Houston, Texas A&M, and San Jose State. University of Phoenix is top for AT&T. </p>
<p>^^Moreover…I have noticed that many of the top CS/engineering graduates from Stanford to MIT to Berkeley usually use places like Google/Facebook/Apple/Yahoo/etc as a training ground/launching pad to get needed “experience” in the real world during college (internships) and right after college before they go out on their own to create a start-up or join a new start-up company or become independent expert consultants in their fields…</p>
<p>…it’s hard to keep top creative minds shackled to a large company for too long before they go out on their own (or with colleagues they met at those institutions)…</p>
<p>I doubt you could find any evidence that “top creative minds” are concentrated at “top universities.” In fact, that goes back to the premise of Google’s hiring practices. They are looking for people who come from collaborative environments and have the “intellectual humility” to admit they don’t have all the answers and then go find them. These attributes are not always prevalent in competitive (and often conformist) university settings.</p>
<p>^^you might want to read this article…
<a href=“http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/12/17/the-top-10-colleges-that-fuel-the.html?page=all”>http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/12/17/the-top-10-colleges-that-fuel-the.html?page=all</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Notice my original comment did not specifically talk about Google…but rather some of the major companies in Silicon Valley…Google is just ONE company among many many other companies in the Valley…</p>
<p>…and Harvey Mudd is highly respected here in California as one of the premiere engineering/CS schools that people outside of California may not have heard of…</p>
<p>I would not be surprised if the Ivy League graduates were found more in the “business” side (finance, venture capital) than in the technical side.</p>
<p>^^probably…and it’s rather misleading to have UCBerkeley at the bottom of the list since the ratio is based on the total number of university students (and we all know how BIG Berkeley student population is)…it should be closer to Stanford and MIT in reality…</p>
<p>FWIW, D1 commented that based on her experience (internship interview) and seeing who’s getting offers from Google, coding ability trumps all on the tech side. The diversity etc etc (in her opinion) applies more on the sales/marketing side. </p>
<p>I’d have to second @Brownparent’s thoughts in post #4 (if the software allowed post numbers…). My wife’s nephew and his wife were both recruited from Cornell. I think the article puts forth noble ideas which don’t match reality.</p>
<p>Interesting to read all this – my personal experience from Googlers I know us that there’s a hoard of Stanford grads in their Mountainview office at least.</p>