Why Google Doesn’t Hire Top Graduates

Photo by Caleb Williams on Unsplash

According to Laszlo Bock, a former Google executive, top students from the best schools often lack the intellectual humility that comes with failure.

As a result, they develop a highly egocentric worldview.

“If something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s because someone’s an idiot or I didn’t get the resources,” Bock explained.

This sort of thinking, of course, is highly incompatible with Google’s constant-learning, soft-skill dominated value system. But it’s not the only reason why Google doesn’t really care about your grades.

A while ago, Google ran a study that found there was no correlation between employee performance and their school GPA.

Apparently, Google really took that study to heart. While it used to be proud of trophy Harvard and MIT graduates, it since loosened its hiring policy. In 2018, they even stopped requiring a degree altogether.

“Good grades certainly don’t hurt,” Bock added. “[But] for every job, though, the №1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly.”

So far, so good. In the interview, Laszlo Bock named several buzzword-y attributes that make a good Googler. Leadership skills, soft skills, general cognitive abilities, rigorous analytical skills. None of these are necessarily tied to your GPA. Everything seemed to make sense.

Until Bock said something very disturbing.

The B-team

Apparently, it’s not all degrees Google considers worthless. Just the humanities ones.

One of the applicants Bock personally worked with was considering switching from a computer science degree to an economics one. According to Bock, this move showed the student’s lack of resilience.

“I told that student they are much better off being a B student in computer science…