The New York Times has a fascinating interview about using Big Data to guide hiring and management techniques with Google’s VP of people operations, Lazlo Bock. Two things in particular stood out.
First, “On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time”. I couldn’t agree more.
Second, “One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless”. This ties in well with rejecting the top-tier school pedigree nonsense and downplaying the benefit of formal education altogether. On the last point, Lazlo notes: “What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well”.
But beyond that, the interview is full of good tips on management as well. Especially around figuring out who’s a good manager and how they can improve. If that’s a subject you’re interested in, checkout our newly launched Know Your Company.
GeeIWonder
on 20 Jun 13Very selective editing of that article. There was correlation of grads, and the person who hire disproportionately best was a ‘world’s leading expert’.
I find it entirely predictable that the proportion of non-grads they are hiring over time has increased. First of all, there has been a huge change in the supply/demand over the last 10 years—people without the degrees are often the ones pruned off first.
This is likely to be the pattern for most companies with primary operations in the U.S. for the foreseeable future.
By the way, the entire analysis method are issue of ‘top-tier schools’. So, obviously, is the company—the two people who founded Google have doctorate degrees and the children of, by the way, academics.
I’d say there’s some correlation there too.
Craig
on 20 Jun 13@Geel, wow you don’t seem to be suffering from post-purchase rationalization at all. I think the point is, formal education is one route to becoming adept at what you do—but certainly not the only route. It’s also possible to obtain credentials on paper while being largely clueless in industry. Those simple observations pretty much blur the supposed correlation at both ends and make using credentials as the sole measuring stick a very short-sighted mistake.
Steve Thackery
on 20 Jun 13The main question I have about Google’s hiring practice is how none of their employees revealed the NSA operation ? This has nothing to do with GPA, testing or anything else – just plain old human honesty. Maybe they need to go back to the big data and see where that aspect has gone wrong.
Attila Domokos
on 20 Jun 13David, I believe you have a typo in the person’s name you are referring to: not “Lazlo” but “Laszlo”. Thanks for posting this!
GeeIWonder
on 20 Jun 13@Craig So counter the points I make then. And who says I purchased anything? I just see potential value in those institutions and believe it’s in the best interest of all of us that high school students reading a post like this hear some counter points.
“I think the point is, formal education is one route to becoming adept at what you do—but certainly not the only route. {etc]”
Yeah, yeah - we all agree on most of this. But we knew this already. So the big revelation from big data or the interview is? And what about the meta-education?
Different universities and degrees purport to do different things, but the results in their analysis shows a) out of school, university graduates correlate with better hires. and b) there’s been a much greater influx of non-university graduates recently. You can attribute this to one thing or the other, but it is absolutely consistent with a less secure workforce. Actually, I’m pretty unimpressed by the interpretation of the metric, frankly.
Craig
on 20 Jun 13@GeeIWonder, I find it hard to believe someone without a degree would take your position. Presumably you paid it? It’s in your interest to defend it’s perceived value, to the point where you may even do it irrationally. I’ve fallen into that trap myself and even fell into the trap of having an inflated sense of ability based only on my paper credentials, only to realise that in reality I’m outclassed by many people who don’t have them.
It’s far too easy to forego continuous self improvement and learning because you think credentials are “enough”. Looking back on my formal education in retrospect, I found it benefited my real world abilities and value as an employee very, very little.
A worrying majority of people seem to have a difficult time separating the reality (knowledge and skills) from the accreditation (credentials and institutional association).
GeeIWonder
on 20 Jun 13I’ve fallen into that trap myself and even fell into the trap of having an inflated sense of ability based only on my paper credentials, only to realise that in reality I’m outclassed by many people who don’t have them.
Yes, well it’s nice that you’ve learned this lesson. And the other truisms are all nice, but have nothing to do with the original article which, again, showed correlation for new grads, and the most outstanding outlier with related credentials. At Google, there is also a 100% correlation of people founding the company and having a doctorate degree, and parents with doctorate degrees (i.e. presumably valuing education from early on).
The causation is unstated, for obvious reasons.
Craig
on 20 Jun 13@GeeIWonder Neither of the founders had a doctorate degree when the company was formed. At least one of them still doesn’t. That’s down to 50% already.
Sure, anyone who progresses to PhD level is almost certainly highly motivated and highly intelligent. Most people who pursue any degree are going to be at least somewhat motivated and intelligent. That’s to say nothing of the people who don’t though.
What about the 70% of people in the U.S. who don’t have a degree? Can tech companies afford to ignore them whilst simultaneously complaining about how hard it is to find “talent”? What about a future where close to 100% of working age people have degrees? What are HR departments going to use for cheap and easy short-listing then? Heaven forbid they start actually testing aptitude and ability instead of checkbox credentials. It’s rather sad that everyone has to throw heaps of money at institutions just to level the playing field.
John
on 21 Jun 13@GeelWonder – You sound like an over-educated, insecure grad student of some sort looking to beat people over the head with garbage you’ve read in textbooks, while being totally wet behind the ears to the ways of the real world. And that, my friend, is why the balance is shifting towards people who spend more time doing and less time pontificating.
GeeIWonder
on 21 Jun 13You’ve got me nailed.
I’m exactly what you described, and that invalidates the argument…
GeeIWonder
on 21 Jun 13By the way, Warren Buffett is also making very similar points these days. The oracle is ACTUALLY pontificating on this one.
Does he qualify as a doer? He has a degree, you know, so he must be biased.
GeeIWonder
on 21 Jun 13The two views are consistent:
It’s not for everyone and individuals should invest in themselves however they best see fit—of course you can do great things without a university degree, and such a degree does not define you. Don’t put yourself in debt to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars for something you hate because someone tells you to. http://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-trashes-higher-education-says-its-not-for-everyone-2012-5 (May 5, 2012)
As a nation it is economically critical to attract “in terms of education, tens or hundreds of thousands of [immigrant] people” (and these will have to certified/accredited schools, by the way according to existing law) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/05/warren-buffett-immigration-reform_n_3219046.html (May 5, 2013)
Vicki
on 21 Jun 13I am delighted to hear that Google has realized that “puzzle questions” are not valuable in interviews. As many interviewers take their cues from this sort of thing, I will be happy to see that silly phase move into history.
Gayle Laakmann McDowell
on 21 Jun 13This article has been wildly exaggerated / misinterpreted (in part due to some unclear / incorrect parts of the original quote).
Nothing has changed at Google, at least nothing recently. This study was done 5+ years ago (I was at Google then, part of the hiring committee, and remember this study). Any conclusions from the study would have been implemented then, not now.
Brainteasers have always been banned at Google, or at least since 2005. However, everyone has a different definition of what a brainteaser is, so you might still see some asked.
Estimation questions are not considered to be brainteasers, at least for certain positions (Product Managers, etc), and are still asked. These are questions like, “How many ads just gmail serve in a year?” and “How much gasoline is purchased every year in the US?”
As far as GPA—people have always wildly exaggerated how much emphasis was put on this. When I started at Google, most of my team didn’t have a college degree, and those who did didn’t necessarily have stellar GPAs.
Ultimately, there’s very little you can draw from the study. Sure, GPA and job performance [when boiled down to a simple number] aren’t correlated. Okay, but, so? Think about who is getting hired with a low GPA: people who have other great things on their resume.
To make an analogy: what if I compared two groups of people— —Group A: non-smokers, selected at random —Group B: smokers, who had completed a marathon in the last year If I then find that Group B is in equally good health, can I conclude that smoking isn’t harmful to your health? Of course not.
This is the problem with Google’s study on GPAs. If Google uses GPA as a factor, then finding that GPA isn’t correlated with job performance doesn’t really say much.
NOTE: I’m not saying that I’m a big believer in GPA as a factor. I’m only saying that the study’s conclusions don’t mean much.
GeeIWonder
on 22 Jun 13Chapeau
This discussion is closed.