Esteemed schools of music probably produce dozens of guitarists "better" (in any way you would measure it academically) than Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix per year who go on to a life of producing nothing of lasting worth.
I'll take the guy/girl who has actually proved they can produce something useful every time over someone who is "better" but hasn't.
Well then I guess it's because Page/Hendrix were much more than expert guitarists. They were also good at composition, lyrics, showmanship, marketing, business. Those academic guitarists will make contributions to the guitar field but seems that you wouldn't value that alone and it's OK. You are free to have your opinion about whom to hire just as Google is. For the sake of the argument, you could imagine 100 reasons why Google wouldn't hire Jimi Hendrix. Even though he produced something very popular he lacks many things that Google wants: he's not respectful of other people so he's going to cause other people problems, he's doing hard drugs so he's unpredictable, good with guitar but not other instruments, and so on.
If Google keeps telling itself it only hires the very best guitarists, and it turns down someone like Hendrix - because he's "not a team player", or he doesn't know how to tap out 13/18 while improvising an Indian Harikhamboji raga, or for some other inane reason - then it isn't really interested in the best guitarists at all.
It's the difference between an holistic view of talent, and an academic and rather narcissistic insistence on specific limited social signals that are believed to correlate with intelligence.
And this really matters in practical ways. A lot of talented devs will be reading this story and wondering if they really want to work for Google. Negative PR like this is incredibly damaging. Consider the opposite - if Google could say "Yes, the Homebrew guy works for us." How much value do you think that would have had?
Long term, the really smart and inventive people start to stay away. And then you get something that seems to be happening to Google already - declining product quality, a poorer user experience, and diminished reputation. You know - Google's record of hits recently hasn't been that great?
So anyone who thinks Google is fine because it still has thousands of applicants is missing the point. Instead of being the kind of place where Hendrix plays, it's in danger of becoming the kind of place where there are a lot of people with a lot of solid but uncreative technical chops, and no one is making cool and interesting music any more.
I think this is spot on. I have seen 30 person teams composed of 30 one dimensional people, and 3 person teams composed of 10 dimensional people. With few communication barriers and everyone thinking about everything all the time, I take the small tight team. It does depend on the project, though, because a) sometimes the problems can be parallelized and many people working is good and b) 10 dimensional people don't typically like boring problems.
Esteemed schools of music probably produce dozens of guitarists "better" (in any way you would measure it academically) than Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix per year who go on to a life of producing nothing of lasting worth.
I'll take the guy/girl who has actually proved they can produce something useful every time over someone who is "better" but hasn't.