[whack]

"Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills"

Worth keeping in mind that this is true for the culture/environment within Google, not universally. Different companies have different cultures, and the above actually makes me more cynical about the culture within Google. If two people have competing ideas for a engineering solution/implementation, is the winner going to be the one with the best technical merits, or the one best at office politics? Judging from the above study, it seems like Google's culture is less meritocracy-driven and more politics-driven than people think.