[bane]

That said, any company that won't look at me because I'm from MIT and not Princeton isn't the kind of place I would want to work anyway. I'm sure this sort of discrimination makes for great internal culture.

Would you count Google in that statement -- with their notoriously discriminating hiring practices with respect to schooling?

[tonydev]

The handful of people I know at Google are from a variety of academic institutions, ASU, UW, Stanford, and MIT to name a few. Most importantly, they're all passionate, creative hackers who take pride in their work – not riding the prestige of their education.

The answer directly, if google decided folks from Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, MIT were not good enough while those from Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and Harvard were - then yes, I would count Google in my statement.

[bane]

That's good to hear -- and sounds like an improvement.

I was having dinner with a coordinator of university job fairs about a year ago and she commented that Google and Facebook were among the worst companies she's ever dealt with respect to hiring practices due to a very large school bias. Many of the schools she works with complains that their students don't even get their resumes looked at. She also note that Microsoft used to be one of those as well, but with Google and FB vacuuming up everybody else they've had to cast their net a bit wider.

Perhaps times are changing?

Anecdotally, the most brilliant people I've ever worked with came from either state schools or CMU or Stanford or MIT (specifically). I've had very little success finding top-notch folks from other established Ivies. Not sure why that is.

I think pg's essay on schools really helps bring some data to that though. It really is the individuals that count.