[listenallyall]

Identifying unmet demand is probably the most valuable skill any Googler can have, it already has enormous engineering talent. It's the difference between GMail or Android (or Search, obv), vs throwing away hundreds of millions on Google Glass or Google+

[kortilla]

Engineers don’t pick products anymore. That died a long time ago

[listenallyall]

Kind of the point - the engineers rejected the guy because (in their perception) he wasn't good enough at leetcode or some esoteric language feature or whatever - meanwhile they were blind to the fact that he possessed a skill that was far more valuable to the company, which they themselves had no ability to recognize or evaluate.

[busterarm]

Yeah most of Google's successful products are acquisitions, not homegrown.