I think it was in Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational book that the story of some branch of the Israeli military came up. They only accept the absolute best ap

I think it was in Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational book that the story of some branch of the Israeli military came up. They only accept the absolute best applicants, but then they also accept a few that fail the admissions process. The reason is to provide a check on the process; if those admitted 'failures' work out in real life, there's something wrong with the selection process that needs to be corrected. Once big difference is that they require a certain amount of manpower, so they can't afford to throw away good material due to an inaccurate screening process. I guess in contrast Google can (probably?) afford to be wasteful.