I agree that the minimal intelligence is going to be lower, but I also don't think it matters as much as you think. Consider the extreme: say Google has 24,999

I agree that the minimal intelligence is going to be lower, but I also don't think it matters as much as you think. Consider the extreme: say Google has 24,999 really smart people and one dumb person, do you really think that one person is going to have that much of an impact? there are recent, fairly inexperienced hires doing amazing things Maybe, but is that true of the average new hire? I'm sure Google is still hiring a fair number of smart people who will do amazing things; my argument is that the average has dropped. You can cite individual examples of smart people but those aren't a counter-argument unless you have a statistically significant number of them. Remember, if you're going to use free food and candy stations as hiring tools, don't be surprised when the type of people you hire are more interested in eating free food and candy than building something awesome.