> When Larry and Sergey started Google, they began by just hiring all the smartest people they knew out of Stanford... I worked for a large tech company as an

> When Larry and Sergey started Google, they began by just hiring all the smartest people they knew out of Stanford... I worked for a large tech company as an intern in the late 90's, which is where I learned smartest doesn't always equal best. There were two of us interns in the org, one on the east coast and one on the west coast. I was in grad school at a regionally known engineering school, whereas my west coast counterpart was a grad at Stanford. They were one of the smartest people I've ever met and worked with, and were basically a walking encyclopedia of CS knowledge, all the way down to level 1 of the OSI model. They were also entirely unable to execute on anything. There was no ability to plan and schedule work or to stay focused on the job itself. One of us got a raise and asked to come back next summer and the other got walked from the building by security (a first, apparently) before the summer ended. Yes, it's anecdata, and over my career I've worked with many other people from "top" institutions. As a whole, I haven't been any more or less impressed with them than any other Engineers I've worked with or hired.