Hiring at Google?

Apparently, the people doing the current hiring at Google have said they found that expensive degrees don't predict success, GPAs don't predict success, and asking interviewees if they can solve puzzles doesn't predict success. Would a coin toss help?

Their claim of what did predict success:

For every job, though, the No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it's not IQ. It's learning ability. It's the ability to process on the fly. It's the ability to pull together disparate bits of information. We assess that using structured behavioral interviews that we validate to make sure they're predictive.

This sounds familiar. According to Marvin Minsky:

No, no; your trouble is that you're confusing a thing with itself!

By the way, Google also regards “intellectual humility” as desirable. That might mean the ability to admit being wrong when confronted by evidence. It might also mean a reluctance to tell an echo chamber they're all wrong. Are the engineers who realized that “alternative energy” was a waste of time and money still working for Google?