I'm sure there were tons of great engineers at Google, and they probably were incredibly picky with college grads. But I also saw them hire people I had worked with that were experienced but not amazing performers. There are people who have good resumes in that they went to a good school and somewhere along the line worked at a well regarded company. The funny thing is that people like that are typically well regarded their entire career even if they just bounce around. The pedigree doesn't go away. It's hard to evaluate people.