New York Times on Google PhDs

Randall Stross of The New York Times takes a look at the hiring practices of Microsoft and Google, specifically focusing on their approach to PhDs.

Working in Google’s favor is its practice of putting new Ph.D.’s to work immediately in the exact areas where they have been trained – in systems, architecture and artificial intelligence. Google, the company, may falter, but Google, the human resources experiment, is unlikely to be the cause.

Microsoft has yet to disavow old templates for hiring. Its chief college recruiter, Ms. Roby, says that among computer science Ph.D.’s, “it’s less likely to find someone with the desire to work on projects that will ship every 24 or 36 months.