Virtuous modesty
Speaking of self-importance, The Register recently reported that Google VP, Bradley Horowitz told press his firm purposefully didn't hire certain exceptionally clever people in order to selflessly leave some brainpower on the other side of the fence.
Sounding as smug as Apple, Horowitz claimed to want to avoid Google becoming a supernova of brilliant genius, leaving at least a handful of Einsteins unemployed for other corporate scavengers to pick at.
"I recently had a discussion with an engineer at Google and I pointed out a handful of people that I thought were fruitful in the industry and I proposed that we should hire these people," he said, adding that the engineer had stopped him and said: "These people are actually important to have outside of Google. They're very Google people that have the right philosophies around these things, and it's important that we not hire these guys. It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry, as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google."
Maybe Google should add "Don't be modest" to its mantra from now on.
