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Google's Ph.D. Advantage

Posted by Hemos on from the dissertating-your-results dept.

Frisky070802 writes "The New York Times reports on Google's success and desire in hiring Ph.D.'s (free registration required). It says that Google's willingness to let every employee spend 20% of his or her time on an independent project is a compelling motivator and that they estimate that Google has as many Ph.D.'s working for it as Microsoft, which is 30 times larger. How many other companies put "Ph.D. a plus" in their want ads?"

5 of 572 comments (clear)

  1. Umm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    How many other companies put "Ph.D. a plus" in their want ads?"

    Quite a few. Any kind of scientific research, for example.

    1. Re:Umm... by troc · · Score: 5, Informative

      Here at the European Patent Office a vast proportion of the patent examiners have PhDs. It's by no means mandatory but it is almost expected.

      (Dr.) Troc

      --
      Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
  2. Re:Link and Thoughts by kwoff · · Score: 5, Informative

    That link required me to register. I noticed that if I typed the original URL into the browser, I was also required to register, but when I did a search on Google http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&ie=as cii&q=google&btnG=Search+News the story for the NY Times was a regular link. So apparently they're using the HTTP-Referer now instead of partner=GOOGLE.

  3. Google outsource research too! by manmanic · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not only a matter of internal PhDs at the company which help along their R&D efforts. Thousands of developers outside of Google are using the Google APIs to create new Google applications. Some notable hits are BananaSlug and GoogleAlert (the latter of which is indeed the product of a PhD, according to this article). The fact that Google is able to tempt so many to build on their platform is another sign of their popularity with the academic nerdy elite.

  4. Re:Is a PHD so great? by cperciva · · Score: 5, Informative

    Liar. Oxford doesn't give out PhDs.

    Since the moderators obviously didn't understand the joke: A doctorate from Oxford is a D.Phil (short for "Doctor of Philosophy"), in contrast to most other universities, which use the term PhD (Philosophiae Doctor, which is exactly the same thing in Latin).

    --
    Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid