I think the problem with this attitude is the assumption that what you are filtering for, which for the sake of this discussion is called 'intelligence', is the sole scalar factor that makes an employee great.
Haven't we all worked with that guy (or gal) who can't explain things as succinctly as the great, super-quick-witted double-800 SAT guy, but who has something different, a creative spark, a way of thinking outside the box? To assume that that character is simply a 'false negative' that an organization can do without, I think is very naive.
It comes down to risk and reward. Google has a proven business model; maybe they don't need that extra something that is worth the risk of a few non-performers. Or, as I suspect, that spark comes mostly from people who ended up at Google through acquisition, or the few who have reputations that allow them to bypass the traditional screening process, or they were just there at the beginning before the process was so ironclad. Or they got lucky and the interviewer liked them and gave them a bit of a pass.
TL; DR: Do you really only need an army of facile, confident test-takers who are good at making first impressions?
[Addendum: it occurs to me that if you are as large as Google, you can accept a process that only produces 0.1% (or less) creative geniuses (because lots of false negatives get rejected). You may even prefer to keep that number small but non-zero (a surfeit of true creative geniuses has its own problems). But is a ratio like 1:1000 the right number for a 20-person startup? I think the dynamics are much different at a small company. Let's remember, Google is not a startup, they are one of the largest companies in the world.]
Haven't we all worked with that guy (or gal) who can't explain things as succinctly as the great, super-quick-witted double-800 SAT guy, but who has something different, a creative spark, a way of thinking outside the box? To assume that that character is simply a 'false negative' that an organization can do without, I think is very naive.
It comes down to risk and reward. Google has a proven business model; maybe they don't need that extra something that is worth the risk of a few non-performers. Or, as I suspect, that spark comes mostly from people who ended up at Google through acquisition, or the few who have reputations that allow them to bypass the traditional screening process, or they were just there at the beginning before the process was so ironclad. Or they got lucky and the interviewer liked them and gave them a bit of a pass.
TL; DR: Do you really only need an army of facile, confident test-takers who are good at making first impressions?
[Addendum: it occurs to me that if you are as large as Google, you can accept a process that only produces 0.1% (or less) creative geniuses (because lots of false negatives get rejected). You may even prefer to keep that number small but non-zero (a surfeit of true creative geniuses has its own problems). But is a ratio like 1:1000 the right number for a 20-person startup? I think the dynamics are much different at a small company. Let's remember, Google is not a startup, they are one of the largest companies in the world.]