Google Hires Chris Messina
latimesblogs.latimes.com
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I wrote a long, rambling piece about the whole episode: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/5/14/184745/679
To put this into context, Google (at least as of 2007 when I was there) takes the style of their code quite serious. In order to check code in, it needs to be reviewed and signed off by at least two team members. The two people who sign it off also have to be certified in that language though, according to Google's internal style guidelines and usage policies.
When you start, you can't sign-off on code for any language, even if you created the language (in all fairness, Google's internal style does vary from PEP-8 slightly). The upside of this is that the entire code base is consistent and more or less looks like it was all written by the same person.
In short, Google has a lot of famous people working for them. When I was there I never saw that impact how they were treated.
During my time in the first company, I thought there were too many bureaucracies/processes revolving code policies.I felt that those rules were slowing me down. After I spent time with the second company, I took my words back. We wasted time arguing about code-style and best practices/standards. People checked-in code as if they were cowboys in the wild wild west. At first it felt fun. Later on during the bug-fixing period, the pain and agony start.
I learned my lesson.
Looking at the incoming orientation group there is no shortage of really smart people just starting. Including Theodore Tso. (The ext4 maintainer for the Linux kernel.)
There will always be turnover, but Google doesn't look like it has any trouble attracting really smart people.