For a lot of the people Google needs to hire to write Google-scale code, maybe "can identify things that people want and need and actually implement them"" isn't a particularly useful skillset _to Google_, but the skill set of "ingrained knowledge of data structures useful to writing scalable, low-level code" is.

I do agree that the "make things people want" is a very useful/desirable skillset for a vast array of non-Google-scale companies, and I'd personally prefer to work for a company that values this.

But I'm willing to posit that at a certain software engineering scale, the problems and valued traits are very different, and may align more with "knows data structures" than "can make something people want".

I'm not saying Google should value one to the exclusion of the other. But perhaps if you have Google's talent pool, the base level is "ingrained data structure knowledge" (correlating to engineering skills they need), and they'll also get the "ingrained data structure knowledge AND ability to make something people want" applicants.

I'm not arguing that other companies should do this. Just exploring whether it makes more sense for Google than perhaps we would think.