Google believes, as so many before them have, that the ideal candidate can be found through numbers: pure, unbiased, beautiful numbers. Because once you reach a certain size, your biggest threat is no longer your competitors, but rather your regulators, and that means that you must not expose yourself to regulatory (at the core, social) risk.
Bias is bad. Discrimination is bad. And if you're big AND bad, you get fined, and have obstacles put in your path.
So what does a rational BigCorp do? They make everything "fair". So everyone has the same opportunities, everyone is colorblind about cultural fairness-obsessions x, y, and z, and the hiring process becomes as effective as cardboard cake. Tick the boxes and you're in. Otherwise, there's the door.
Of course, the irony of all of this is that they end up discriminating against the very people they need: The different, the strange, the quirky, the innovative - everyone who doesn't perfectly fit the criteria of a safe hire where nobody can criticize the hiring decision (and impact your promotion prospects).
This is the social process by which BigCorp stagnation works, and it's always how it worked.
Attack the idea, not the "type of mind" that posted it.
My point of disagreement would be that BigCos making "safe" hiring choices and having overbearing, one-size fits all HR policies is a phenomenon that predates modern political correctness. Having a policy of making interviews into arbitrary objective tests isn't just to prevent twitter mobs and hold off political rhetoric, it's a way of making hiring more predictable, combat nepotism, and select for people who aren't too individualistic to succeed in the corporate environment. The downside, of course, is you throw away and turn off a lot of good candidates who don't fit the mold.
I think BigCorp prefers to bring on the strange/quirky talent through acquisitions and acquihires, rather than through the front door. That way, strange though the individuals may seem, their track record is proven.
Of course, the irony of all of this is that they end up discriminating against the very people they need: The different, the strange, the quirky, the innovative - everyone who doesn't perfectly fit the criteria of a safe hire where nobody can criticize the hiring decision (and impact your promotion prospects).
I work for Google as a software engineer and now also engineering manager.
There is no plausible mechanism by which a decision that anyone makes on whether to hire a candidate could affect that person's promotion prospects.
Interviewers don't make hiring decisions directly, they merely individually make recommendations to a committee that reviews these recommendations (along with other info like the candidate's resume). I have never heard of hiring committee "reporting" someone for recommending they hire someone "weird" or "bad" -- it would be kind of absurd. If you don't like the recommendation, don't take it! Similarly, hiring committee members are not going to be "written up" for making "weird", or "bad" recommendations. There isn't even a group of people who could plausibly do this.
There is plenty to criticize about how Google hires. But I disagree with what I read as the thesis of your post that we have to choose between a biased process and an effective one. Indeed the problem you identify is what I would describe as bias against people who don't fit a particular mold, people who are unusual or "weird", and so really what I think you're saying is that in trying to fight e.g. gender bias, we have introduced new biases.
I also don't think that's true. The counternarriative I'd propose is, we have always been biased against what we consider to be "weird" people, that's human nature. What we've been trying to do is change people's perception of what is weird, so that e.g. female or black coders aren't. That's what unbiasing is about.
The Goal of BigCorp, at any point in which they've been crowned the market leader (or sometimes monopolist) is to maintain the course. They become risk averse because you're less likely to get fired for making the same amount of money as last year than you are for making less. Yes, that might limit you from making MORE money than last year, but that's just how the human mind works.
There's several logical fallacies that wind up happening in these sort of processes (confirmation bias, survivor bias, etc) but the people making the decisions are fine with making them as long as things are working as expected. Eventually entropy takes over in all systems, including human social systems, and things break down irreparably. There's no stopping this in BigCorp, because that is their nature. There's no stopping this at Small Co. either, because in that system there's so few people that a single hiring mistake affects such a large % of the total work force.
TL;dr- All human systems involve humans, and that is best point of entry for problems.
Bias is bad. Discrimination is bad. And if you're big AND bad, you get fined, and have obstacles put in your path.
So what does a rational BigCorp do? They make everything "fair". So everyone has the same opportunities, everyone is colorblind about cultural fairness-obsessions x, y, and z, and the hiring process becomes as effective as cardboard cake. Tick the boxes and you're in. Otherwise, there's the door.
Of course, the irony of all of this is that they end up discriminating against the very people they need: The different, the strange, the quirky, the innovative - everyone who doesn't perfectly fit the criteria of a safe hire where nobody can criticize the hiring decision (and impact your promotion prospects).
This is the social process by which BigCorp stagnation works, and it's always how it worked.