Hey, I read that New York Times article too!

Let me quote the paragraph, with a little bit of emphasis:

Q. Other insights from the data you’ve gathered about Google employees?

A. One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything.

Many game programmers are young, in their early and mid 20s, and therefore just a few years out of school. Older developers (including myself) frequently age-out of the industry. I'm hoping it doesn't happen in my case, but it is unrealistic to think it cannot happen. Either way, the bulk of game development applicants are just a few years out of school, where they still correlate somewhat in the pattern of success.

Repeating what was written all over that post, I look for a pattern of successes. For a recent graduate, completing schooling with high grades is for them a success, one among many on the resume. That resume looks like success after success after success, each success describing obstacles that were overcome with both smarts and efforts.

Again, I look for patterns that the person has brains and uses them. I don't count any single data point as strong individually, considering instead the broad pattern that emerges.

Good point Frob about the college graduates, I missed that in my haste. Myself (and I do allot of interviews) do not take GPA into my hiring decision. I have not seen the raw numbers from their data, but it mentiones only "slight correlation". I understand that is another data point, but in mine mind is just not enough and my bigger weighting point for interviewee is if they have any personal project which they can show. That part usually drives large portion of mine decision.

I don't ask for it, but if they want to offer it I'll consider it.

When you work on a project at a company, the results do not accurately display your own ability because you were part of a team frob. Everyone contributed. Having a portfolio is a means of isolating your own abilities and showing your own work, not the work of your teammates as a manifestation or extension of your own. I feel that your logic is unsound in your evaluation of potential candidates.

Except that when we hire people, we're hiring people to work on a team. Someone's ability to contribute effectively in a team environment is actually more important than what they do when they have absolute control and can do whatever they want on whatever schedule they want.

--Dave