cadets stand and look around, they are astonished to discover that
everyone has accomplished those things. The same is true for the Four
Horsemen: formidable accomplishments are the baseline for
applicants. Google is notorious for its vetting process for job
applicants, including bizarre questions that have no real answers. The
process is the message: if you survive, you are among the elite, the
most brilliant members of your generation.
There is no evidence that this process actually works, but that
doesn’t matter. Getting a job at one of the Four Horsemen is a ticket to
the tech illuminati—and the trajectory of your career is about to go
vertical.
8. Geography
Geography matters. There are few, if any, firms that have added tens
of billions of dollars in the last decade that aren’t a bike ride from a
world-class technical or engineering teaching university. RIM and
Nokia were the pride of their countries, and near the best engineering
schools in those countries. The ability to develop and lubricate a
pipeline with the best engineering talent from one of the best schools
in the world is the eighth factor in the T Algorithm.
Three of the Four Horsemen—Apple, Facebook, and Google—have
outstanding relationships with, and are a bike ride away from, a
world-class engineering university, Stanford, and short drive to
another, UC Berkeley (ranked #2 and #3, respectively).^12 Many would
argue the University of Washington (Amazon) is in the same weight
class (#23).
To be an accelerant you must have the raw material. Just as you
used to build the electricity plant near the coal mine, the raw material
today is top engineering, business, and liberal arts graduates. Tech—
software—is eating the world. You need builders, people who can
program software, and who have a sense for the intersection of tech
and something that adds value to the enterprise and/or the consumer.
The best engineers and managers for that task come from, in greater
proportions, the best universities.