My principal exposure to Chris Messina was his 50-minute long, rambling vlog about Mozilla's future direction—one that seemed really poorly thought out and ill-considered to me. It apparently irritated a number of folks at Mozilla as well.

I wrote a long, rambling piece about the whole episode: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/5/14/184745/679

I have to wonder - does the high profile guy like Chris go though the same rigorous Google interview process that they are so famous for or is it a "simply hired" scenario?

Disclaimer, I started at Google this week.

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.

What does it say about me that I parsed this sentence with "Google" as a verb and Hires as Hi-Res?

I have a vague feeling a Mark Jen episode could be forthcoming.