Corporations become more like universities, at least for their digital elites, while universities are rapidly transformed into corporations. From How Google Works loc 1419:
From the outset, Google’s founders understood that to consistently hire the best people possible, the model to follow wasn’t that of corporate America, but that of academia. Universities usually don’t lay professors off, so they invest a lot of time in getting faculty hiring and promotion right, normally using committees. This is why we believe that hiring should be peer-based, not hierarchical, with decisions made by committees, and it should be focused on bringing the best possible people into the company, even if their experience might not match one of the open roles. Eric hired Sheryl Sandberg even though he didn’t have a job for her. It didn’t take long for her to assume the task of building our small business sales team, a role that didn’t formally exist until she helped create it. (Of course, Sheryl later left us and became COO of Facebook and a best-selling author. When you hire smart creatives, some of them eventually smartly create opportunities for themselves outside the company. More on that later in the chapter.) In a peer-based hiring process, the emphasis is on people, not organization. The smart creatives matter more than the role; the company matters more than the manager.
Mark Carrigan 