HR people have to market candidates internally, many times to hiring managers who tell their bosses “Your recruiters don’t bring me quality candidates.” To protect themselves, the recruiters go after brand names. (“Is it my fault they didn’t like someone from Cornell who worked at Google?”)
The reality is this is suboptimal for the company, but can still be rational for HR.
I'm no different as an an architect. I don't always choose the best technology. I sometimes choose the most popular. The practical reason being its easier to find people who know it and there is plenty of documentation. The CYA reason is that if things go south, It's much easier to say it came highly reccomended. "No one ever got fired for buying IBM."
It’s not the revenue that I’m knocking. It’s being stuck with obsolete legacy technology that you can’t get rid of. Better things are out there but you are stuck because someone else made a decision that wouldn’t get them fired. (I’m at a place that is going through the painful process of showing IBM the door)
