Maybe he gets to work on difficult problems that can only be solved by a great algorithm.
Or maybe he works on making a set of algorithms 5% faster.
Making a sorting algorithm just 1% faster for the most used cases will probably save a company like Google vast amounts of electricity.
I guess there are plenty people who understand both algorithms and programming language features well. But if you want someone who is awesome in algorithms you might not care if they couldn't grasp the simplest programming language feature like a for-each loop, or a static variable.
At such a big company, I doubt anyone could get a job just working on algorithms coming out of undergrad. Maybe if you had a PhD in a relevant field I could see it. I'd bet almost everyone at Google is extremely good with algorithms when compared to the whole population of developers so I really don't see them giving this kind of sought after position to someone so junior. There's just too much risk for the managers to give it to someone who's still unproven.
Or maybe he works on making a set of algorithms 5% faster.
Making a sorting algorithm just 1% faster for the most used cases will probably save a company like Google vast amounts of electricity.
I guess there are plenty people who understand both algorithms and programming language features well. But if you want someone who is awesome in algorithms you might not care if they couldn't grasp the simplest programming language feature like a for-each loop, or a static variable.