That's not really a problem for computer science students, I think. Their area of focus tends to be on the algebraic, theoretical side of the spectrum. It's much more of a problem for computer (software) engineers.
The most obvious evidence he's wrong is that Google's codebase is all C++ and Java, both languages that have generics and other more advanced features than Go. So apparently Googlers can use such languages just fine. What Pike was claiming was that Google had at some point dropped their hiring bar dramatically and somehow nobody had noticed this or commented on it, despite how controversial it'd have been inside the company.
I rather think that this comment about Go is not reflective of any real strategy or decision inside Google. Go's creators were bored and wanted to make a new language, so they did. The justification for what it looks like was then retrofitted on top.
I believe it was the latter, the twist being that it was forward looking, not reflecting then-current reality. It was likely someone else's prediction that the quality of talent available to Google will go down, going forward.
> "The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt."
Full context: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Lang-NEXT/Lang-NEXT-2014/Fro...
Alternatively: Seeing people continue to make mistakes in those languages that are widely used has informed the position about language features and design aspects that are problematic, and things that would be helpful to have. Proposing a new language to avoid them is an (admittedly fairly extreme) solution to that.
Back home CS means Informatics Engineering, a degree certified by the Engineering Order to practice, with enough theory and practice spread across 3 - 5 years.
Those that want CS theory without programing have a major in Mathematics with a minor degree in computing.