> There’s growing evidence that hiring a top sport programmer is a coup for software companies. Novakovski, the retired sport programmer, brought in Neal to wor

> There’s growing evidence that hiring a top sport programmer is a coup for software companies. Novakovski, the retired sport programmer, brought in Neal to work with him at Quora and then later hired Scott to work with him at Addepar. “Neal was like 18 when he started and, within three months on the job, he was in the top 10 percent of all our engineers,” Novakovski says. “Every time I have hired someone who is good at these contests, they have crushed the job. They tend to be fast, accurate, and into getting things done.” I'm pretty skeptical. I'm sure they are great coders, but is their skill level at solving math-heavy problems like the ones in these contests really required to build something like Quora?