I expect this to be the true root cause of the negative correlation as well. Technical questions are good at rooting out those not good at data structures and a

I expect this to be the true root cause of the negative correlation as well. Technical questions are good at rooting out those not good at data structures and algorithms, and good at promoting those that do. However, you can be excellent at solving ICPC questions and not know anything about documentation, object oriented design, OS, databases, anything web related, etc. It's a very specific skill and practicing programming contests optimizes for it.