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Can't agree with this enough. The most consistent finding in industrial psychology is that general cognitive ability is by far the best predictor of job perform

Can't agree with this enough. The most consistent finding in industrial psychology is that general cognitive ability is by far the best predictor of job performance in virtually every role ever tested. Even jobs that don't seem cognitively demanding, like janitors or infantry. Higher IQ candidates almost universally do better, even if they start with much less experience. The takeaway as it applies to modern software hiring, is that skillset is way overemphasized. It's quite common to see job ads that heavily focus on the company's specific tech stack. ("Must have experience with Rails, React, Travis, and AWS") It's much better to cast a much wider net, and try to find the smartest people anywhere. High IQ people can easily re-tool their specific skillset. What's interesting is this is much closer to how the most successful tech firms, like Google, tend to hire.

kayoone 8y ago
I can't agree with this. High IQ can't be everything. Wouldn't this value experience and knowledge (like everything you learned in university) at zero? Imo there are a lot of great/amazing and productive Software Engineers that wouldn't do well in a whiteboard algorithm interview. The people that tend to do well, are the ones that have a lot of practice with the kind of problems.
- ghaff 8y ago
  I read the parent as talking about narrow skill sets that a smart and motivated individual can pick up pretty quickly. If you're looking for a senior developer you probably don't want to hire someone who has never programmed even if they're widely acknowledged as really smart and an expert in ball bearing design. And obviously applies in lots of areas. If I'm looking for someone to head up a digital marketing or marketing research initiative, someone whose only work experience is software development is probably not the best choice no matter how smart and motivated they are. OTOH, as you get to the level where people are more managers than practitioners, their specific skill sets presumably start to make less of a difference. Added: And, as peer noted, people do shift careers significantly all the time. I never really directly used my undergrad (or grad) engineering degrees all that much.
- pps43 8y ago
  > Wouldn't this value experience and knowledge (like everything you learned in university) at zero? Having switched professions twice, I now use practically nothing of what I learned in university from about second year forward. Math and to some extent physics are still relevant, but that's pretty much it. It might be painful to admit, but the practical value of that rather specialized knowledge that took me several years of hard work to obtain is pretty much zero now.
  - klntsky 8y ago
    > It might be painful to admit, but the practical value of that rather specialized knowledge that took me several years of hard work to obtain is pretty much zero now. It's sad that your professors didn't tell you beforehand that you were going to learn how to learn during that time, not just study a particular technology stack.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      I thought that was fairly common knowledge about a great deal of university education.
    - jonfw 8y ago
      This bears the question- are classes based around studying a particular technology track the most effective way to teach somebody how to learn?
      - ghaff 8y ago
        The short answer is probably no. And the fact is that top universities mostly aren't so focused on teaching whatever language or framework is the flavor of the day. That said, you need tools of some sort if you're going to actually build things as opposed to just learning, say, algorithms in pseudo-code. And it probably makes sense to use some fairly standard language to do so. There's not much point in making things deliberately obscure by making students use some language that the professor designed for his PhD thesis.
      - vecter 8y ago
- rifung 8y ago
  > Wouldn't this value experience and knowledge (like everything you learned in university) at zero? I haven't read the research myself but if they are only looking at interviews, this could be explained by the fact people with absolutely no prior knowledge would be filtered before reaching the interview.
- dcolkitt 8y ago
  So, what we know from industrial psychology isn't that experience doesn't add value. It's that high IQ people learn faster. This makes sense when you remember that intelligence is broadly defined as the ability to learn. While Alice may have fewer years of experience than Bob, she might have effectively more experience if she absorbed understanding at a faster rate. An unexperienced, high-intelligence person usually starts at an initial disadvantage, but manages to "get up to speed" quickly. This also underscores the particular importance of intelligence in software. The field is constantly awash in new technologies, where nobody has had time to accumulate extensive chronological experience. So, it's really important to find people that can absorb new concepts quickly. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191308510000043 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019130851...
- noego 8y ago
  My interpretation is that among the pool of people who meet the minimum requirements and are interested in that position/career, IQ is the best predictor. If you're just picking random high-IQ people off the street, I don't think they'll do very well in a software engineering job.
jfarmer 8y ago
The research says structured interviews and work-sample tests have similar predictive power and all together they have yet more. The takeaway shouldn’t be IQ über alles.
- dcolkitt 8y ago
  The research shows that structured interviews do have better predictive performance than unstructured interviews. But that effect is entirely mediated by their higher correlation with IQ. In other words, structured interviews are better because they're less noisy measures of intelligence. The takeaway very much is IQ uber alles. [1] https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1133&context=studentwork https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refer...
  - ma2rten 8y ago
    I am not familiar with the research, and don't have time to review it right now. However, it seems like common sense to me that there are some factors beyond intelligence that matter such as motivation, interpersonal skills and character traits.
    - IshKebab 8y ago
      I think you're right but those are really hard to measure in an interview. Motivation especially.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  Your grasp of the research is out of date. From the 1998 meta-analysis > The most well-known conclusion from this research is that for hiring employees without previous experience in the job the most valid predictor of future performance and learning is general mental ability ([G M A ], i.e., intelligence or general cognitive ability; Hunter & Hunter, 1984; Ree & Earles, 1992). > Work sample measures are slightly more valid but are much more costly and can be used only with applicants who already know the job or have been trained for the occupation or job. http://www.flume.com.br/pdf/Scmidt_The_validity_and_utility.pdf http://www.flume.com.br/pdf/Scmidt_The_validity_and_utility.... From the 2016 meta-analysis by the same author. > Overall, the two combinations with the highest multivariate validity and utility for predicting job performance were GMA plus an integrity test (mean validity of .78) and GMA plus a structured interview (mean validity of .76) Work sample tests do not work as well as the old research suggests Table with effects linked below https://m.imgur.com/jULz7RE https://m.imgur.com/jULz7RE More recent paper https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi1x46z0uzhAhWSAHwKHamyCPYQzPwBegQIARAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F309203898_The_Validity_and_Utility_of_Selection_Methods_in_Personnel_Psychology_Practical_and_Theoretical_Implications_of_100_Years_of_Research_Findings&psig=AOvVaw05ooOefVZxP5lN3tSnonHH&ust=1556329789071905 https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi1...
hunter23 8y ago
What is the correlation between IQ tests and algorithm interviews? Do people with better IQ scores do better on algorithm interviews?
- pmiller2 8y ago
  With or without months of preparation on some of the exact problems interviewers use “grinding LeetCode”?
- kradroy 8y ago
  I wouldn't expect that. Algorithm interviews as they're practiced tend to favor memory abilities and not cognitive. It's hard to come up with standard algorithms on the spot if you haven't been exposed to them. I do know that cognitive abilities and long term memory abilities aren't correlated. Cognitive abilities and short term / working memory are positively correlated though.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cloverich 8y ago
  The trick here would be separating high IQ people who have prior algorithmic experience from those who do not, because that's a much bigger influence on performance.
- ma2rten 8y ago
  I work at Google, based on personal experience I would say it does a good job of setting a minimum bar in terms intelligence and coding ability. However, it might reject some people unfairly. A little bit of preparation helps a lot, but beyond a certain point preparation doesn't help anymore. All interview questions require solving a new problem in the interview itself. Depending on the interviewer and question, the difference between a hire and no-hire recommendation can be quite marginal. There is a huge luck factor involved.

kayoone 8y ago

I can't agree with this. High IQ can't be everything. Wouldn't this value experience and knowledge (like everything you learned in university) at zero? Imo there are a lot of great/amazing and productive Software Engineers that wouldn't do well in a whiteboard algorithm interview. The people that tend to do well, are the ones that have a lot of practice with the kind of problems.

ghaff 8y ago
I read the parent as talking about narrow skill sets that a smart and motivated individual can pick up pretty quickly. If you're looking for a senior developer you probably don't want to hire someone who has never programmed even if they're widely acknowledged as really smart and an expert in ball bearing design. And obviously applies in lots of areas. If I'm looking for someone to head up a digital marketing or marketing research initiative, someone whose only work experience is software development is probably not the best choice no matter how smart and motivated they are. OTOH, as you get to the level where people are more managers than practitioners, their specific skill sets presumably start to make less of a difference. Added: And, as peer noted, people do shift careers significantly all the time. I never really directly used my undergrad (or grad) engineering degrees all that much.
pps43 8y ago
> Wouldn't this value experience and knowledge (like everything you learned in university) at zero? Having switched professions twice, I now use practically nothing of what I learned in university from about second year forward. Math and to some extent physics are still relevant, but that's pretty much it. It might be painful to admit, but the practical value of that rather specialized knowledge that took me several years of hard work to obtain is pretty much zero now.
- klntsky 8y ago
  > It might be painful to admit, but the practical value of that rather specialized knowledge that took me several years of hard work to obtain is pretty much zero now. It's sad that your professors didn't tell you beforehand that you were going to learn how to learn during that time, not just study a particular technology stack.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I thought that was fairly common knowledge about a great deal of university education.
  - jonfw 8y ago
    This bears the question- are classes based around studying a particular technology track the most effective way to teach somebody how to learn?
    - ghaff 8y ago
      The short answer is probably no. And the fact is that top universities mostly aren't so focused on teaching whatever language or framework is the flavor of the day. That said, you need tools of some sort if you're going to actually build things as opposed to just learning, say, algorithms in pseudo-code. And it probably makes sense to use some fairly standard language to do so. There's not much point in making things deliberately obscure by making students use some language that the professor designed for his PhD thesis.
    - vecter 8y ago
rifung 8y ago
> Wouldn't this value experience and knowledge (like everything you learned in university) at zero? I haven't read the research myself but if they are only looking at interviews, this could be explained by the fact people with absolutely no prior knowledge would be filtered before reaching the interview.
dcolkitt 8y ago
So, what we know from industrial psychology isn't that experience doesn't add value. It's that high IQ people learn faster. This makes sense when you remember that intelligence is broadly defined as the ability to learn. While Alice may have fewer years of experience than Bob, she might have effectively more experience if she absorbed understanding at a faster rate. An unexperienced, high-intelligence person usually starts at an initial disadvantage, but manages to "get up to speed" quickly. This also underscores the particular importance of intelligence in software. The field is constantly awash in new technologies, where nobody has had time to accumulate extensive chronological experience. So, it's really important to find people that can absorb new concepts quickly. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191308510000043 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019130851...
noego 8y ago
My interpretation is that among the pool of people who meet the minimum requirements and are interested in that position/career, IQ is the best predictor. If you're just picking random high-IQ people off the street, I don't think they'll do very well in a software engineering job.

jfarmer 8y ago

The research says structured interviews and work-sample tests have similar predictive power and all together they have yet more. The takeaway shouldn’t be IQ über alles.

dcolkitt 8y ago
The research shows that structured interviews do have better predictive performance than unstructured interviews. But that effect is entirely mediated by their higher correlation with IQ. In other words, structured interviews are better because they're less noisy measures of intelligence. The takeaway very much is IQ uber alles. [1] https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1133&context=studentwork https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refer...
- ma2rten 8y ago
  I am not familiar with the research, and don't have time to review it right now. However, it seems like common sense to me that there are some factors beyond intelligence that matter such as motivation, interpersonal skills and character traits.
  - IshKebab 8y ago
    I think you're right but those are really hard to measure in an interview. Motivation especially.
barry-cotter 8y ago
Your grasp of the research is out of date. From the 1998 meta-analysis > The most well-known conclusion from this research is that for hiring employees without previous experience in the job the most valid predictor of future performance and learning is general mental ability ([G M A ], i.e., intelligence or general cognitive ability; Hunter & Hunter, 1984; Ree & Earles, 1992). > Work sample measures are slightly more valid but are much more costly and can be used only with applicants who already know the job or have been trained for the occupation or job. http://www.flume.com.br/pdf/Scmidt_The_validity_and_utility.pdf http://www.flume.com.br/pdf/Scmidt_The_validity_and_utility.... From the 2016 meta-analysis by the same author. > Overall, the two combinations with the highest multivariate validity and utility for predicting job performance were GMA plus an integrity test (mean validity of .78) and GMA plus a structured interview (mean validity of .76) Work sample tests do not work as well as the old research suggests Table with effects linked below https://m.imgur.com/jULz7RE https://m.imgur.com/jULz7RE More recent paper https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi1x46z0uzhAhWSAHwKHamyCPYQzPwBegQIARAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F309203898_The_Validity_and_Utility_of_Selection_Methods_in_Personnel_Psychology_Practical_and_Theoretical_Implications_of_100_Years_of_Research_Findings&psig=AOvVaw05ooOefVZxP5lN3tSnonHH&ust=1556329789071905 https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi1...

hunter23 8y ago

What is the correlation between IQ tests and algorithm interviews? Do people with better IQ scores do better on algorithm interviews?

pmiller2 8y ago
With or without months of preparation on some of the exact problems interviewers use “grinding LeetCode”?
kradroy 8y ago
I wouldn't expect that. Algorithm interviews as they're practiced tend to favor memory abilities and not cognitive. It's hard to come up with standard algorithms on the spot if you haven't been exposed to them. I do know that cognitive abilities and long term memory abilities aren't correlated. Cognitive abilities and short term / working memory are positively correlated though.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cloverich 8y ago
The trick here would be separating high IQ people who have prior algorithmic experience from those who do not, because that's a much bigger influence on performance.
ma2rten 8y ago
I work at Google, based on personal experience I would say it does a good job of setting a minimum bar in terms intelligence and coding ability. However, it might reject some people unfairly. A little bit of preparation helps a lot, but beyond a certain point preparation doesn't help anymore. All interview questions require solving a new problem in the interview itself. Depending on the interviewer and question, the difference between a hire and no-hire recommendation can be quite marginal. There is a huge luck factor involved.