I'm probably a stronger believer in this than most, which is why it was easy for me to follow the evidence for our narrow case where it led. But you only need a

I'm probably a stronger believer in this than most, which is why it was easy for me to follow the evidence for our narrow case where it led. But you only need a weaker form of this to explain the experience I had recruiting at that company. All it takes to be a good engineer at the lower levels is a sufficiently high IQ/creative problem-solving ability. Put someone like that under the mentorship of someone who's learned good engineering habits and (barring severe behavioral problems), you'll have a pretty great junior engineer in a few months. Otoh,Experience and other habits and knowledge do become more relevant at higher levels, only because the responsibilities of the job shift and grow, such that you can do a lot more damage in the "learn by exploration" period of becoming good at something by just being really intelligent and learning on the job. I currently work with a bunch of physics and math and CS PhDs, people who are likely as intelligent as I am or more, but I'm a lot more equipped for our job because I'm applying that intelligence in the context of understanding how engineering systems work, at both a technical and personal level. There are tons of engineering habits that are second nature to me that never occur to them; if they shadowed me closely and I dedicated time to explaining the reason I do every little thing I do, then they'd pick up those habits in the same way junior engineers do. That is to say, as one would expect, the relative supremacy of IQ over other skills like conscientiousness (or yes, experience) diminishes at the higher levels. Everyone I work with would be considered "really smart" by any reasonable measure, but it's not purely the smartest who are the most effective anymore, the way it was when we were entry level.