No, you are not. The more damning trait would be believing you are not qualified because of a test administered when you were 8 years old (or worse, believing t

No, you are not. The more damning trait would be believing you are not qualified because of a test administered when you were 8 years old (or worse, believing the results of any IQ test administered after that). There are certainly brilliant folks around in the valley, who can grasp concepts faster and more deeply than seems human, but they are a significant minority. The prime requisites for success as an employee in the valley are still: 1) Good judgement (which tends to come from accurate self-reflection and critique) 2) Love of learning (so it takes you a couple hours or even days to grok redis's failure modes instead of 20 minutes, who cares -- the question is are you going to learn it (and every other useful thing that comes along, for years)) 3) Basic sociability (the valley is a small world, everyone knows each other, if you are a jerk life will get more difficult). For a much more eloquent description of how to thrive as a programmery type in the valley, consider http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html but translate research into "generally useful skills for building stuff." "You and Your Generally Useful Skills for Building Stuff." :-)