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Reddit and Forums are full of people with similar experience. Canonical currently uses this "psychometric test" as a decisive critera for candidates https://w

by adev_ 3y ago

Reddit and Forums are full of people with similar experience. Canonical currently uses this "psychometric test" as a decisive critera for candidates https://www.thomas.co/sites/default/files/2019-08/GIA-Example-Booklet-2018.pdf https://www.thomas.co/sites/default/files/2019-08/GIA-Exampl... And from their own words "they take it very seriously". The result is exactly what you would expect of this kind of test. It is unsurprisingly utter rubbish. It asks the candidate to solve "important cognitive tasks" and translate that to substract 2 number as fast as possible, identify letters as fast as possible or rotate an image as fast as possible. I would honestly be curious to know how anybody with a functional brain can believe 5 seconds that this can be an important selection criteria for a senior software engineer, a SRE or an engineering manager. Is the goal suppose to be identifying the best human-based GPUs ? I wonder how many top talents they lost in early selection process due to this kind of garbage.

anthonypasq 3y ago
its obviously just an abstraction over an IQ test. Id argue its probably quite hard to find a 'top talent' that has an IQ thats substantially outside their desired range. Obviously theres variance and there's other factors that contribute to someones success in their career, but their raw intelligence is certainly a large input thats worth considering. Its nearly impossible to train someone with an IQ of 80 to be a senior software engineer. and please dont respond to this comment claiming IQ is a useless metric. its not, and thats been very clear for decades.
- timmytokyo 3y ago
  >and please dont respond to this comment claiming IQ is a useless metric. its not, and thats been very clear for decades. I'm glad you settled the debate with a single sentence. https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...
  - anthonypasq 3y ago
    if you could guarentee your child had an iq of 80 or an iq of 120 which would you pick? presumably if IQ is useless youd be fine flipping that coin?
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  "High IQ" != "able to do certain simple things faster than everyone else". What you're really looking for is "able to do really hard things at all".
  - anthonypasq 3y ago
    that is a fair point, but i think the two are correlated
- JohnFen 3y ago
  IQ is not a useless metric, but using it as a proxy for a ability is extremely questionable at best.
  - anthonypasq 3y ago
    they arent using it as a proxy for an ability. they are just trying to hire people with high iqs
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      If people are just selecting high IQ applicants for the sake of them being high IQ applicants, then I think we can all agree they're doing it wrong regardless of our other opinions about IQ. Presumably, companies that value a high IQ do so because they think it's an indicator of ability. But perhaps I'm wrong here. What other reason could they have?

by adev_ 3y ago

anthonypasq 3y ago

its obviously just an abstraction over an IQ test. Id argue its probably quite hard to find a 'top talent' that has an IQ thats substantially outside their desired range. Obviously theres variance and there's other factors that contribute to someones success in their career, but their raw intelligence is certainly a large input thats worth considering. Its nearly impossible to train someone with an IQ of 80 to be a senior software engineer. and please dont respond to this comment claiming IQ is a useless metric. its not, and thats been very clear for decades.

timmytokyo 3y ago
>and please dont respond to this comment claiming IQ is a useless metric. its not, and thats been very clear for decades. I'm glad you settled the debate with a single sentence. https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...
- anthonypasq 3y ago
  if you could guarentee your child had an iq of 80 or an iq of 120 which would you pick? presumably if IQ is useless youd be fine flipping that coin?
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
"High IQ" != "able to do certain simple things faster than everyone else". What you're really looking for is "able to do really hard things at all".
- anthonypasq 3y ago
  that is a fair point, but i think the two are correlated
JohnFen 3y ago
IQ is not a useless metric, but using it as a proxy for a ability is extremely questionable at best.
- anthonypasq 3y ago
  they arent using it as a proxy for an ability. they are just trying to hire people with high iqs
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    If people are just selecting high IQ applicants for the sake of them being high IQ applicants, then I think we can all agree they're doing it wrong regardless of our other opinions about IQ. Presumably, companies that value a high IQ do so because they think it's an indicator of ability. But perhaps I'm wrong here. What other reason could they have?