[Shubley]

I think what you said about height might be a bit off since you're dismissing the possibility that tall people actually are better at their jobs.

E.g. looks and facial symmetry both correlate with fertility and IQ, probably through the mechanism of mutational load. So you could say, "good looking people make more money" as an example here, but the effect could be from IQ because they actually do go together.

The same could be happening for height. This may be the reason people instinctively are attracted to tall people.

[nickparker]

I haven't looked at that literature myself, but I would be surprised if it completely disarms my point.

It's very believable that intelligence and height correlate, but the question then becomes "Do we overweight height in decision making, relative to its predictive power for success/intelligence?" If height very weakly predicts increased intelligence and we weight it strongly, that's still far from optimal decision making.

The correlation with intelligence isn't even necessary to ask that question. Hiring taller people also has upside in that other people (eg, your customers!) are biased toward them as well. However, and I admit this is conjecture, I still suspect allowing your own biases to influence decision making is a net negative.