[fdgsdfogijq]

I used to glorify these schools until I worked in finance, where basically everyone went to a top 5 usa school. They were quick, organized, efficient with their work, on the ball, competitive. But intellectually superior? Not really. They were definitely smart, but the traits that got them into those schools werent raw intellect.

[heresie-dabord]

In every professional environment that I have known, good habits have beaten genius, whether real genius (a very rare property) or assumed genius.

[taneq]

In my experience, good habits beat genius 9 times out of 10 (maybe even 99 out of 100).

That other time, genius recreates the entire playing field and good habits are left sitting around staring at each other trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

[Supermancho]

> In every professional environment that I have known, good habits have beaten genius, whether real genius (a very rare property) or assumed genius.

In every successful startup I worked at (3 of 20ish), I observed the opposite.

[urthor]

How so?

Curious on your perspective why professionalism and good work habits beat "genius" at startups.

I would have assumed the opposite. My view of startup life was that it's about managing your money, your hiring/firing, your sales, and what you focus on.

That's about good prioritization and productivity per minute.

[heresie-dabord]

Assuming the good faith of the poster, he or she may have worked with (a) real genius several times, or (b) with several real geniuses.

(a) is more probable. Sustainable business start-up success of the non-banal order requires high general intelligence. It does exist. But 9 times out of 10 hard work and people skills will win.

[Supermancho]

> (a) real genius several times,

Perceived genius (or more appropriately, assumed genius) would be more accurate. The people who are the least scrupulous, most creative, and technically competent are very successful. Startups aren't usually successful because of sweat hard work, but realizing a combination of opportunity and reach, rather than contracting as much software development labor as possible.

[kube-system]

Ivy Leagues’ admission process rewards students who are outgoing and do a lot of different things.

You can’t tell from a high school transcript whether someone got an A because they’re brilliant and didn’t have to study at all, or whether they got an A because they studied hard.

Most of my friends who went into ivy leagues were outgoing and did tons of extracurriculars and studied hard. My friends who were naturally brilliant either stuck to the subjects they liked, and ended up getting their doctorate at a state school, or they had had their success derailed for some other reason.

[Aeolun]

> My friends who were naturally brilliant either stuck to the subjects they liked

When you know you are smart there is no reason to prove it to yourself by going to a fancy school.

Unfortunately you need to prove it to other people later, and going to the fancy school is a very simple signal.

[rowanG077]

So being smart somehow absolves you from wanting validation from others? Why?

[taneq]

This is really interesting, because it feels like it lines up with my own experience but I'd like to see how someone else quantifies it. What do you mean by "intellectually superior"? What does "raw intellect" even mean? What are these nebulous not-intellect-but-contributing-to-GI-score traits?

[imtringued]

I once did an online IQ test and then got interrupted by someone else after five minutes and I quit the test, my score was apparently 88. I don't trust online IQ tests, I only did it because someone annoyed me into taking it and someone annoyed me out of taking it.

I honestly think IQ scores primarily measure how much you want to score well on an IQ test. You can improve your scores by 10 points according to scientific papers just by being more motivated and not quitting, not being distracted and so on.

[taneq]

I don't trust online IQ tests because the scores I get on them range from 110ish to 180ish and despite my robust self-esteem I don't see a score of 160+ as especially credible. :P

Real (ie. official medical) IQ scores seem to be heavily skewed around age and speed. So the same performance would get you a super high score in a 5-year-old and a mediocre score in a 10-year-old, which is weird because the questions are explicitly trying not to test language/knowledge type stuff that would change a lot between those ages. And the same answers would get a far higher score if you bashed them out in 15 minutes than if you took 2 hours on them. I haven't gone back to re-examine it but I remember thinking that you were way better off smashing through the questions as fast as possible and getting a few right than carefully considering the questions... which is an odd way to define intelligence.

[achenatx]

hard work can compensate for a lot when you are solving problems that have already been solved with known answers (e.g. school) . When you are solving totally novel problems with no known solutions things get much harder and you start to be able to separate high performers.

[taneq]

99.99% of everything is (re-)solving problems that have already been solved with known answers. It's those curly edge cases that have to involve us weirdos.