[switchupcb]

Michael Seibel recommends that all hires raise the average IQ score of the company. Yet they also recommend that startups be run by outliers? It doesn't work logically. Regardless, many programmers (technical founders) believe that LeetCode performance is correlated with IQ Score (since Google started using DS&A).

[tedmiston]

It sounds comforting in theory but expensive in practice.

That advice has long been old startup lore even before Michael was at YC.

But wrt literal IQ (I recall the advice being "smarter" than the average person in the room, not IQ specifically), I think the intended meaning is more "cognitive ability" or i.e., ability to learn quickly.

I think this is why most early stage startups can do well with mostly strong junior engineers and a lesser percentage of seniors to oversee the cloud engineering concerns like scale, architecture, infrastructure, security, etc.

[avgDev]

I score above average on IQ tests. Today, I would fail an algorithm interview. I have been building business apps. I can take an idea and make it a feature from 0 to database/api/web app.

I made a decision to just suck it up next year and practice algorithms. I have no problem getting offers from average companies. However, all the big dogs want data structures and algorithms. It doesn't feel right for me, but oh well.

[gedy]

I'd rather a real IQ test vs leetcode cramming games and having junior coders being the gatekeepers anyways.