[atleastoptimal]

Should a prerequisite to every successful tech person advice list include "Be 99th percentile IQ or higher"?

All these people go to schools and work environments where they exclusively interact with incredibly intelligent people. Do they really know just how mediocre the average person is? Or is the average person implicitly written off with respect to any sort of prodigious success.

[dragonwriter]

95th percentile wealth and 90th percentile IQ is probable better than the reverse or 99th percentile IQ alone, if you want to succeed in any business, including tech.

[ZephyrBlu]

Eh, 95th percentile is probably more reasonable. You don't have to be super smart to be successful. In tech you probably have to be pretty smart, but I think being from a well-off family is more important in most cases.

[Mezzie]

Yeah, reading this advice as somebody in that percentile according to all The Tests and who started at around the same time Altman did (bit younger) but who was way, way further down the socio-economic ladder is interesting.

I did put some of this advice into practice. One thing it got me was an ODD diagnosis.

[elcritch]

Well we can add a postulate that if you really were smarter then you would’ve been born to a wealthier family to resolve the quandary. Quite elementary. ;)

[teaearlgraycold]

Or willing to bust your ass every day

[ZephyrBlu]

You can bust your ass all you want, but it's not going to make up for having an IQ of 100.

There is a lower bound, and I think it's around the 90-95th percentile if you want to excel in tech. This is based on 115 = 85th percentile, and I think <110-115 you're going to have a tough time in a top tech company as an engineer.

[comte7092]

The hubris on this site never ceases to amaze.

That one would assume these people are solely in the place they are due to exceptional intelligence and merit and not a combination of luck, connections and a degree of hard work and talent just shows how much of a bubble tech is.

The meritocracy myth rages on.

[pfannkuchen]

If you are smarter than 99 out of 100 people, there are still millions of people as smart as you in USA alone. If someone said 99.999th percentile I would agree with you, but IME being smarter than 99 out of 100 people is not that high of a bar.

[comte7092]

Excluding 99% of the population from applying fairly generic advice from listicle isn’t that high of a bar?

[pfannkuchen]

I am assuming that the advice given is not just to get any tech job at all, but to be highly successful in the field. Clearly, below some analytic intelligence level, being highly successful in engineering is not a realistic or useful pursuit. Where that threshold is would be up to debate, certainly. I think most would agree it’s above 90th percentile, at least. Calling it 99th might be hyperbolic, sure, but I don’t think it’s intensely out of touch or anything. It’s like if an NBA player is giving advice about how to succeed in a basketball career. Presumably they are speaking about succeeding in the NBA or at least college level basketball, not some rec league. And, if you are 5’5”, while it is not strictly impossible for you to succeed, it is probably not realistic for you to pursue it. The advice is implicitly aimed at people who stand any chance at all of making it into the NBA.

[comte7092]

It’s funny that you use the NBA as an example. You are talking about a league with less than 1,000 players (aka less than .00001% of the population of the US, and players are recruited globally), and even still there are people who are that short who has lengthy careers.

As I understand it, and I’m not going to pretend to know everything about him, Sam Altman is not a successful programmer but a successful businessman. To assert that his success is even primarily due to IQ rather than being at the right place at the right time and having connections to the right people demonstrates a dogmatic deviation to the notion that IQ is all encompassing, when in reality is it consistently shown to be poorly correlated with success.

[blackoil]

Depends on your definition of successful. Will these advice help make you next tech billionaire. Most probably no, that requires too many dices to land in your favour.

But all of these advice while not novel and may sound superficial, will make you more happier and more successful if followed.

e.g. a ~20%(adjust by country/age) CAGR in income will make most feel monetarily successful no matter what the start point is. Spending less time on TV and more with family/friends will for most give them more happiness. Working hard may not be enough but almost always a pre-requisite.

[thatguyknows]

Can you list one invention or idea that Sam has had that requires 99th percentile IQ?

[whateverman23]

Does he have any original ideas or inventions to list since 2004?