[dodos]

I had a very similar experience with Canonical when I was looking for my first job. The entire tone of the transaction was very negative and passive aggressive. It made me nervous about their work culture so I decided not to continue the application process. I'm still a bit bummed about it since I would have loved to work in that space.

[sokoloff]

I had to submit my SAT scores for a job at D. E. Shaw & Co.

I paused and had to check with the recruiter to make sure I'd heard her correctly. (I had.)

[DaveExeter]

What's wrong with that? SAT scores measure IQ, and can't be gamed like grades.

[StreetChief]

Have you ever seen this chart? SAT score correlates almost exactly with income.

https://www.futurescienceleaders.com/yvr1b/wp-content/upload...

[sokoloff]

What is the relationship across those income ranges between income and parental IQ?

https://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/08/least-surprising-cor...

Saying that SAT scores correlate closely with income in response to someone claiming that SAT scores measure IQ could be a statement of agreement or disagreement, depending on the relationships among the various measures.

[StreetChief]

I am disagreeing - why would more money make you inherently smarter? His premise that smart parents make more more is unquestionably false when 99% (or something) of wealth is transferred via inheritance - people don't generally get rich anymore[1].

Also, if you want to measure IQ, why not use an IQ test and not some arbitrary proxy?

[1] http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/papers/abs_mobility_p...

[sokoloff]

It's not that more money would make you inherently smarter, but rather that more intelligent parents might (statistically) both make more money and also have more intelligent children.

Those children might go on to score better on the SAT, leaving a correlation between parental income and SAT scores that would be unsurprising at each step.

Your point about inherited wealth is not demonstrated on the chart you showed, which was parental incomes (not wealth) and in ranges unlikely to be perturbed by vast inheritances.

> Also, if you want to measure IQ, why not use an IQ test and not some arbitrary proxy?

I don't want to; I suspect colleges and D. E. Shaw felt like SAT scores were an acceptable/practical proxy for whatever purpose it was that they had. I thought it was weird and slightly off-putting to be asked, but it seems to work for them.

[jvanderbot]

SAT is a decent measure of IQ when corrected for the number of times you've taken the SAT. Rich folks can take it a lot, including prep courses.

[StreetChief]

Are you just out of college?! That is insane to me.

[sokoloff]

I was in my late 20s at the time and had graduated from a well-known engineering school. They ask everyone, even tenured professors...

It was also the single highest-density pool of talent that I've ever worked with, then or since. Our office manager had a PhD from Colgate.

[kunley]

At one job, Canonical was our vendor and I need to admit, they tended to be arrogant also towards the paying customer.