Ah yes. The real world. Where people with pointless skills get hired by Google, even though the ability to design and implement clever algorithms is an irrelevant programmer skill.
It is NOT an irrelevant programmer skill. It is a programmer skill which is relevant for certain projects and irrelevant to others.
Being the best in the world at anything is usually a good sign. Given two candidates for a programming position who appeared to have roughly equal skills based on the interview, but where one had held the world record in weightlifting and the other hadn't, I'd hire the one with the world record in weightlifting. The skill is utterly irrelevant to all programming projects, but the dedication needed to become the best in the world at something... that's valuable.
Being the best in the world at anything is usually a good sign. Given two candidates for a programming position who appeared to have roughly equal skills based on the interview, but where one had held the world record in weightlifting and the other hadn't, I'd hire the one with the world record in weightlifting. The skill is utterly irrelevant to all programming projects, but the dedication needed to become the best in the world at something... that's valuable.