[hkmurakami]

>I suspect the "tough" interview plays well into a company's PR.

from: "The trick Max Levchin used to hire the best engineers at PayPal"

Levchin realized the best engineers wanted to be challenged both in their jobs and in the interview process. “We cultivated a very public culture of being incredibly hard to get in. Even though it was actually very hard to get good people to even interview, we made a point of broadcasting that it's incredibly hard to even so much as get into the door at PayPal. You have to be IQ of 190 to begin with, and then you have to be an amazing coder, and then five other requirements. The really, really smart people looked at it and said, "That's a challenge. I'm going to go interview there just to prove to these suckers that I'm better." Of course, by end of the conversation, I'm like, "Maybe you want to come get a job here because you're pretty amazing.”

http://firstround.com/article/the-trick-max-levchin-used-to-...

[Retric]

Looking for people with high IQ's with the right background is basically a waste of time. There are plenty of ways to define IQ's but 160 is around 1 in 30,000 and there are only something like ~200 graduating highschool each year. If 5 percent of them study programming you looking a say 10 new genius programmers every year. And plenty of them avoid SV for reasons as simple as the limited dating pool.

The simple truth is large companies end up with a few geniuses randomly but there rare enough to not be worth optimizing for. What companies really want are people willing to work ridiculously hard for little reason and that's what 'hard' interviews are optimized for. O your willing to put up with hours of BS on the off chance we will higher you, great let's just see how you like 60h+ weeks.

[astrobiased]

My dad was part of a company in Boston that only had employees with an IQ of 140 and up. I asked him how it went and he laughed and said it naturally fell into ruins. Key point: there's a lot more to employees than just quantifiable numbers like GPA, IQ and such.

[lelandbatey]

I'm pretty sure that was mostly hyperbole, with the intention being "we hire smart, clever people" however you choose to qualify that.

[killermonkeys]

Yes lack of dates has always been a big complaint at the Palo Alto MENSA meet ups.

[reinhardt]

Bazinga!

[fuzzywalrus]

To add: Genius isn't even a predictor of success. Granted, intelligence is a useful tool, its only one of many things that govern success. Sometimes "genius" can be in impediment to success.

Humans are hive minded despite our best attempts to assert otherwise. A modern computer or a modern bridge can't be built from scratch by one person. A genius can certainly help raise the bar, but a cohesive unit capable of achieving the end result is going to be a better optimization strategy.

[nostrademons]

IQ has fat tails: the extreme ends of the distribution are much more common than a bell curve would predict.

[Retric]

IQ by definition fits the bell curve. A given normalized IQ test is only good for a given rang and time period and when incorrectly interpreted outside of that range will produce excesive people with high IQ's. Also a test that's accurate +/- 10 IQ points is going to bump more people from 150 to 160 than drop people from 160 to 150 simply because there are more people at 150 than 160. Not to mention the tendency for people to pick the highest score vs the average.

PS: Often the limit is as low as 135.

[nostrademons]

Alex3917 brought up the same point in the other sub-thread where I raised this, and my response was basically "What's the point then?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5915459

Yes, you can define a concept as a normal distribution centered at 100 with a standard deviation of 15. But if you claim that this concept can be measured with IQ tests, and then the observed distribution of IQ scores doesn't match the predicted curve - it's the curve that's wrong, not the tests.

The studies that the "fat tail" results were from all used the Stanford Binet L-M test, which has a ceiling of around 230.

[Retric]

Sit back and think about this for a second, if you define IQ in some other fashion you can't really have multiple IQ tests just the score on one specific test. As to having problems with a specific test, just because a specific laser rang finder has issues does not mean we need to redefine the inch.

PS: There is no way they had enough data to support an IQ rang up to 230. Do you bave any idea how many people you need to sample to have 50 people with an IQ between 205 and 220.

[HelloMcFly]

Do you have evidence for that? I've worked on cognitive ability testing as it related to workplace performance, and have never seen anything that deviated dramatically from a normal distribution, especially at the high end.

[nostrademons]

Google [iq fat tails] and there're a bunch of articles on it (and one comment I wrote here about 4 years ago). The original data source for most of the articles is Terman's 1921 study of high-IQ people; they've plotted out the observed frequency of Terman's data against a normal distribution and found that it deviated markedly after about 3-4 SD.

Some additional Googling seems to have found some other independent studies:

http://hiqnews.megafoundation.org/John_Scoville_Paper.htm

http://www.abelard.org/burt/burt-ie.asp

I'm curious what sort of population your work draws from. The results above showed that IQ follows a normal distribution until about 140; other papers I've read indicate that IQ correlates with life outcomes until an IQ of about 140, and then appears completely uncorrelated. If you're studying workplace performance, I wouldn't be surprised if a good fraction of high-IQ people simply aren't in the workplace. (See eg. Christopher Langan.)

[gwern]

> other papers I've read indicate that IQ correlates with life outcomes until an IQ of about 140, and then appears completely uncorrelated.

Cites? The papers I've read, from the Terman study and the SMPY kids, don't show that.

[nostrademons]

The citation I was thinking of was from Daniel Goleman's Working with Emotional Intelligence, where one of the findings presented was that a moderately high IQ (usually in the 120-130 range) is often a prerequisite for entering a demanding profession like doctor, lawyer, or computer programmer, but continued success in the field depends more upon emotional skills like confidence, perseverance, resilience, social skills, and leadership.

With a bit of Googling, I've found some other support for this, including the Terman study:

http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/grady/emptypromise.html

"Our conclusion is that for subjects brought up under present-day educational regimes, excess in IQ above 140 or 150 adds little to one's achievement in the early adult years." - Louis Terman, 39th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education Part I, pp. 83-84

[ArekDymalski]

Just remember that the distribution of the test results depends on the tool itself as well as testing conditions. So I would say that such anomalies are rather the problem with the measurement than characteristic of the population.

[dk8996]

I have to agree with this at some level. I have seen startups trying to pull this type of crap. I haven't figured out why, it could be because they are trying to create "elite culture" that just doesn't fit or they are trying to seem more special so you will put up with BS and 60h+ weeks.

[kybernetyk]

> "That's a challenge. I'm going to go interview there just to prove to these suckers that I'm better."

Well that, or: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

[SatvikBeri]

Dunning Kruger does not mean that unskilled people think they do better than skilled people. On average, the more competent people at any skill will rate their abilities higher than the less competent people. See this graph[0] from the original study[1] for a better explanation.

[0]: https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/p480x...

[1]: http://ttsg.org/pdfs/Dunning-Kruger%20Effect.pdf

[kybernetyk]

I meant it the other way round: That some smart people won't have that "I show 'em" attitude and won't even try because they think they are too bad anyways.

[ndefinite]

The chart supports that assumption to some extent. The smartest are under estimating their percentile.

[skwirl]

It would also unfortunately filter out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

[skrebbel]

That does filter out the genius engineers who aren't also arrogant, doesn't it?

(which might not be a problem)

[hkmurakami]

earlier in the interview he talks about preferring avoiding false positives over missing out on false negatives, so this practice does fit into their philosophy.

[skrebbel]

I suspected so. Still, as a super-amazingly competent genius engineer with no self esteem, I hope not many companies follow their lead.

[peterjancelis]

You see yourself as a "super-amazingly competent genius engineer" yet lack self esteem?

What would stop you from applying at a company with a hiring PR strategy as described by Levchin? They aren't looking for confidence in all fields of life, just the technical job related part...

[hkmurakami]

there's probably a bit of sarcasm and hyperbole in his words ;)

[mseebach]

What's the point of hiring a super-amazingly competent genius engineer if he's going to sit in a corner and think he's wrong all the time? If you don't offer your genius to the team, you might as well not have it.

And no, parceling out work for you to go and excel at on your own is likely not a good use of your skill.

[stephenhuey]

I'm sure loads of amazing projects throughout history have been pulled off with great assistance from amazingly competent people who were hesitant about their abilities. It'd be interesting to find out if more teams are successful with arrogant or humble people. Perhaps you're just more likely to hear about the successes of arrogant people thanks to their loud trumpeting about themselves.

[pekk]

What a pile of bullying bullshit. If someone is skilled, they are skilled completely apart from whether they are constantly advertising themselves and putting other people down as worse than them.

[rhizome]

What's the point of hiring a super-amazingly competent genius engineer if he's going to sit in a corner and think he's wrong all the time?

Think of it this way: someone who is concerned with not doing the wrong thing is going to be more sure that what they do come up with is the right thing, that they aren't reinventing the wheel badly.

[sliverstorm]

Yes, but someone who is paralyzed by fear of doing the wrong thing is never going to invent the wheel, forget about whether or not it has actually been invented yet.

[hkmurakami]

imo such nice people do well by depending on nice friends who can introduce them to competent, well meaning teams (I know a few here and do my best to play matchmaker)

Btw I noticed you like C# (from your profile) so I automatically like you haha :)

[skrebbel]

hah :)

I wonder whether the downvote is because of the C# line.

[da02]

That seems to be a good thing. They get together after lots of rejections and start a sleep little company that goes on to impress the world. Either that or they stay in academia. (eg Niklaus Wirth)

[ArekDymalski]

This story is a great example of what happens if you mix up employer branding with recruitment process. Attracting talent is one thing, while defining what actually "talent" means for your company (in terms of competencies required for the job) and how to measure it - now that's completely different story. In an extreme case you can end up with ultra-smart, over-qualified people who will be disappointed by the boring, uninspiring every-day tasks they're assigned to. The goal of recruitment is not to get "the best people", but to get the people who will consistently deliver business results.

[themstheones]

There are approximately 7 people on earth with an IQ of 190 or higher, so I'm calling bullshit on that requirement.

[nostrademons]

I've seen this misconception twice on the thread now, so I'm calling it out: IQ is not normally distributed. It has fat tails: the extreme ends of the distribution are much more common than a normal distribution would suggest. Some quick Googling indicated that Terman's data on high-IQ people (1921) showed IQs at 4 SDs (160ish) are about 15x more common than a Gaussian would predict, while at 5+ SDs (175-200ish) they can be up to 1000x more common than a Gaussian.

[Alex3917]

> IQ is not normally distributed.

IQ is actually normally distributed by definition. Actual intelligence, if such a thing exists, may not be. The reason for Terman's finding is that there aren't any IQ tests that are valid for people with extremely high IQ.

[nostrademons]

Then you get into "What's the definition of IQ?" You could argue that IQ is a theoretical construct that's defined to average 100 with a standard deviation of 15 - but then, if you can't measure it with any tests, and when you do try to measure it the tests come up with different numbers, what's the point?

In my physics courses, my professors were always very careful to stress that "If the theory says one thing and the data says another, it's the theory that needs to change." (Well, unless it's a student lab report that measures the speed of light as different from the commonly accepted value. ;-))

[Alex3917]

I agree with what you're saying, my point is just that all of the current IQ tests (including the ones Terman used) were not designed to be measures. That is, someone with an IQ of 200 isn't twice as smart as someone with an IQ of 100, which is what the term 'measurement' implies. (C.f. the book Measurement In Psychology, which was recommended by tokenadult a while ago.) Rather, they are designed to compare people relative to one another. In other words, regardless of whether or not there is some underlying thing called IQ, no one (to the best of my knowledge) has ever tried to measure it.

[Helianthus]

Valid discussion all around! Let's all go get some beers.

[rollo_tommasi]

That's clearly hyperbole to illustrate the perception they wanted to create, not an actual checkbox on the hiring form.