[Retric]

I know it's probably an exaggeration, but IQs of 160 are the 99.997th percentile so there should be something like 10,000 people in the united states of all ages with 160+ IQ's. Suggesting those are the type of people you want to recruit is mostly a waste of time because there are just not that many people let alone people with that IQ let alone people with that IQ who are looking for programming jobs.

[DaniFong]

Hmm,

Try as we might, IQs don't actually follow a bell curve. There are many more on the high and low ends than would be expected by looking at the curvature in the middle. Whether this is a measurement error or something else, we don't know.

Also, because of the unique position of the USA in the world (and especially places like Silicon Valley, Cambridge, Pasadena, New York) an awful lot of the right hand side of the bell curve for nations like China, India, Russia, etc. are currently living here, and often working for tech companies.

Additionally, when you do happen to get extremely brilliant people excited and working on the same thing as you in the same organization, the effects are magical. I've experienced nothing else like it.

Finally, when you're in Silicon Valley, you get the sense that there are maybe a couple thousand serious players who, if you look close, are directly involved in or are supporting most of the major efforts. It is a small world -- it seems like it's about two degrees of separation, give or take. You really get the sense that the right kind of people are the crucial ingredient that fires the whole engine of innovation here.

IQ is probably one of the less important characteristics in most positions in most companies. But it's still an ok measure for something important.

But much better to have people who are not merely good intellectual generalists (high 'g') but who are actually alarmingly good at the actual things you need to do in your company. There are as many times more of these as there are distinct things to do.

[niels_olson]

"Intelligence Quotient"

The value is defined by a bell curve.

[btilly]

No. No. No.

The IQ test was invented by Alfred Binet as a way of identifying people who were having trouble in school because they were mentally slow. For this he came up with a large number of different questions that exercised the brain in various ways, and figured out how well an average kid would do. When he gave the test to a real kid he would take their performance and figure out a "mental age" that they performed at. Their intelligence quotient was then defined as 100 * (mental age) / (physical age).

The development of IQ tests aimed at adults which are defined based on a bell curve was a later innovation. The name was kept simply because it was then well-known.

[nostrademons]

The value is defined by your test results. The tests generate scores that are roughly normally distributed up to about an IQ of 130 (two standard deviations), but then have many more people at high IQs than a bell curve would predict.

Most IQ tests can't even measure above 155 or so, anyway, and they obviously can't measure below 0. So it's a little silly to talk about them being normally distributed.

[rudd]

I could just as well have replied to any of the other comments below this talking about IQ, but I wanted to make sure people know that 1) IQ is not a perfect measure of one's intelligence, nor even necessarily the type of intelligence needing for programming, and 2) IQ tests are far from perfect in even measuring IQ. I don't know my IQ because I've scored anywhere from 120 to 200 on IQ tests.

[davidmathers]

As a programmer with an IQ of ~125, I'm doubtful that I would want to be a programmer if my IQ was 160+. I have a hard time believing that there are many professional programmers with IQs that high.

[reeses]

Having an IQ of 160 or above is not a life of sitting on clouds thinking deep thoughts about how string theory is obviously wrong. You run especially hard into the nurture trap so often discussed here.

That is, hearing,"You're so smart," so many times, from teachers, other students, coworkers, bosses, etc., cultivates a sense of elitism and a shock when something is actually difficult.

You're also bound by the same emotions as most other people. If you're a particularly aggressive or irritable person, imagine being surrounded by people who keep making mistakes because they're stupid. If you turn it outward, you're impatient at best and a bully at worst. If you turn it inward, you're stressed out, anxious, and depressed.

All of that said, being a professional programmer was the most satisfying thing I've done. Unfortunately, I moved on precisely because of the above paragraph -- I had managers I felt were particularly dim.

[drewr]

Always worth mentioning: "The Inverse Power of Praise" http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

[dbz]

I do not appreciate compliments anymore. I haven't for a long time. I have a complicated view I don't really wish to explain right now (maybe I'll write a blog post later) about why compliments are almost insulting, especially insulting by those people who care about "you" and who give them often (Sorry for that passive voice).

My thoughts all stemmed from the idea that compliments make people worse at what they do. At BEST they make the person continue at the same speed with a boost of moral. Imho.

[gmurphy]

Anecdote: while the environment is probably a contributing factor, the 25-30 teenagers and adults I know with IQs of 130-160 (gifted children's program) basically make the same career and life choices as others in the same socio-economic group, with the exception of post-graduate degrees, which they mostly avoided.

[waterlesscloud]

What do you imagine you would want to be?

[nostrademons]

IQ has fat tails. There are many more people with IQs over 160 than the bell curve would predict.