> There's a cheaper filter called an IQ test, but they are illegal in the US.
Tech people have been repeating this bullshit since the days when Slashdot was the HN. Maybe earlier. It's always been 99% false and 0% true, with 1% "it depends" (please spare us that bullshit).
IQ and IQ-like employment proficiency testing is literally an entire cottage industry.
> There is no compelling reason why s/w engineering couldn't be taught on an apprenticeship model
Two reasons, without thinking particularly hard:
1. Why internalize a cost that can be externalized?
2. Who's doing the mentoring? Senior Engineers make $300K-$600K. Professors make $60K-$200K. Most CS educators make less than their students' first year offers. So, even if you internalized the cost, you'd run it as a stand-alone training program as opposed to embedded apprenticeships. Which, btw, is what companies with "learn to code career pathways"tend to do.
> Do you have a high G score? You may be good at software.
I know lots of geniuses -- in the sense of high Putnam scores even -- who are clever programmers but couldn't SWE their way out of a wet paper bag. I also know a lot of folks who are not particularly bright but who are really fantastic SWEs.
It's not clear to me that IQ is a good predictor of SWE performance for most SWE roles, any more than it's a good predictor for literally any job (including checkout clerk or fry cook, btw).
IME certain types of Software folks massively over-estimate their own intelligence and also the importance of IQ-like intelligence required to be excellent in 99% of software development roles.
Tech people have been repeating this bullshit since the days when Slashdot was the HN. Maybe earlier. It's always been 99% false and 0% true, with 1% "it depends" (please spare us that bullshit).
IQ and IQ-like employment proficiency testing is literally an entire cottage industry.
> There is no compelling reason why s/w engineering couldn't be taught on an apprenticeship model
Two reasons, without thinking particularly hard:
1. Why internalize a cost that can be externalized?
2. Who's doing the mentoring? Senior Engineers make $300K-$600K. Professors make $60K-$200K. Most CS educators make less than their students' first year offers. So, even if you internalized the cost, you'd run it as a stand-alone training program as opposed to embedded apprenticeships. Which, btw, is what companies with "learn to code career pathways"tend to do.
> Do you have a high G score? You may be good at software.
I know lots of geniuses -- in the sense of high Putnam scores even -- who are clever programmers but couldn't SWE their way out of a wet paper bag. I also know a lot of folks who are not particularly bright but who are really fantastic SWEs.
It's not clear to me that IQ is a good predictor of SWE performance for most SWE roles, any more than it's a good predictor for literally any job (including checkout clerk or fry cook, btw).
IME certain types of Software folks massively over-estimate their own intelligence and also the importance of IQ-like intelligence required to be excellent in 99% of software development roles.