Had a couple funny experiences these last few weeks that reminded me why I'm such an IQ-skeptic

The first was an interview w/ a Big Company

Big Company has engineers go through a technical screen which is a series of "solve this simple coding puzzle" tasks /1

I basically did this interview for fun, I have no interest in changing my job

And a big part of the reason for this is that my job is building things and solving problems. Switching my brain into code-puzzle mode was HARD. It took me days. I didn't enjoy it. /2

It dawned on me *just today* that the code puzzle technical screen is a thinly veiled IQ test. Lots of the same pattern matching and mental function you test for IQ is the same kind of thing they are looking for in the technical screen

I'm not great at that /3

The second thing was I did a great, fun virtual bachelor party with an old friend

All of his other friends are nerdy, high-functioning, very smart

We played JackBox and I did ok on stuff that was general knowledge but I really sucked on stuff that was closer to IQ-function /4

It's been a long time since I took an IQ test and I surprised the person who gave it to me that I did as poorly as I did

This did not surprise me though, I've always found myself in the company of people who struck me as innately smarter than I /5

I've wondered a long time how I even end up in these groups and why they can't see that I've clearly a low-rung intellectual and I think I finally have some answers:

1) I'm curious

2) I out-work my innate intelligence

I think that's why I kind of blow off discussions around IQ... b/c I see myself as something of a mid-wit who manages to punch above his weight by virtue of simply being tenacious

I have no sense of how common that quality is, but I know it's something I have in spades

My guess is that it is a quality that is not particularly common since it's not very well accounted for in most of the tech interviews I've done

The best I ever do in tech interviews is when they give me a chance to out-work the competition. Then I do very well.