9 ms·

firstly, there's legal issues with IQ tests in job interviews in the US at least secondly, IQ testing covers a number of areas, many of which are not necessari

by npc 14y ago

firstly, there's legal issues with IQ tests in job interviews in the US at least secondly, IQ testing covers a number of areas, many of which are not necessarily related to the kind of thinking needed for programming. i think most of the verbal stuff in IQ tests wouldn't relate that much thirdly, even if someone aces the IQ test, there's still no indication that they would actually enjoy programming if they've never done it before. It's kind of pointless to train someone to code if they're just going to get sick of it and quit in 6 months. and fourth, an IQ test doesn't say anything about a person's ability to work with other people or prioritize things properly. an IQ test provides no protection against ending up with a prima donna who obsesses over brace style at the expense of getting useful things done. really, i think the best way to find out if someone can code is to look at something they've coded

noduerme 14y ago
Is it actually illegal to hire in the US based on IQ? I mean how is that discriminatory more than any other test for employment? Race, religion, political affiliation, disability are obviously all irrelevant in an IQ test... so in a way, isn't it more equitable? You make a good point about primadonnas and other potentially toxic personality types with high IQs, but you can screen that too. And I mean, I don't care about IQ. To me, pretty much anybody with talent should be able to come in with something awesome and say "look what I did", and if it's great, then who cares? Hire them. Obviously this isn't an argument for creating a new narrow-minded structure to replace the current one; I'm just talking about prioritizing along the essential lines instead of dancing around the real question. Isn't someone who codes and who can give you a fibonacci sequence in realtime more valuable than someone who codes, but can't? I can't do it, but I'd hire that guy.
- redthrowaway 14y ago
  Race, religion, political association, and the like are all socioeconomic factors which have been shown to have an effect on an individual's score on an IQ test. The classic example goes as follows: The testee is shown four pictures: a teapot; a saucer; a table, and a water pump. They are then shown a teacup, and asked to match it with the appropriate picture. The upper-class testee, for whom tea was always served in a cup on a saucer, selects the saucer. The middle-class testee selects the teapot, as the tea obviously goes in the cup. The child in sub-Saharan Africa recognizes the teacup as a cup, a so selects the water pump, as water goes in cups. This is obviously a contrived example, but it shows how the biases of the test-makers can conflict with those of the test-takers, leading those from different backgrounds to score worse on the test.
  - MartinCron 14y ago
    A real example I heard of a few years ago was with children putting picture story panels in order. The "correct sequence" was: Get Up, Eat Breakfast, Go To School while many of these children were getting subsidized breakfasts at school.
    - noduerme 14y ago
      I think anyone with an IQ over 80 would agree that's more of a red herring than a test of actual intelligence, so, if we can dispense with absurd fringe examples of the abuse of the concept of "IQ" maybe we can get down to the nuts of what companies are looking for, what programmers are trying to provide, and put a stop to this dramatic yarn about "how hard it is to find good help" once and for all.
      - MartinCron 14y ago
        The example was for small children and speaks more to the fact that IQ tests are in practice more discriminatory than they are designed to be. That's all.
      - derleth 14y ago
        If you can come up with a way to test for general intelligence without inadvertently biasing your tool in favor of a specific ethnicity, social class, or gender we're all ears.
        barry-cotter 14y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravens_Progressive_Matrices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravens_Progressive_Matrices
        Daniel_Newby 14y ago
        Curiously, American minorities score more poorly on culture-neutral tests like Raven's Matrices. They do better on culturally biased tests because they can pick up mainstream culture knowledge from TV and movies.
- starwed 14y ago
  >Race, religion, political affiliation, disability are obviously all irrelevant in an IQ test... so in a way, isn't it more equitable? Except that cultural background is not, unfortunately. And it's highly correlated with the first and probably weakly linked to the second and third classes as well.
  - noduerme 14y ago
    Let's assume a test that isn't culturally biased. The idea behind the test should be to determine the raw underlying intelligence of a person; culture shouldn't play into it at all. The fact that some IQ tests seem to discriminate - referring to the legal explanations above - appears to be a flaw in the tests given in those cases. If a test is biased toward a race or culture, then it's not an accurate measure of intelligence; we can't even call it an IQ test. It doesn't meet the definition of what most people are talking about or referring to when they say "IQ test" -- since "IQ" by definition is measured on a sliding scale in reference to the entire population. For argument's sake let's assume a test that doesn't discriminate or give advantage to any given race or culture. How is that different from a coding test, other than that it requires more general interest and knowledge, and doesn't overly reward memorization of algorithms?
    - starwed 14y ago
      This is a substantial enough topic that Gould wrote a whole book about it, The Mismeasure of Man. But directly relevent: * even if the concept of some sort of underlying general intelligence were valid, we have yet to come up with an unbiased test of it. * And then if you could somehow prove an IQ test was unbiased and germane to the job, then the court ruling referenced elsewhere in this thread wouldn't prohibit it's use.
      - noduerme 14y ago
        So you can't prove anything about anyone. No test can qualify or disqualify anyone. What about writing code? Isn't that a kind of basic test of intelligence? Or do you hold that anyone can write as well as anyone else, and there's no fundamental logic or critical thinking needed as long as they're properly trained? If that's true, why all this bother about who to hire -- can't we just hire anybody, and find them equally useful or useless in their jobs? You've gotta measure people somehow in order to hire them, right? You can spend all day talking about how unfair any possible test is, but the world will continue choosing people based on a multitude of criteria, most of which boil down to intelligence, and all I'm suggesting is that there are more efficient and less circumspect ways of doing that.
- patio11 14y ago
  The Supreme Court has held that a particular IQ test had a disparate impact on black applicants. This makes IQ tests essentially radioactive for most corporations in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    Unless the job is in law enforcement.
  - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
    1. That case was a social justice witch hunt. The purpose was to prove the political piety of the plaintiff. 2. The microscopic number of black engineers have already run the gamut of cognitive testing. An IQ test would not have a "disparate impact". This is why big corporations ask for university degrees: the degree itself is an IQ test. 3. FizzBuzz will screen out virtually the entire African race, and is provably related to actual job performance. After that an IQ test will not appreciably change the statistics.
    - keithnoizu 14y ago
      As multi-racial fellow with an i.q. of 148 with out a university degree making six figures doing software development i'd like to say that I find #3 questionable.
- bri3d 14y ago
  "IQ test" is too broad a term to say if it's "illegal to hire in the US based on IQ." Some purported IQ tests are provably biased towards a particular race. Those are illegal. The rest are presumably not illegal, but if you were sued, there'd probably be a pretty large burden in proving that every IQ question you'd ever asked was both not racially biased and directly relevant to the job opening. Hence, very few business even look twice at IQ testing anymore - it's too deep a minefield. For more background about IQ testing for employment in America, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. .
- burgerbrain 14y ago
  Interestingly, rejecting candidates because they score too well on IQ tests seems to be totally kosher in the US. Who would do such a thing? Cops.
  - aswanson 14y ago
    I pray this is a snide swipe at the police and not actually true.
    - wtracy 14y ago
      Nope. http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836#.T5sQ9u2E6JU http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/sto...
      - noduerme 14y ago
        I used to work in a place in LA with a regular group of cops who came in every night, and one guy told me exactly the same thing. It certainly explains a lot about cops in America, and the US in general. You can reason with most people. But cops in America aren't reasonable, because they aren't fuckin smart enough to hear what you say, when for example you say, "Yes, I left my driver's license in the house, which is right there, I'm just sitting in my car listening to music. Can I please go inside and get it for you?" No - way too much to process. Or when you say, "Is she under arrest, because if so I want to call her lawyer," and they crack you with a nightstick and chase you up Cahuenga Blvd while you're yelling at them for their badge number. Not that either of those things happened to me in the last ten years. But uh, fuck the police and fuck the government that chooses to arm a bunch of meatheads and send them out to lord it over citizens. I could tell you some stories about the cops my dad defended as a public defender, the ones from Culver City who only pulled women over to get blowjobs from them. But what would be the fucking point. You're all screwed. So much for a civilized conversation, now I've just let it all hang out on HN, and I'm sure I'll be attacked for it.
        JoeAltmaier 14y ago
JoeAltmaier 14y ago
Ok, you brought it up. IQ tests test one thing - can you do an IQ test. Scholars love them, write them, and they filter for ... yes! Scholarship! A human mind is multidimensional. The idea you can find one number to measure it is downright ridiculous. You wouldn't even buy pants based on just one number, say waist size. You'd get home, they'd be too long or too short. Obviously! But folks buy into the IQ cargo cult big time. Totally baffles me.
jcrites 14y ago
> I think most of the verbal stuff in IQ tests wouldn't relate that much Most software engineering jobs involve communicating with people. Customers, other engineers, other teams, leaders, etc. I would hazard to say that most effective senior engineers will spend at least as much time communicating with people as they will spend on individual technical tasks, if not more. Communication skills are vital. If you cannot effectively persuade a team of people that your approach or point of view is correct, then your views, no matter their objective merit, will not impact the organization. Being an effective engineer requires having good ideas and also influencing other people to understand and adopt them. A person can be an effective journeyman individual contributor engineer without strong communication skills, but to become a master with wide impact requires it.

by npc 14y ago

noduerme 14y ago

Is it actually illegal to hire in the US based on IQ? I mean how is that discriminatory more than any other test for employment? Race, religion, political affiliation, disability are obviously all irrelevant in an IQ test... so in a way, isn't it more equitable? You make a good point about primadonnas and other potentially toxic personality types with high IQs, but you can screen that too. And I mean, I don't care about IQ. To me, pretty much anybody with talent should be able to come in with something awesome and say "look what I did", and if it's great, then who cares? Hire them. Obviously this isn't an argument for creating a new narrow-minded structure to replace the current one; I'm just talking about prioritizing along the essential lines instead of dancing around the real question. Isn't someone who codes and who can give you a fibonacci sequence in realtime more valuable than someone who codes, but can't? I can't do it, but I'd hire that guy.

redthrowaway 14y ago
Race, religion, political association, and the like are all socioeconomic factors which have been shown to have an effect on an individual's score on an IQ test. The classic example goes as follows: The testee is shown four pictures: a teapot; a saucer; a table, and a water pump. They are then shown a teacup, and asked to match it with the appropriate picture. The upper-class testee, for whom tea was always served in a cup on a saucer, selects the saucer. The middle-class testee selects the teapot, as the tea obviously goes in the cup. The child in sub-Saharan Africa recognizes the teacup as a cup, a so selects the water pump, as water goes in cups. This is obviously a contrived example, but it shows how the biases of the test-makers can conflict with those of the test-takers, leading those from different backgrounds to score worse on the test.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  A real example I heard of a few years ago was with children putting picture story panels in order. The "correct sequence" was: Get Up, Eat Breakfast, Go To School while many of these children were getting subsidized breakfasts at school.
  - noduerme 14y ago
    I think anyone with an IQ over 80 would agree that's more of a red herring than a test of actual intelligence, so, if we can dispense with absurd fringe examples of the abuse of the concept of "IQ" maybe we can get down to the nuts of what companies are looking for, what programmers are trying to provide, and put a stop to this dramatic yarn about "how hard it is to find good help" once and for all.
    - MartinCron 14y ago
      The example was for small children and speaks more to the fact that IQ tests are in practice more discriminatory than they are designed to be. That's all.
    - derleth 14y ago
      If you can come up with a way to test for general intelligence without inadvertently biasing your tool in favor of a specific ethnicity, social class, or gender we're all ears.
      - barry-cotter 14y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravens_Progressive_Matrices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravens_Progressive_Matrices
        Daniel_Newby 14y ago
        Curiously, American minorities score more poorly on culture-neutral tests like Raven's Matrices. They do better on culturally biased tests because they can pick up mainstream culture knowledge from TV and movies.
starwed 14y ago
>Race, religion, political affiliation, disability are obviously all irrelevant in an IQ test... so in a way, isn't it more equitable? Except that cultural background is not, unfortunately. And it's highly correlated with the first and probably weakly linked to the second and third classes as well.
- noduerme 14y ago
  Let's assume a test that isn't culturally biased. The idea behind the test should be to determine the raw underlying intelligence of a person; culture shouldn't play into it at all. The fact that some IQ tests seem to discriminate - referring to the legal explanations above - appears to be a flaw in the tests given in those cases. If a test is biased toward a race or culture, then it's not an accurate measure of intelligence; we can't even call it an IQ test. It doesn't meet the definition of what most people are talking about or referring to when they say "IQ test" -- since "IQ" by definition is measured on a sliding scale in reference to the entire population. For argument's sake let's assume a test that doesn't discriminate or give advantage to any given race or culture. How is that different from a coding test, other than that it requires more general interest and knowledge, and doesn't overly reward memorization of algorithms?
  - starwed 14y ago
    This is a substantial enough topic that Gould wrote a whole book about it, The Mismeasure of Man. But directly relevent: * even if the concept of some sort of underlying general intelligence were valid, we have yet to come up with an unbiased test of it. * And then if you could somehow prove an IQ test was unbiased and germane to the job, then the court ruling referenced elsewhere in this thread wouldn't prohibit it's use.
    - noduerme 14y ago
      So you can't prove anything about anyone. No test can qualify or disqualify anyone. What about writing code? Isn't that a kind of basic test of intelligence? Or do you hold that anyone can write as well as anyone else, and there's no fundamental logic or critical thinking needed as long as they're properly trained? If that's true, why all this bother about who to hire -- can't we just hire anybody, and find them equally useful or useless in their jobs? You've gotta measure people somehow in order to hire them, right? You can spend all day talking about how unfair any possible test is, but the world will continue choosing people based on a multitude of criteria, most of which boil down to intelligence, and all I'm suggesting is that there are more efficient and less circumspect ways of doing that.
patio11 14y ago
The Supreme Court has held that a particular IQ test had a disparate impact on black applicants. This makes IQ tests essentially radioactive for most corporations in the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
- rhizome 14y ago
  Unless the job is in law enforcement.
- Daniel_Newby 14y ago
  1. That case was a social justice witch hunt. The purpose was to prove the political piety of the plaintiff. 2. The microscopic number of black engineers have already run the gamut of cognitive testing. An IQ test would not have a "disparate impact". This is why big corporations ask for university degrees: the degree itself is an IQ test. 3. FizzBuzz will screen out virtually the entire African race, and is provably related to actual job performance. After that an IQ test will not appreciably change the statistics.
  - keithnoizu 14y ago
    As multi-racial fellow with an i.q. of 148 with out a university degree making six figures doing software development i'd like to say that I find #3 questionable.
bri3d 14y ago
"IQ test" is too broad a term to say if it's "illegal to hire in the US based on IQ." Some purported IQ tests are provably biased towards a particular race. Those are illegal. The rest are presumably not illegal, but if you were sued, there'd probably be a pretty large burden in proving that every IQ question you'd ever asked was both not racially biased and directly relevant to the job opening. Hence, very few business even look twice at IQ testing anymore - it's too deep a minefield. For more background about IQ testing for employment in America, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. .
burgerbrain 14y ago
Interestingly, rejecting candidates because they score too well on IQ tests seems to be totally kosher in the US. Who would do such a thing? Cops.
- aswanson 14y ago
  I pray this is a snide swipe at the police and not actually true.
  - wtracy 14y ago
    Nope. http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836#.T5sQ9u2E6JU http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/sto...
    - noduerme 14y ago
      I used to work in a place in LA with a regular group of cops who came in every night, and one guy told me exactly the same thing. It certainly explains a lot about cops in America, and the US in general. You can reason with most people. But cops in America aren't reasonable, because they aren't fuckin smart enough to hear what you say, when for example you say, "Yes, I left my driver's license in the house, which is right there, I'm just sitting in my car listening to music. Can I please go inside and get it for you?" No - way too much to process. Or when you say, "Is she under arrest, because if so I want to call her lawyer," and they crack you with a nightstick and chase you up Cahuenga Blvd while you're yelling at them for their badge number. Not that either of those things happened to me in the last ten years. But uh, fuck the police and fuck the government that chooses to arm a bunch of meatheads and send them out to lord it over citizens. I could tell you some stories about the cops my dad defended as a public defender, the ones from Culver City who only pulled women over to get blowjobs from them. But what would be the fucking point. You're all screwed. So much for a civilized conversation, now I've just let it all hang out on HN, and I'm sure I'll be attacked for it.
      - JoeAltmaier 14y ago

JoeAltmaier 14y ago

Ok, you brought it up. IQ tests test one thing - can you do an IQ test. Scholars love them, write them, and they filter for ... yes! Scholarship! A human mind is multidimensional. The idea you can find one number to measure it is downright ridiculous. You wouldn't even buy pants based on just one number, say waist size. You'd get home, they'd be too long or too short. Obviously! But folks buy into the IQ cargo cult big time. Totally baffles me.

jcrites 14y ago

> I think most of the verbal stuff in IQ tests wouldn't relate that much Most software engineering jobs involve communicating with people. Customers, other engineers, other teams, leaders, etc. I would hazard to say that most effective senior engineers will spend at least as much time communicating with people as they will spend on individual technical tasks, if not more. Communication skills are vital. If you cannot effectively persuade a team of people that your approach or point of view is correct, then your views, no matter their objective merit, will not impact the organization. Being an effective engineer requires having good ideas and also influencing other people to understand and adopt them. A person can be an effective journeyman individual contributor engineer without strong communication skills, but to become a master with wide impact requires it.