I think people can recognize those at level N+1, but not (reliably) level N+2 and beyond. In fact they are likely to think that people much above level N+1 are "crazy".
Current political discourse contains lots of examples of people at level N+1 (or emulating that) convincing lots of people at level N that all the people at level N+k, k>1 are dumb, crazy or evil.
Re:Don’t Do This in Production
by YinglingLight on Monday August 20, 2018 @01:35PM
(#17801942)
Political discourse has very little to do with IQ and very much to do with Persuasion and hallucination bubbles.
Yes but... the level you are at is not just or mainly a function of IQ. I cannot evaluate the quality of a structural engineer who is much more skilled than me. Their cool new structural ideas could be brilliant or just terrible; I can't tell.
A key issue here is how one responds to not knowing how good those ideas are. Dangerous responses: "I can't tell so they must be crazy" or "I can't tell so they must be brilliant." Accepting that one doesn't know mitigates the risk.
Re:Don’t Do This in Production
by BurningFrog on Sunday August 19, 2018 @08:23PM
(#17796979)
I like this quite a lot!
Re:Don’t Do This in Production
by scarface74 on Sunday August 19, 2018 @08:13PM
(#17796947)
At every level of development when I really started getting serious about my career 10 years ago. I knew what I needed to know to get to the next level. That’s how I chose companies to work for. It would be really easy to tell if someone had more experience in something I had a passing knowledge about.
10 years later, I still know what I need to learn to get to the next level.
> there is some "law" here that I can't quite formulate about how developers can't recognize skills above their own level.
Perhaps you're trying to reformulate/restate the "Blub paradox" [1]?
This makes it impossible for someone with skill N to hire people with skill N+1, other than by dumb luck.