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Re:It’s better to be born rich than gifted by paulpauper on Saturday October 13, 2018 @05:31PM (#18210128)
>If I had to pick between IQ and pre-existing wealth, I would choose wealth.

It depends how one defines wealth. If the choice is framed as choosing between $10 million lump sum with no taxes or any conditions vs. an IQ of 130, then maybe the $10 million and an IQ of 100 is the better bet. However, these studies define 'wealthy' (assuming they even quantify it at all) to be merely upper-middle class, which is much less, and this this wealth is further diluted by number of siblings and other factors.

>. Hard work is a necessary but not sufficient condition to make money -- same applies to IQ.

That's my point and I agree. But many of these articles downplay or ignore the role of IQ. IQ is still necessary but it may not be sufficient.

Re:It’s better to be born rich than gifted by Hydraulix989 on Saturday October 13, 2018 @05:38PM (#18210149)
You need an IQ of at least 140 probably even 150 to make $10 million (4+ stddev). You see people on the street every day with a 130 IQ, that's your average software engineer right there.
Re:It’s better to be born rich than gifted by Kaveren on Saturday October 13, 2018 @05:54PM (#18210211)
No you don't, where is this supposed to come from? 130 IQ on 15 SD is probably significantly too high as well to be the mean average.
Re:It’s better to be born rich than gifted by Hydraulix989 on Saturday October 13, 2018 @07:07PM (#18210484)
Mean IQ world-wide (and also in America) is 100. Software engineers here in San Francisco are nowhere close to average intelligence across the US. Data shows differences across professions for IQ, and software engineering lands firmly on the 2 stddev (130 IQ) mark. Remember, populations aren't distributed evenly, and smarter people than average tend to end up in SF Bay. It's difficult to be well-calibrated if you haven't spend enough time outside the bubble here.
Re:It’s better to be born rich than gifted by Kaveren on Saturday October 13, 2018 @07:51PM (#18210611)
I'm open to being wrong here, but where can I find a source on this?

I only found this one chart [1], and the mean averages seem to be lower than 130. I have no idea how reliable this is. I can't speak to San Francisco at all, but I can't find the data.

I'd also include "web developer" with software engineer, and everyone with no knowledge of CS theory, just all software developers in my opinion.

[1] http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/Occupations.aspx

Re:It’s better to be born rich than gifted by Hydraulix989 on Sunday October 14, 2018 @03:57PM (#18214915)
Without doing too much digging, one of the first results in my quick Google search suggested a 128 IQ average:

https://www.electronicproducts.com/News/Engineer_vs_engineer...

Google and Facebook engineers even push 140 IQ when you look at how selective they are. For example, many Top 10 university graduates work there, and just based on SAT score acceptances alone, the average IQ at a top US university crosses 140-150 easily.

Re:It’s better to be born rich than gifted by Kaveren on Sunday October 14, 2018 @04:21PM (#18215089)
I still disagree on the IQ requirement for money, but looks like you're right about this. I was mistakenly searching for "average IQ by profession", rather than "average iq for engineers". Thank you for the link!
Re:It’s better to be born rich than gifted by Hydraulix989 on Sunday October 14, 2018 @04:51PM (#18215249)
Right, I wouldn't call it a "requirement" per se, but not having such a high IQ is like being only 6 feet tall in the NBA. It takes some serious cognitive abilities to be able to amass 8 figures without any prior family fortune of any sort.
Re:It’s better to be born rich than gifted by obscurantist on Saturday October 13, 2018 @07:38PM (#18210585)
I've lived in the Bay Area since before starting kindergarten. No way the average IQ of software engineers here, or anywhere, is close to 130. Software engineering might be one of the only STEM disciplines that gives credibility to the Ortega hypothesis.
Re:It’s better to be born rich than gifted by Hydraulix989 on Sunday October 14, 2018 @05:40PM (#18215561)
How so? I don't see how the average software engineer IQ being 100 vs 130 affects the (rather questionable) proposition that the large mass of average/mediocre software engineers MIGHT outperform the handful of Jeff Dean's (the claim made by the Ortega Hypothesis). Just based on the IQ population distribution alone, it's not unreasonable to think that Jeff Dean has a 160-170+ IQ.

It is still a questionable proposition -- "10x engineers" are a thing, and brilliant singular insights that unlock billions of dollars in productivity like the concepts of convolutional neural networks and MapReduce are the brainchild of rare chart-defying individuals, rather than a product of the masses working in tandem. The Pareto Principle still seems to hold, even for software engineering (just ask any Bay Area software company's HR department).

Regardless, as an appeal to intuition, there is some sort of minimum bar (software engineers are still a VERY scarce commodity, as evidenced by market dynamics), suggesting that the average individual (100 IQ) is ill-equipped to take on the sort of abstract reasoning and novel thought processes so readily discarded by billions of years of prior evolution (indeed, knowing C++ would not have helped you as a primordial human fighting off that hungry sabertooth tiger) needed to comprehend and write robust code wading through some of the most complex systems (the Linux kernel is millions of lines of code) ever fathomed by humankind. This is the whole premise behind IQ theory, which really just boils down to a simple statistical argument.

Re:It’s better to be born rich than gifted by samontar on Saturday October 13, 2018 @09:33PM (#18210920)
Haha, in my various jobs I always considered myself fairly gifted in intelligence. Then one day I met a guy who is actually clearly damned intelligent - a technical cofounder of a company. The speed with which he would comprehend a problem and approach it was off the charts in comparison to me. Quite remarkable, really, and it sort of made me realize how smart some people can be. It was like going to college again and finding out that while you were exceptional in school, you’re now with a lot of people just like you. Love it.