>I don't see any data that says it's correlated with standard IQ test scores.
While there's no Data that correlates IQ with algorithm problems. Intuitively the more intelligent you are the better you would be at these algorithm problems.
If IQ measures intelligence and if intelligence determines your ability to perform well on algorithm problems than your performance on these problems correlates with IQ.
To deny the above logic would be to say intelligence has no correlation with IQ and/or algorithms therefore algorithms don't correlate with IQ.
Not every axiom needs to be measured with data. Common sense and intuition also fill the gap where no data exists. Google saying Intelligence correlates with your problem solving abilities and abilities to solve computer science problems is something that absolutely makes sense even if no data to back it exists.
>Leetcode grind for 3 months is not exactly raw ability.
Doesn't matter how long you spend on leetcode. Google will present you with a problem you haven't seen before and there are a huge amount of people who have done leetcode for years and can't pass the interview questions.
If you're a guy who just grinds for 3 months and can suddenly pass the google interview with flying colors than you're the guy that google wants because there are many people who can't do this.
It matters how long you spent time on leetcode/other practices from popular algorithm books (comen, skiena, sedgewick). Source : friends, ex co-workers, and personal experience. Sometimes they just change the "story" questions but the algo and tricks are the same, sometime they took it verbatim from leetcode (or the other way around: someone leaked them to leetcode).
I actually passed the on-site and hiring committee on my third try, but was (apparently) nixed by some executive, for reasons I can only guess at.
I'm estimating prevalence based on my SAT and GRE scores. As supporting evidence, even colleagues with PhDs often seem not to do as well when mathy sorts of puzzles come up in real life. As often noted, however, that and a dime will get you a cup of coffee.
It might be sour grapes, but lately I've come to appreciate the benefits of being the big fish in a tiny pond, rather than the tiny fish in an ocean I'd be at a FAANG. Money's nice, of course, but in the end you do pay for it, one way or another.
Bit of a tangent, but, for anyone who's interested, I'm guessing the book was Steven Skiena's The Algorithm Design Manual [0], as it is well-regarded and has a red cover.
Also, even more tangentially, there are videos of the author's Algorithms course lectures online from 2012 which I went through once and they were pretty good [1].
(There were one or two that had audio issues or issues seeing what he projected on the screen, but there are multiple years' worth of videos, so you can choose an alternate from an earlier year if necessary and the slides are available there too, so you can follow along with them, if need be; audio-only files are are also available if you want them).
[1] https://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~algorith/video-lectures/
Yeah it's like going to an elite university and competing with geniuses. I get it, I think I'm right at that cusp too.
Some of the smartest people work at google for half a million in TC.