> So the issue for companies is that without the usual whiteboarding or educational paper trail you have to find a way to identify high IQ people without being too obvious about it.
Yup. I was surprised to find myself gravitating to this through trial-and-error, since I had pretty thoroughly absorbed my affluent coastal background's bullshit religious conviction in the pure blank slate of every human mind and the uselessness of intelligence as a distinct concept.
> The other issue is if you find no-experience very-smart people you have to spend time training them before they start being productive. This works if you're not in a hurry, but it's harder to justify when runway is limited.
Right, the other ingredient that I mentioned was that the engineering work we needed didn't require any specific skills. The vast majority of our engineering work was just a Python backend, which is about as "pure" an exercise of manipulating logic as you get in engineering.
IQ has always been a good indicator of programming skill. Unfortunately school grades and specialisation aren't a good indicator of IQ, and (I think?) it's illegal in the US to require job candidates to take IQ tests.
So the issue for companies is that without the usual whiteboarding or educational paper trail you have to find a way to identify high IQ people without being too obvious about it.
The other issue is if you find no-experience very-smart people you have to spend time training them before they start being productive. This works if you're not in a hurry, but it's harder to justify when runway is limited.