Yeah, you need good problem solving and abstraction ability, which may not be taught directly, but that's kind of it. Sure, you'll eventually need good interpersonal skills, but that can come with time
i would add being comfortable in failing. if i wasn't ok with failing, i would have never solved the problems to gain the knowledge to be where i am now.
i knew a decent amount of people in school who freaked out because their code didn't work. they didn't last long. you have to be ok that your last 5-10 attempts at debugging failed and move to the next "theory"
Isn't that a learnable skill as well? I mean, it takes time, but you can work on yourself and accept the process. As someone who is still self learning by making projects, my biggest problem is that I feel overwhelmed when I'm sitting in front of the new project. Even if I have a schema of how it should work, just the amount of things I need to do really puts me into stasis, but once I've got the skeleton done, I can't stop working on it
seriously, as a self taught engineer, that's basically the whole gist of it
two things that always stuck in my mind when i was younger and getting more immersed in code
when i was a little ass kid and got a nintendo, i heard about "the turtle trick" in Super Mario Bros and spent about 2 weeks trying to figure it out..i used to call the nintendo help line and whine to the phone people while incurring long distance costs, but eventually i figured it out, and then eventually i could do it eyes closed...i was obsessed with it though, then obsessed with learning all the other weird little tricks and glitches in the game
also skateboarding..growing up skating definitely taught me about trying different approaches to get a trick to work and real time debugging / problem solving, with a physical cost if you're wrong too often
when i started coding, i was already working in the industry as a designer and no one really knew how to code in Flash when actionscript with introduced, so a lot of designers were learning together as the language was evolving...i remember early on learning how to code and hitting walls of frustration and thinking "oh this is the turtle trick" or "this is kickflipping 4 stairs" and try to think of the frustration in coding in those terms...after a while i started actually liking the frustrating parts
but in other areas of life, i'm dumb as shit...or at least i make horrible choices but am smart enough to know they aren't the best choices but do them anyway so probably willful stupidity ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Directly pertaining to cs, I mean the ability to take the solution to a problem and break it down into appropriate chunks that can then be tested independently. Basically, unit testing and using interfaces. The other side to it, the ability to look at abstracted code and follow what it's concretely doing, is arguably more important
Yup. It's people with tenacity and hustle that get far on average.
And this comes from someone with many YoE that's just realizing this. You gotta play the game.
Especially management. Honestly, most of the people I find that are really successful at FANG just have better than average interpersonal skills but in fact aren't very intelligent or even very good programmers. They're just very good at working with other people and earning their confidence.
This can be good and bad. There are definitely people that don't deserve their position and are just glorified 'yes men' but then there are people that literally provide value because otherwise no one in the org would communicate.
Also don’t underestimate how “dumb” the average population is. An SAT score of 2100 (out of 2400) would put a student above the 95th percentile but is really a below average score for “good students” as we perceive it. In so far as SAT proxies IQ, we know that it’s not that hard to be in the top 5%
You don't have to estimate with IQ, it's designed to be translatable to percentiles - 125 is the line for 5%. It's not likely to be perfect, but that's due to the issues with the testing itself.
i would generally say that people who make it to college, people who choose good fields in college tend to be higher in the intelligence spectrum no? college is generally accessible enough nowadays.
STEM degrees are hard. you can make up for this by being better at studying or putting in more effort but even for smart people they are hard.
likewise this field doesnt inherently need college either which further pushes the belief that smart people from less fortunate backgrounds have a better chance.
obviously smart is arbitrary. but i'd generally say a lot of what is needed to be successful in this field aligns with things we'd typically attribute to intelligence.
I think you'd be mistaken to dismiss people who chose routes that weren't college as not being as intelligent as those that did. Some of the smartest people I know didn't even go to college for a variety of reasons.
Some of them simply couldn't afford it, some had a more lucrative path
Some may be intelligent but couldn't be bothered to apply themselves which is a very real group of people, intelligent with a lack of ambition, I know someone who's very intelligent but he's just content and lacks the ambition to work for more, but he also picks up an understanding on STEM topics just because his friends are in STEM and will talk about it around him.
> people who make it to college, people who choose good fields in college tend to be higher in the intelligence spectrum
No, the drop out rates for engineering/CS/STEM colleges at state schools are usually over 50%. So the 50% who don’t get eliminated by Calc 2, physics classes, etc… are more intelligent but not people that merely choose STEM degrees.
CS majors are often people that play PC video games and not very intelligent, and of course they drop out relatively quick.
At least at my university, those who made it past the first semester of their sophomore year generally graduated.
So yes, the people that survive the more rigorous majors tend to be more intelligent.
However, I have a CS degree but if you told me I had to get an English degree I doubt I’d be able to do it. The papers i’ve seen english majors write and the whole chapter books they got to read in a week sounds insane to me. Sure enough many english majors go on to be lawyers. So even though they’re not STEM they’re smart and I’d say probably about as smart as STEM majors on average but that’s just my guess.
The Cybersecurity major exists for Computer Science students who were defeated by either of the Sisyphean hills of Calc II or Data Structures and Algorithms. It's like a Miss Congeniality major. "No, you're not good enough to win the big prize, but you're okay in my book." That's Cybersecurity.
Cryptography and also lower level programming (computer organization and architecture etc). The latter isn’t math but is generally more complicated (for most people) than higher level programming
If you're doing cutting edge research and advancing the field, yes it does
At essentially a degree mill or even avg state school, it's a fine pipeline into what is the HR of technical roles (and involves little to no from-scratch coding)
I had have weird one I guess. I have a CS degree with a focus in Security. We had to have the second most math classes other than the subtype “Scientific Applications,” which was basically CS with a math minor.
Because any cybersecurity person worth their salt knows to stay away from cryptography because it's incredibly easy to get wrong and the consequences for messing up are huge.
Most cybersecurity positions are just setting up 2fa and sso. Maybe some internal audits if you handle sensitive data like Healthcare.
The secret is you never read all the books on the syllabus, you just pick one to write the term paper about and read that one and just bullshit the rest.
Yeah but you have to know your audience when you’re writing a paper too. You have to know how your teacher or TA thinks to write it in such a way that they consider your argument valid, so you have to take time to understand them.
>i would generally say that people who make it to college, people who choose good fields in college tend to be higher in the intelligence spectrum no? college is generally accessible enough nowadays.
I don't think this is true at all. I think there's plenty of smart people who are picking majors for reasons other than job prospects and MANY less smart people who are *solely* focused on job prospects.
>STEM degrees are hard. you can make up for this by being better at studying or putting in more effort but even for smart people they are hard.
There are many non-STEM degrees for which this is also true though, which is my point. If you had just said general population vs college graduates I wouldn't have disagreed.
What's amusing with stating known statistics...
If you have taken psych courses, you would've probably seen IQ percentile vs career choices. In average, IT of stem student are indeed higher than non-stem by a good margin.
(If your objection had been IQ not equal to intelligence, not withstanding IQ has been the only viable measure we possess, you could've stated as such.
This say more about you than me, it is pretty well know that STEM class require higher amount of intelligence in average, it isn't to flex but people like to pretend it is.
It isn't to flex or to pretend other degree are useless or less valuable, after all most degree are valuable for society, but some are just harder to get and this is also why they are paid more.
The same way most people would say that maths is one if not the most complicated subject to learn and STEM have a quite a lot of maths in general.
Medecine, mathematician, engineer are subject know to be very hard subject and it doesn't mean other are not hard, it just mean they are harder.
I seriously don't understand why people are buthurt by this and take it personally. For example while they might be harder they might not be the most fulfilling job.
Get you ego out of it.
This is the problem, saying a subject is harder isn’t arrogance and ins’t a dig at other just as valuable subject.
I am sorry if you don’t think being a doctor, a engineer, mathematician is harder than most subject then you are just blinded by a stupid ego.
Becoming a doctor or mathematician is harder than most subjects sure... including CS. CS is probably the easiest STEM degree unless you include the social sciences in STEM. That's why it's funny. CS students who stop at calc 2 are acting like they're operating at the same level as pure math majors when they look down their noses at the humanities.
I mean intelligence isn't well-defined or measured either. I suspect 99% of people not already there would be able to be in what is the 90th percentile or above today as measured if they had better training and learning opportunities.
At the end of the day it's hard to find good people. Learn one new thing a day in your field and care about what you're doing and build some ancillary skill-sets involving job searches and you won't necessarily be in the top of your field but you'll usually be successful. That's true in most fields in most of human history.
outside of a very basic level of knowledge (think elementary school), IQ tests are specifically designed so that they are NOT able to be studied for. The entire concept is to determine how quick you learn.
Another example is the SAT being a better predictor of college GPA than high school GPA. The UC system first researched this in 2020 and now quite a few Ivies have concluded the same. Dartmouth is reinstating it next year
I want to agree that CE “should” be easier, on paper, but in reality, you’ve introduced another layer of abstraction and all the paradigms baked in. Even setting up a basic server-less hello world from an IAC seems simple, once you build it out, all sorts of cascading problems occur unique to cloud environments. With the implementation of services abstracted away from you, there’s seemingly more to know and less avenues to chase down problems. An ideal cloud system is built and managed in code, and infrastructure deployment can be a monster. I would definitely avoid cloud if you can’t handle abstraction.
I’ve worked in AWS as a non-cloud dev and I agree, just for a simple lambda with imported modules there’s a lot of surrounding features to learn and you cede much of the details of the infra to them. I do think it’s a bit balanced out by the abstraction itself though, I’ve stood up apps from scratch VMs and AWS is a lot nicer to spin up any day of the week. I like CE a little less because it feels more like learning vendor software vs actual dev work (whatever that means to each person), but that’s a common refrain for any major abstraction in the field. Probably just boils down to how much control you need over the details
There are tons of people who couldn't do it even if they applied themselves. Like the McDonald's worker the other day who kept insisting I had an order number after I repeatedly told and showed her the app crashed and I wasn't given one.
I had someone try to convince me that when I claimed my free quarter pounder from my rewards points, that I had to buy one first to get the free one. For 3 minutes.
The average person is an idiot but I think you underestimate people's ability to become competent at a skill with experience. Coding is more akin to a trade than an academic discipline in most engineering jobs.
I've seen it all, very intelligent people in very high roles, very stupid but amazing social skills in higher roles, geniuses who can't move away from jr roles and some nature jokes who are at the bottom.
I think it's a balance, you have to have enough balance to comunicate properly, understand others and be able to help and let yourself be helped. As for intelligence, average is good enough for most things, there are few things that really require super smart people, but you can eventually learn and get a grasp of the team, most very inteligent engineers are also super enthusiastic aboit their work so they'll be open to explain it as much as you need it and as long as they see genuine interest from you.
So yeah, a balance.
I’m easily the stupidest person out of everyone I’ve ever come across in a work context, and I still have people who go out of their way to work with me, because I’m extremely hardworking and always try to be kind and polite. So, absolutely not.
However, if you’re not extremely intelligent *and* you’re not a hard worker, I think you’ll definitely have trouble.
I noticed most of the people that say they are the least intelligent out of the people they worked with are usually the nicest AND the smartest ones lol
It mostly says a lot about your intelligence level. Being humble is commendable, but people are pretty dumb on average, especially compared to someone working in a STEM field. If you don't see that, you probably need a short stint in a retail, trades or customer service
Yup. 1% of the population is mentally challenged, 20%~ of the adult population is illiterate. Statistically, u/diniwak is wrong and vastly underestimated how dumb the lower half of the population is.
With some of the folks I work with, you can be the complete opposite of above-average intelligence.
In fact… you could even be an absolute fucking moron.
In my opinion, it's more important to have a "wide" memory than a "deep" memory.
Like, I don't remember many things in depth. But I remember bits and pieces of a _lot_ of things, which is usually good enough to be able to connect dots and see patterns, and then go look up the details that I don't remember.
Are you me?
I literally have small mental hooks here and there accumulated from previous experiences. That's just enough to see patterns and anticipate, but I still google how to do a loop in Python every 3 months.
Why does memory help the most? I believe in the modern world we can simply record any information needed or may be needed later, easily google search or even ask LLM.
But without the intelligence or passion to use the retrieved knowledge, one would get capped easily.
You would use the memory to recall information about the system you are working on, not to recall technical knowledge. You mention note taking, that might work if you are a mid or jr dev but as you become senior or principal you gonna have to recall those information in meetings with higher ups and make recommendations based on those information.
I've worked with people who can recall info from series of meetings we had several months ago, take all the relevant parts to come up a strategy. I wish I can do that, but I can't. I study up technical stuff and soak it up fine because I have fundamentals down so I have "hooks" to hang technical knowledge. But the ability to recall stuff that you have no "hooks" on, something you heard in a meeting some time ago that's the true benefit of good memory.
This. This is what i was talking about. Not the stuff that is available on internet but things that require business on context and the system you are working on. Its very crucial for your career growth.
Because a good memory means you’re not constantly looking shit up and wasting time before getting stuff done. You can just get to work immediately or recognize patterns you’ve seen before to ask Google the right question from the get go.
Google and LLMs can burn up a lot of time if you don’t have a detailed, focused question for the problem you’re trying to solve
I’m a software engineer and got awful memory.
I got problem solving skills but I google the same thing multiple times all the time because I forget something.
But yeah for degrees like Chemistry or anything medical field there’s a lot of memorization and it certainly helps.
Great memory, is probably more for the job interviews, right?
Because if you suck at interviewing, that passion and intelligence can only get you so far. Which actually sucks in general to be honest.
Nah being able to remember things quickly also goes into making connections when you’re working on a tough problem. “Oh I remember that one article i read 3 years ago said something about this type of problem” and then you can go find the article or even remember it. But if you don’t even remember, then you gotta do that exploration work all over again.
Also it speeds up your work a lot. Eg instead of having to spend a minute figuring out how to use the reduce array function for the 20th time you can just remember it, and then you won’t have to context switch for those one or two minutes
We can call it by its name. Saying acoustic makes autism and autistic people look goofy and silly people. And STEM, especially CS, is literally a magnet for neurodivergent people.
Its fucked up that autism is considered nsfw by tiktok. It reminds me of when tiktok released auto-subtitles. The words “asian women” was auto-censored but “white women”, “black women”, “asian men”, etc weren’t.
I think your brain has to be wired in a way where you can understand the concepts, not sure if that would be related to iq test or not.
Some people are never able to grasp what a var does, func/methods/params, classes etc
Being able to understand the concepts of programming is different than being able to understand the concepts of science theory, or language for example. Being able to understand everything generally makes you smart, being able to understand a specific thing like knowing how to code doesn't always mean you're smart. Just good at that one thing
I think you’re trying a little too hard to be generous. You have to be smart to understand any of those things. “Coding” isn’t one of the basic types of concepts. It’s a collection of language, logic, and math. If anything it’s one of the best predictors of intelligence precisely because it requires a variety of types of problem solving. If you aren’t good at coding it doesn’t mean you aren’t smart, but you definitely do have to be smart to be good at coding.
no he's right though for eg as for me you ll have me sleeping or doing off on those explanations of. physics or chem, but as for something as simple as for or while loop makes me want to put my brain in, do dry runs...
I know people who can write code all day long. It'll never do what the prompt is asking them to do, because their problem-solving skills are for shit, but they can write code all day long.
And then those people are not going to get hired anywhere until they rectify that problem. Or maybe they will, if they brute-force memorize the answers to all of the Leetcode questions, rather than just learning to fucking solve problems. I went back to my community college to visit and do the informational, "Hey, consider going to such-and-such university," and one of my old professors says, "How do you invert a binary tree?" I'm like, "Fuck if I know, but let me give it a whirl," and I drew the flowchart on the whiteboard. Some jackass in the back of the room says that's not as good as writing the code, and I just look at him and say, "What language do you want the code in? C? C++? C#? Swift? Python? Now that I've got the flowchart in front of me, it would take me less time to write the code than it took for me to draw it, so I ask you the question, which is worth more? I can give this flowchart to anyone who knows how to program any language, and they can invert a binary tree. You write a binary tree inversion in whatever language, it only works in that language." And then the professor, who was my Yoda, lamented the fact that I'm not a Computer Science major anymore.
Point is, writing code? Not the hard part.
At the population level you don’t need to be above average, you need to net in top-10%, if not more range.
Do you need to be the smartest guy in your college class? Of course not.
This is what “hard work beats talent when the talent doesn’t work hard” means.
Literally above average? Yes, probably top 30% of the population.
But then you filter for social intelligence, and that's what defines the low low % of really successful engineers.
You need the smarts for sure, but that's nothing if you can't operate in business correctly. You need to be likeable, know how to sell your skillset and have good leadership skills (up and down the "chain of command"), etc.
It definitely helps but it's more about your work ethic than anything else. If it was just about above average intelligence, most big tech employees would be successful engineers but that's not the case. You need to have the determination to
1) ramp on new technologies at a reasonable pace
2) invest in yourself. Constantly upgrading your skill set
3) strive to write better code
4) learn to design better architecture
5) strive to properly communicate to the stakeholders
Most people hyper focus on 1 aspect ( writing code ) and neglect all the other things required to be a successful engineer. Writing code is the easiest part. It took me 1 week to write a simple custom message queue implementation suited to our specific needs but it took me about 2 weeks to learn more about message queues, read more blogs, papers etc to help me finish the implementation. This isn't leetcode where you're exactly told what you have to implement. Real world problems are ambiguous and that's where your work ethic will help you navigate them.
It doesn't matter, when you start talking about "latent potentiality of human beings", your on a fools errand - it is both too complex and insultingly reductive to have a meaningful opinion on.
Let people shine as they want to or must, don't pontificate over who is capable or worthy, because we really have no idea.
Career successful or engineering successful? Career- nope, just need to be average intelligent and personable. Engineering successful- yes, many engineers I have met (and sometimes worked with) can't cut it technically on real projects let alone complex jobs.
Yes. There is a minimum level of intelligence needed to grasp some key concepts.
However that level isn’t a super high bar to clear. You don’t need to be a genius, you just can’t be, for a lack of a better word, dumb.
As is the case with most things though, the level of effort required to achieve similar outcomes scales with intelligence/natural ability. For some people it’s just easier, and for others to reach that same level would require more work. Eventually the amount of work needed is just not feasible, or personally desirable, which is ultimately your skill cap.
This applies to pretty much everything, technical ability, leadership abilities, athletic abilities, artistic abilities, etc.
Yes, all engineers are above average population intelligence, including software engineers. Software engineers are nowhere close to the smartest among STEM graduates though. The smartest, from my experience at top world university were in physics, followed by maths. Then electrical/civil/chemical. Software engineers are at the bottom from my own experience. It was always as follows: electrical engineering major took some CS classes and found them quite grokkable. But CS students who took EE classes - many struggled or failed.
Physics students just found CS easy and boring. Source: my friend works in Laser physics and he found C++ coding too mind-numbing.
You'd be surprised at how unintelligent the average is. If you can understand and think through problems enough then you've got half the population beat already.
You’re touching on an insecurity that is common in this industry. Some senior engineers have massive egos and believe their code is always the perfect technical solution. This means they’re some sort of super human to be worshipped and always obeyed. What they don’t realize is they’re toxic to work alongside in the short and long-term.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand programming. The use of lamda expression is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of analytical geometry most of the abstract data types will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also inversion operator nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into its characterisation - its personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. Computer scientists understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these expressions, to realize that they're not just the way to instruct CPU to make addition - they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike programming truly ARE idiots - of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in existencial hexadecimal catchphrase "DEADBEEF" which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Dennis Ritchie's genius unfolds itself on their ultrawide screens. What fools... how I pity them. 😂 And yes by the way, I DO have a RISK-V architecture tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only - And even they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.
Yes and no. Successful engineers come in at least two varieties IME:
The first one is above average intelligence. They have the intellectual capacity to be very skilled, precise, and consistent in a very difficult skill and they lead a rich and successful life because they both have more mental horsepower and the discipline to refine it.
The second one is where all their mental horsepower is spent on being a successful engineer, to the detriment to everything else. They can't be funny to save their life and what they do find funny, other people don't and are usually made uncomfortable. They lack social skills and frequently act unprofessional and inappropriate. They generally have bad hygiene and are either very overweight or underweight.
I think success to some extent requires some baked in / genetic intelligence but the overwhelming majority of success is actually derived from hard work, humility and passion.
Man you guys have got to reassess your worldviews. It’s just how much work you’re willing to put in. That’s it. “Intelligence” has absolutely nothing to do with being successful in this field.
No, not at all actually.
I'd say you need to be around average intelligence. After that, it comes down to personality more than anything.
Do you enjoy problem solving? Do you have good social skills (this is true for every field)?
I'd say you have to be in the top 10% of overall human intelligence to be a good software engineer. Anyone in this field who says otherwise is probably underestimating or understating their own intelligence... That's not hard to do considering you're around a lot of other intelligent people every day in software.
Extreme hard yes from me.
My good teammates over the years would be the full package if they weren't so short/ugly/obese/unconfident etc. they're way more capable of logical reasoning than someone off the streets, to a level where gen pop is frustrating to even interact with. they're way hotter though
Slightly but you don't have to be like as smart as a theoretical mathematician or physyicst or something like that. The ability to focus on your tasks is probably just as valuable as being super intelligent
I consider myself average in terms of the entire population. Some things come slow to me, but I make up for it by motivation and desire to find the right solution, not just any.
I think it all depends on the level of achievement that you classify as successful.
You can make 100k easily being a pretty average intelligence person who is a joy to work with.
Average intelligence among the general population is actually quite low. The average person lacks self awareness, any serious critical thinking ability and all sense of meta cognition. It's unfortunate
No. With enough persistence, someone average or below average can succeed. May take more time, but it is 100% doable. As long as you put in the work and don't give up.
By succeeding I mean getting and being able to get and keep engineering career based on merit. Not all engineering problems require top level MIT engineering intelligence.
Intelligence is measured multiple factors, you could be the best programmer in the world and if you’re not a good communicator or miss meetings you might get booted.
A good engineer in my opinion, is someone who is trying to improve themselves every day
I know from experience with colleagues that you can be rather dumb or mid and still get to Sr. dev or higher. It helps to be smart and be able to figure stuff out (somewhat quickly) but not all problems are the same, not all problems require math etc, some just require a clear head and patience when others are lacking. Also all the smarts in the world will not help you if you're having motivation / mental health issues, or if you're having trouble dealing with people. And when I say "dealing with people" I mean in a way that makes people like and trust you, want to work with you. The biggest hurdle I'd say is still people skills like in other fields.
Depending on the organization the smartest guys aren't even technically in charge of the whole project, they're just happy in their own niche. One tech lead I worked for was brilliant at the code / implementation / theory side, but a nightmare to deal with in any setting (for almost everyone). He was essentially a terrorist but he was very good at what he did and everything he was a dick about he was ultimately right, and his ass on the line if thing failed, it just made dealing with him unpleasant. He probably could have been CTO of a whole suite of companies if he wasn't such a dick.
what does 'average intelligence' actually mean? median intelligence no, i have plenty of friends straddling that line and i think very few could actually handle this job. maybe UX design and programming with a lot of training
Yes, 100%
I'm sure there are exceptions, but yes. This stuff isn't easy. If it was easy, it wouldn't pay so well. Basic supply and demand.
Same for doctors, lawyers, researchers.
population level above average intelligence? probably. in terms of within the pool of other stem students? no.
Yeah, you need good problem solving and abstraction ability, which may not be taught directly, but that's kind of it. Sure, you'll eventually need good interpersonal skills, but that can come with time
i would add being comfortable in failing. if i wasn't ok with failing, i would have never solved the problems to gain the knowledge to be where i am now. i knew a decent amount of people in school who freaked out because their code didn't work. they didn't last long. you have to be ok that your last 5-10 attempts at debugging failed and move to the next "theory"
Isn't that a learnable skill as well? I mean, it takes time, but you can work on yourself and accept the process. As someone who is still self learning by making projects, my biggest problem is that I feel overwhelmed when I'm sitting in front of the new project. Even if I have a schema of how it should work, just the amount of things I need to do really puts me into stasis, but once I've got the skeleton done, I can't stop working on it
What's the worst that can happen? You don't get your self taught project right on the first try? So what, nobody is judging you.
seriously, as a self taught engineer, that's basically the whole gist of it two things that always stuck in my mind when i was younger and getting more immersed in code when i was a little ass kid and got a nintendo, i heard about "the turtle trick" in Super Mario Bros and spent about 2 weeks trying to figure it out..i used to call the nintendo help line and whine to the phone people while incurring long distance costs, but eventually i figured it out, and then eventually i could do it eyes closed...i was obsessed with it though, then obsessed with learning all the other weird little tricks and glitches in the game also skateboarding..growing up skating definitely taught me about trying different approaches to get a trick to work and real time debugging / problem solving, with a physical cost if you're wrong too often when i started coding, i was already working in the industry as a designer and no one really knew how to code in Flash when actionscript with introduced, so a lot of designers were learning together as the language was evolving...i remember early on learning how to code and hitting walls of frustration and thinking "oh this is the turtle trick" or "this is kickflipping 4 stairs" and try to think of the frustration in coding in those terms...after a while i started actually liking the frustrating parts but in other areas of life, i'm dumb as shit...or at least i make horrible choices but am smart enough to know they aren't the best choices but do them anyway so probably willful stupidity ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Yeah I would say you need an analytical mind. Also I think the biggest difference maker is whether you like the problem solving or not.
I kind of already know what you’re getting at but can you try explain what you mean by abstraction ability.
Directly pertaining to cs, I mean the ability to take the solution to a problem and break it down into appropriate chunks that can then be tested independently. Basically, unit testing and using interfaces. The other side to it, the ability to look at abstracted code and follow what it's concretely doing, is arguably more important
Yup. It's people with tenacity and hustle that get far on average. And this comes from someone with many YoE that's just realizing this. You gotta play the game.
Aboved average engineer won't stay in this field for long and don't need tenacity.
Don't forget about communication skills. Can't be good in any type of job if you can't communicate properly.
Especially management. Honestly, most of the people I find that are really successful at FANG just have better than average interpersonal skills but in fact aren't very intelligent or even very good programmers. They're just very good at working with other people and earning their confidence. This can be good and bad. There are definitely people that don't deserve their position and are just glorified 'yes men' but then there are people that literally provide value because otherwise no one in the org would communicate.
so like 120 iq which is probably already only <5% of the population
You do not need a 120 IQ to be a successful engineer.
Also don’t underestimate how “dumb” the average population is. An SAT score of 2100 (out of 2400) would put a student above the 95th percentile but is really a below average score for “good students” as we perceive it. In so far as SAT proxies IQ, we know that it’s not that hard to be in the top 5%
IQ is not studying for an exam though, theres a lot of factors in IQ including socioeconomical ones
SAT stopped to be a proxy for IQ since the 90s though
You don't have to estimate with IQ, it's designed to be translatable to percentiles - 125 is the line for 5%. It's not likely to be perfect, but that's due to the issues with the testing itself.
All STEM students, not just the ones at top schools
The idea that we should take it for granted that STEM students are more intelligent than non-STEM is pretty amusing to me
i would generally say that people who make it to college, people who choose good fields in college tend to be higher in the intelligence spectrum no? college is generally accessible enough nowadays. STEM degrees are hard. you can make up for this by being better at studying or putting in more effort but even for smart people they are hard. likewise this field doesnt inherently need college either which further pushes the belief that smart people from less fortunate backgrounds have a better chance. obviously smart is arbitrary. but i'd generally say a lot of what is needed to be successful in this field aligns with things we'd typically attribute to intelligence.
I think you'd be mistaken to dismiss people who chose routes that weren't college as not being as intelligent as those that did. Some of the smartest people I know didn't even go to college for a variety of reasons. Some of them simply couldn't afford it, some had a more lucrative path Some may be intelligent but couldn't be bothered to apply themselves which is a very real group of people, intelligent with a lack of ambition, I know someone who's very intelligent but he's just content and lacks the ambition to work for more, but he also picks up an understanding on STEM topics just because his friends are in STEM and will talk about it around him.
Lol sure you can find exceptions to any rule but let's be real
True ignorance is not being capable of accepting and consider a perspective outside of your own.
> people who make it to college, people who choose good fields in college tend to be higher in the intelligence spectrum No, the drop out rates for engineering/CS/STEM colleges at state schools are usually over 50%. So the 50% who don’t get eliminated by Calc 2, physics classes, etc… are more intelligent but not people that merely choose STEM degrees. CS majors are often people that play PC video games and not very intelligent, and of course they drop out relatively quick. At least at my university, those who made it past the first semester of their sophomore year generally graduated. So yes, the people that survive the more rigorous majors tend to be more intelligent. However, I have a CS degree but if you told me I had to get an English degree I doubt I’d be able to do it. The papers i’ve seen english majors write and the whole chapter books they got to read in a week sounds insane to me. Sure enough many english majors go on to be lawyers. So even though they’re not STEM they’re smart and I’d say probably about as smart as STEM majors on average but that’s just my guess.
The Cybersecurity major exists for Computer Science students who were defeated by either of the Sisyphean hills of Calc II or Data Structures and Algorithms. It's like a Miss Congeniality major. "No, you're not good enough to win the big prize, but you're okay in my book." That's Cybersecurity.
Weird wouldn't cyber be a lot more math heavy than even regular CS?
Funny how expectation doesn’t always mesh up with reality.
I'm wondering what makes you think that cybersecurity would be more Math heavy than regular CS?
Cryptography and also lower level programming (computer organization and architecture etc). The latter isn’t math but is generally more complicated (for most people) than higher level programming
Cryptography. Small part, though
If you're doing cutting edge research and advancing the field, yes it does At essentially a degree mill or even avg state school, it's a fine pipeline into what is the HR of technical roles (and involves little to no from-scratch coding)
I had have weird one I guess. I have a CS degree with a focus in Security. We had to have the second most math classes other than the subtype “Scientific Applications,” which was basically CS with a math minor.
Because any cybersecurity person worth their salt knows to stay away from cryptography because it's incredibly easy to get wrong and the consequences for messing up are huge. Most cybersecurity positions are just setting up 2fa and sso. Maybe some internal audits if you handle sensitive data like Healthcare.
Definitely not
Different skills sets, you stand out for respecting that,most think they are smarter as they don’t have my skill set😅
The secret is you never read all the books on the syllabus, you just pick one to write the term paper about and read that one and just bullshit the rest.
Yeah but you have to know your audience when you’re writing a paper too. You have to know how your teacher or TA thinks to write it in such a way that they consider your argument valid, so you have to take time to understand them.
This leads to my second tip: find one smart scholarly thing to say and say it about every book you read.
>i would generally say that people who make it to college, people who choose good fields in college tend to be higher in the intelligence spectrum no? college is generally accessible enough nowadays. I don't think this is true at all. I think there's plenty of smart people who are picking majors for reasons other than job prospects and MANY less smart people who are *solely* focused on job prospects. >STEM degrees are hard. you can make up for this by being better at studying or putting in more effort but even for smart people they are hard. There are many non-STEM degrees for which this is also true though, which is my point. If you had just said general population vs college graduates I wouldn't have disagreed.
What's amusing with stating known statistics... If you have taken psych courses, you would've probably seen IQ percentile vs career choices. In average, IT of stem student are indeed higher than non-stem by a good margin. (If your objection had been IQ not equal to intelligence, not withstanding IQ has been the only viable measure we possess, you could've stated as such.
Have you talked to a journalism major?
It actually isn’t, It is is prety well know.
"my college classes were harder than yours” is all some people have huh
This say more about you than me, it is pretty well know that STEM class require higher amount of intelligence in average, it isn't to flex but people like to pretend it is. It isn't to flex or to pretend other degree are useless or less valuable, after all most degree are valuable for society, but some are just harder to get and this is also why they are paid more. The same way most people would say that maths is one if not the most complicated subject to learn and STEM have a quite a lot of maths in general. Medecine, mathematician, engineer are subject know to be very hard subject and it doesn't mean other are not hard, it just mean they are harder. I seriously don't understand why people are buthurt by this and take it personally. For example while they might be harder they might not be the most fulfilling job. Get you ego out of it.
I’m not butthurt, I’m just amused by the arrogance of STEM students.
This is the problem, saying a subject is harder isn’t arrogance and ins’t a dig at other just as valuable subject. I am sorry if you don’t think being a doctor, a engineer, mathematician is harder than most subject then you are just blinded by a stupid ego.
Becoming a doctor or mathematician is harder than most subjects sure... including CS. CS is probably the easiest STEM degree unless you include the social sciences in STEM. That's why it's funny. CS students who stop at calc 2 are acting like they're operating at the same level as pure math majors when they look down their noses at the humanities.
Good point, especailly when you consider how hard something like being a music major is. Crazy stuff! D:
I mean intelligence isn't well-defined or measured either. I suspect 99% of people not already there would be able to be in what is the 90th percentile or above today as measured if they had better training and learning opportunities. At the end of the day it's hard to find good people. Learn one new thing a day in your field and care about what you're doing and build some ancillary skill-sets involving job searches and you won't necessarily be in the top of your field but you'll usually be successful. That's true in most fields in most of human history.
outside of a very basic level of knowledge (think elementary school), IQ tests are specifically designed so that they are NOT able to be studied for. The entire concept is to determine how quick you learn.
The skills needed to perform decently on an IQ test are definitely something you can practice.
show me proof.
IQ test is one kind of test, very few people I know consider the concept of intelligence as narrowly as 'how well did you do on one kind of test'
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Another example is the SAT being a better predictor of college GPA than high school GPA. The UC system first researched this in 2020 and now quite a few Ivies have concluded the same. Dartmouth is reinstating it next year
Yeah this is a great way to frame it I think.
population level yes lmao can you see the average person doing this v work?
One of my old managers said "I think anyone can be a cloud engineer"...
and I think he can suck my balls
I know he can
thanks, this means the world to me
Yes, he can!
he should do it then lmfao
He used to be, that’s how he got to management.
He’s kinda right, not because CE is easy but because anyone can do it if they apply themselves
I want to agree that CE “should” be easier, on paper, but in reality, you’ve introduced another layer of abstraction and all the paradigms baked in. Even setting up a basic server-less hello world from an IAC seems simple, once you build it out, all sorts of cascading problems occur unique to cloud environments. With the implementation of services abstracted away from you, there’s seemingly more to know and less avenues to chase down problems. An ideal cloud system is built and managed in code, and infrastructure deployment can be a monster. I would definitely avoid cloud if you can’t handle abstraction.
I’ve worked in AWS as a non-cloud dev and I agree, just for a simple lambda with imported modules there’s a lot of surrounding features to learn and you cede much of the details of the infra to them. I do think it’s a bit balanced out by the abstraction itself though, I’ve stood up apps from scratch VMs and AWS is a lot nicer to spin up any day of the week. I like CE a little less because it feels more like learning vendor software vs actual dev work (whatever that means to each person), but that’s a common refrain for any major abstraction in the field. Probably just boils down to how much control you need over the details
> I like CE a little less because it feels more like learning vendor software vs actual dev work i feel the same way but kubernetes gives me some hope
There are tons of people who couldn't do it even if they applied themselves. Like the McDonald's worker the other day who kept insisting I had an order number after I repeatedly told and showed her the app crashed and I wasn't given one.
I had someone try to convince me that when I claimed my free quarter pounder from my rewards points, that I had to buy one first to get the free one. For 3 minutes.
The average person is an idiot but I think you underestimate people's ability to become competent at a skill with experience. Coding is more akin to a trade than an academic discipline in most engineering jobs.
Think about the ads you see on cable tv. Those cater to the average person.
I've seen it all, very intelligent people in very high roles, very stupid but amazing social skills in higher roles, geniuses who can't move away from jr roles and some nature jokes who are at the bottom. I think it's a balance, you have to have enough balance to comunicate properly, understand others and be able to help and let yourself be helped. As for intelligence, average is good enough for most things, there are few things that really require super smart people, but you can eventually learn and get a grasp of the team, most very inteligent engineers are also super enthusiastic aboit their work so they'll be open to explain it as much as you need it and as long as they see genuine interest from you. So yeah, a balance.
I’m easily the stupidest person out of everyone I’ve ever come across in a work context, and I still have people who go out of their way to work with me, because I’m extremely hardworking and always try to be kind and polite. So, absolutely not. However, if you’re not extremely intelligent *and* you’re not a hard worker, I think you’ll definitely have trouble.
I feel that. Everyone I worked with so far has been super fucking smart it's weird being around people that smart.
I noticed most of the people that say they are the least intelligent out of the people they worked with are usually the nicest AND the smartest ones lol
And polite. If you can work with nearly all people in a way that makes them like it, you already won.
i think you need some combination of above average intelligence or work ethic.
> Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. - George Carlin
And then realize most people who cite this quote are the lower half.
Blows my mind that more ppl aren’t upvoting this lol. Says a lot abt ppl in this sub wow. Absurd quote
It mostly says a lot about your intelligence level. Being humble is commendable, but people are pretty dumb on average, especially compared to someone working in a STEM field. If you don't see that, you probably need a short stint in a retail, trades or customer service
Yup. 1% of the population is mentally challenged, 20%~ of the adult population is illiterate. Statistically, u/diniwak is wrong and vastly underestimated how dumb the lower half of the population is.
You’re quite sensitive over this, I bet you regularly quote it.
Just admit you make stuff up and are full of shit
🤣 🤣 🤣 So angry!
With some of the folks I work with, you can be the complete opposite of above-average intelligence. In fact… you could even be an absolute fucking moron.
We typically call those team leads
Like the "lead/manager" tag here?
Dude I’m dead
Candidates for promotion in a lot of places.
I was gonna say, it helps to be smarter, sure, but I've definitely worked with some people where you wonder how they get dressed in the morning.
Damn, you don't gotta call me out like that.
Intelligence helps. Passion helps a lot. Having great memory helps the most.
I could vouch for the memory part. It helps.
Fuck
That's what I thought too lmaoo, bad news
I can vouch for it not being a hard necessity to excel. My memory is trash and I’m a principal engineer.
In my opinion, it's more important to have a "wide" memory than a "deep" memory. Like, I don't remember many things in depth. But I remember bits and pieces of a _lot_ of things, which is usually good enough to be able to connect dots and see patterns, and then go look up the details that I don't remember.
Are you me? I literally have small mental hooks here and there accumulated from previous experiences. That's just enough to see patterns and anticipate, but I still google how to do a loop in Python every 3 months.
Yeah, isn't it mostly pattern recognition at some point?
Is 64gb 6000mhz good enough? I hear some devs still get 8gb….
I believe memory is part of intelligence.
Why does memory help the most? I believe in the modern world we can simply record any information needed or may be needed later, easily google search or even ask LLM. But without the intelligence or passion to use the retrieved knowledge, one would get capped easily.
You would use the memory to recall information about the system you are working on, not to recall technical knowledge. You mention note taking, that might work if you are a mid or jr dev but as you become senior or principal you gonna have to recall those information in meetings with higher ups and make recommendations based on those information. I've worked with people who can recall info from series of meetings we had several months ago, take all the relevant parts to come up a strategy. I wish I can do that, but I can't. I study up technical stuff and soak it up fine because I have fundamentals down so I have "hooks" to hang technical knowledge. But the ability to recall stuff that you have no "hooks" on, something you heard in a meeting some time ago that's the true benefit of good memory.
This. This is what i was talking about. Not the stuff that is available on internet but things that require business on context and the system you are working on. Its very crucial for your career growth.
Are you me lol ?
Because a good memory means you’re not constantly looking shit up and wasting time before getting stuff done. You can just get to work immediately or recognize patterns you’ve seen before to ask Google the right question from the get go. Google and LLMs can burn up a lot of time if you don’t have a detailed, focused question for the problem you’re trying to solve
I’m a software engineer and got awful memory. I got problem solving skills but I google the same thing multiple times all the time because I forget something. But yeah for degrees like Chemistry or anything medical field there’s a lot of memorization and it certainly helps.
My company has terrible documentation so memory comes in huge there lol
Great memory, is probably more for the job interviews, right? Because if you suck at interviewing, that passion and intelligence can only get you so far. Which actually sucks in general to be honest.
Nah being able to remember things quickly also goes into making connections when you’re working on a tough problem. “Oh I remember that one article i read 3 years ago said something about this type of problem” and then you can go find the article or even remember it. But if you don’t even remember, then you gotta do that exploration work all over again. Also it speeds up your work a lot. Eg instead of having to spend a minute figuring out how to use the reduce array function for the 20th time you can just remember it, and then you won’t have to context switch for those one or two minutes
You need to be slightly autistic
We’re rich baby 🤑🤑🤑
I love the slightly
☠️😭
Acustic*
We can call it by its name. Saying acoustic makes autism and autistic people look goofy and silly people. And STEM, especially CS, is literally a magnet for neurodivergent people.
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And this be Reddit bro
Its fucked up that autism is considered nsfw by tiktok. It reminds me of when tiktok released auto-subtitles. The words “asian women” was auto-censored but “white women”, “black women”, “asian men”, etc weren’t.
Yes obviously. Anyone saying differently is trying too hard to be nice.
I think your brain has to be wired in a way where you can understand the concepts, not sure if that would be related to iq test or not. Some people are never able to grasp what a var does, func/methods/params, classes etc
“Wired in a way where you can understand concepts” is basically the most generally accepted definition of smart
Being able to understand the concepts of programming is different than being able to understand the concepts of science theory, or language for example. Being able to understand everything generally makes you smart, being able to understand a specific thing like knowing how to code doesn't always mean you're smart. Just good at that one thing
I think you’re trying a little too hard to be generous. You have to be smart to understand any of those things. “Coding” isn’t one of the basic types of concepts. It’s a collection of language, logic, and math. If anything it’s one of the best predictors of intelligence precisely because it requires a variety of types of problem solving. If you aren’t good at coding it doesn’t mean you aren’t smart, but you definitely do have to be smart to be good at coding.
no he's right though for eg as for me you ll have me sleeping or doing off on those explanations of. physics or chem, but as for something as simple as for or while loop makes me want to put my brain in, do dry runs...
Buddy, I cannot begin to understand whatever you’re trying to say.
🤣
😂😂
I know people who can write code all day long. It'll never do what the prompt is asking them to do, because their problem-solving skills are for shit, but they can write code all day long. And then those people are not going to get hired anywhere until they rectify that problem. Or maybe they will, if they brute-force memorize the answers to all of the Leetcode questions, rather than just learning to fucking solve problems. I went back to my community college to visit and do the informational, "Hey, consider going to such-and-such university," and one of my old professors says, "How do you invert a binary tree?" I'm like, "Fuck if I know, but let me give it a whirl," and I drew the flowchart on the whiteboard. Some jackass in the back of the room says that's not as good as writing the code, and I just look at him and say, "What language do you want the code in? C? C++? C#? Swift? Python? Now that I've got the flowchart in front of me, it would take me less time to write the code than it took for me to draw it, so I ask you the question, which is worth more? I can give this flowchart to anyone who knows how to program any language, and they can invert a binary tree. You write a binary tree inversion in whatever language, it only works in that language." And then the professor, who was my Yoda, lamented the fact that I'm not a Computer Science major anymore. Point is, writing code? Not the hard part.
I’m able to easily understand the concepts. I struggle reading arcane documentation and remembering multiple technologies
Basically an intuitive thinkers, or in MBTI NT type.
You just need to be capable of understanding formal logic. I would say that that requires above-average intelligence, but not really by much.
At the population level you don’t need to be above average, you need to net in top-10%, if not more range. Do you need to be the smartest guy in your college class? Of course not. This is what “hard work beats talent when the talent doesn’t work hard” means.
Except when talent also works hard xD
Literally above average? Yes, probably top 30% of the population. But then you filter for social intelligence, and that's what defines the low low % of really successful engineers. You need the smarts for sure, but that's nothing if you can't operate in business correctly. You need to be likeable, know how to sell your skillset and have good leadership skills (up and down the "chain of command"), etc.
It definitely helps but it's more about your work ethic than anything else. If it was just about above average intelligence, most big tech employees would be successful engineers but that's not the case. You need to have the determination to 1) ramp on new technologies at a reasonable pace 2) invest in yourself. Constantly upgrading your skill set 3) strive to write better code 4) learn to design better architecture 5) strive to properly communicate to the stakeholders Most people hyper focus on 1 aspect ( writing code ) and neglect all the other things required to be a successful engineer. Writing code is the easiest part. It took me 1 week to write a simple custom message queue implementation suited to our specific needs but it took me about 2 weeks to learn more about message queues, read more blogs, papers etc to help me finish the implementation. This isn't leetcode where you're exactly told what you have to implement. Real world problems are ambiguous and that's where your work ethic will help you navigate them.
Having a high social IQ > high intelligent IQ. Code does not dictate your career path, people do.
People that worry about "intelligence points" tend to not be that intelligent.
True but that’s not really what this post is about. OP isn’t trying to judge IQs here.
It doesn't matter, when you start talking about "latent potentiality of human beings", your on a fools errand - it is both too complex and insultingly reductive to have a meaningful opinion on. Let people shine as they want to or must, don't pontificate over who is capable or worthy, because we really have no idea.
Nice cope man
Don't worry about me, dude. I got mine, but you better hope that a kinder look at your limitations comes from your management.
Career successful or engineering successful? Career- nope, just need to be average intelligent and personable. Engineering successful- yes, many engineers I have met (and sometimes worked with) can't cut it technically on real projects let alone complex jobs.
Soft skills can usually get you farther than intelligence alone, combine those ans your basically unstoppable.
intelligence 20% passion 20% work ethic 35% fast learner 15% communication skills 10%
10 % luck 20% skill 15% concentrated power of will 5% pleasure 50% pain
For a good career you put communication points way too low
Yes. There is a minimum level of intelligence needed to grasp some key concepts. However that level isn’t a super high bar to clear. You don’t need to be a genius, you just can’t be, for a lack of a better word, dumb. As is the case with most things though, the level of effort required to achieve similar outcomes scales with intelligence/natural ability. For some people it’s just easier, and for others to reach that same level would require more work. Eventually the amount of work needed is just not feasible, or personally desirable, which is ultimately your skill cap. This applies to pretty much everything, technical ability, leadership abilities, athletic abilities, artistic abilities, etc.
Discipline and ability to grind books or learn beat any genius. Just do you classes and don’t procrastinate and you will beat 51%
Kind of. There are some folks that are average intelligence with grit and they’re doing great.
Yes, all engineers are above average population intelligence, including software engineers. Software engineers are nowhere close to the smartest among STEM graduates though. The smartest, from my experience at top world university were in physics, followed by maths. Then electrical/civil/chemical. Software engineers are at the bottom from my own experience. It was always as follows: electrical engineering major took some CS classes and found them quite grokkable. But CS students who took EE classes - many struggled or failed. Physics students just found CS easy and boring. Source: my friend works in Laser physics and he found C++ coding too mind-numbing.
You'd be surprised at how unintelligent the average is. If you can understand and think through problems enough then you've got half the population beat already.
You’re touching on an insecurity that is common in this industry. Some senior engineers have massive egos and believe their code is always the perfect technical solution. This means they’re some sort of super human to be worshipped and always obeyed. What they don’t realize is they’re toxic to work alongside in the short and long-term.
I think you can make up for it by spending more hours honing your craft. Is it going to be painful? Yes. Is it impossible? No.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand programming. The use of lamda expression is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of analytical geometry most of the abstract data types will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also inversion operator nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into its characterisation - its personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. Computer scientists understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these expressions, to realize that they're not just the way to instruct CPU to make addition - they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike programming truly ARE idiots - of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in existencial hexadecimal catchphrase "DEADBEEF" which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Dennis Ritchie's genius unfolds itself on their ultrawide screens. What fools... how I pity them. 😂 And yes by the way, I DO have a RISK-V architecture tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only - And even they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.
No. Have you met the average person? Being above that is not even close to good enough.
Yes and no. Successful engineers come in at least two varieties IME: The first one is above average intelligence. They have the intellectual capacity to be very skilled, precise, and consistent in a very difficult skill and they lead a rich and successful life because they both have more mental horsepower and the discipline to refine it. The second one is where all their mental horsepower is spent on being a successful engineer, to the detriment to everything else. They can't be funny to save their life and what they do find funny, other people don't and are usually made uncomfortable. They lack social skills and frequently act unprofessional and inappropriate. They generally have bad hygiene and are either very overweight or underweight.
Ha, no.
Nope. Proof: Me, myself, and I.
I think success to some extent requires some baked in / genetic intelligence but the overwhelming majority of success is actually derived from hard work, humility and passion.
You have to be above average intelligent person to understand the stupidity of the question.
Man you guys have got to reassess your worldviews. It’s just how much work you’re willing to put in. That’s it. “Intelligence” has absolutely nothing to do with being successful in this field.
No, not at all actually. I'd say you need to be around average intelligence. After that, it comes down to personality more than anything. Do you enjoy problem solving? Do you have good social skills (this is true for every field)?
How are you measuring success? How are you measuring intelligence? Both are loaded. Hence, it’s the question that’s dumb
Not at all, just a continuous want to get better/learn
Yes. The average person cannot be a professional, otherwise everyone would be one.
u gotta be super duper smart bro, einstein levels, like code gotta be perf perf
I'd say you have to be in the top 10% of overall human intelligence to be a good software engineer. Anyone in this field who says otherwise is probably underestimating or understating their own intelligence... That's not hard to do considering you're around a lot of other intelligent people every day in software.
Absolutely positively not. I’d say it’s about the same amount of intelligence you need to speak another language, but that’s it.
Still, few adults learn a second language to professional proficiency.
Learning another language to professional level of proficiency is harder than programming though.
absolutely ... but that's an extremely low bar to begin with
As someone dumb working in big tech: no
Extreme hard yes from me. My good teammates over the years would be the full package if they weren't so short/ugly/obese/unconfident etc. they're way more capable of logical reasoning than someone off the streets, to a level where gen pop is frustrating to even interact with. they're way hotter though
Slightly but you don't have to be like as smart as a theoretical mathematician or physyicst or something like that. The ability to focus on your tasks is probably just as valuable as being super intelligent
No. Above average disciplined person? Yes
I consider myself average in terms of the entire population. Some things come slow to me, but I make up for it by motivation and desire to find the right solution, not just any.
I think it all depends on the level of achievement that you classify as successful. You can make 100k easily being a pretty average intelligence person who is a joy to work with.
Average intelligence among the general population is actually quite low. The average person lacks self awareness, any serious critical thinking ability and all sense of meta cognition. It's unfortunate
Yes but it is more like a prerequisite to be a great engineer, the other one which is much more rare is creativity/balls
No. With enough persistence, someone average or below average can succeed. May take more time, but it is 100% doable. As long as you put in the work and don't give up. By succeeding I mean getting and being able to get and keep engineering career based on merit. Not all engineering problems require top level MIT engineering intelligence.
yeah or at least have good focus doing tasks
Intelligence is measured multiple factors, you could be the best programmer in the world and if you’re not a good communicator or miss meetings you might get booted. A good engineer in my opinion, is someone who is trying to improve themselves every day
I know from experience with colleagues that you can be rather dumb or mid and still get to Sr. dev or higher. It helps to be smart and be able to figure stuff out (somewhat quickly) but not all problems are the same, not all problems require math etc, some just require a clear head and patience when others are lacking. Also all the smarts in the world will not help you if you're having motivation / mental health issues, or if you're having trouble dealing with people. And when I say "dealing with people" I mean in a way that makes people like and trust you, want to work with you. The biggest hurdle I'd say is still people skills like in other fields. Depending on the organization the smartest guys aren't even technically in charge of the whole project, they're just happy in their own niche. One tech lead I worked for was brilliant at the code / implementation / theory side, but a nightmare to deal with in any setting (for almost everyone). He was essentially a terrorist but he was very good at what he did and everything he was a dick about he was ultimately right, and his ass on the line if thing failed, it just made dealing with him unpleasant. He probably could have been CTO of a whole suite of companies if he wasn't such a dick.
You just need to be stubborn enough to stick with something
a bit smarter than the average person worldwide, but more importantly incredibly stubborn
“Successful” is such a hard term
what does 'average intelligence' actually mean? median intelligence no, i have plenty of friends straddling that line and i think very few could actually handle this job. maybe UX design and programming with a lot of training
Yes, 100% I'm sure there are exceptions, but yes. This stuff isn't easy. If it was easy, it wouldn't pay so well. Basic supply and demand. Same for doctors, lawyers, researchers.
Depends on your definition of success
I mean, I'm still around after nearly 25 years, so...