Chinese Company Seeks US Workers With 125 IQ 553
CWmike writes "A Chinese IT outsourcing company that has started hiring new US computer science graduates to work in Shanghai requires prospective job candidates to demonstrate an IQ of 125 or above on a test it administers to sort out job applicants. In doing so, Bleum Inc. is following a hiring practice it applies to college recruits in China. But a new Chinese college graduate must score an IQ of 140 on the company's test. The lower IQ threshold for new US graduates reflects the fact that the pool of US talent available to the company is smaller than the pool of Chinese talent, Bleum said."
World is changing (Score:5, Insightful)
It's quite interesting how you can already predict how the world will change in the upcoming 10-20 years. The Chinese have the workforce (and hence more persons with high IQ), they're used to work hard for a living, and realistic economy. They don't let banks cheat and collapse the country like in the US where everyone must get the latest HDTV, big cars and just spend money on non-important items and entertainment. That is how US has been doing for many many years and loaning more and more money along the way.
Re:World is changing (Score:5, Informative)
Percentage of people with an IQ higher than 140: 0.31349%
Percentage of people with an IQ higher than 125: 4.15182%
(Based on Wechsler)
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Re:World is changing (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps your IQ isn't quite high enough then, since it is hard for you to conceive that. Some of the most accomplished scientists are often also the best teachers, since they are intelligent enough not only to understand the material but also to understand their audience.
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Re:World is changing (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe but the funny thing is 2 of the worst professors I had in university were amongst the most intelligent people I've ever met. Admittedly one knew he was kind of bad, largely because his english was pretty bad and gave everybody a break. They other guy was obviously super smart and wrote "the" book in his field but couldn't teach at all. (Unfortunately other professors at the school only knew him by his reputation and would say stupid things like "he's really good isn't he?" This guy was so bad he couldn't tell you how he determined your grade. The reason he couldn't tell you is because he didn't even know how he was going to do it. Yes, that's literally true.)
Sounds like my circuits professor. He wrote the book. The students had to buy the book. He also taught the Circuits I class, and he taught straight from the book. It all sucked massively. My Circuits II professor said the book was "good" but politely suggested that we all go out and find a "supplemental" textbook to help us in the course.
I doubt the professors who said "he's really good, isn't he?" didn't know that your professor sucked. They just didn't want to openly bad-mouth one of their colleagues. In fact, "he's really good, isn't he?" sounds more to me like "yeah, we know he sucks, but we can't do anything about it."
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Professors aren't teachers. They're lecturers. You know who the teacher is in a university? I mean, a proper one, not a hand-holding University of Huge State, Main Campus.
It's the student.
If the student wants to succeed, he or she has to teach him- or herself. To do this, the university provides a number of resources the student can use: lectures, teaching assistants, textbooks, libraries, etc.
Ultimately, though, it's the student's job. And that's the main difference between high school and college.
So
That's true (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:World is changing (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want a certificate, then you have to pay.
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The only problem is that certificate is what's needed to get a job in most cases. It's the equivalent of "pics or it didn't happen" in the business world.
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Re:World is changing (Score:4, Funny)
Impressive. Still... all that, and you still haven't mastered the possessive tense.
Re:World is changing (Score:5, Insightful)
intelligent enough not only to understand the material but also to understand their audience
It takes a whole lot more than raw intelligence to understand people. I have met plenty of folks who are wickedly smart but couldn't read body language or a facial expression if their life depended on it.
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Re:World is changing (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the whole problem with the idea of "intelligence", or someone being "smart". Smart at what?
Different people are smart at different things. Some people are musical geniuses, but they wouldn't have the first clue about partial differential equations no matter how hard they tried. Some people are brilliant at understanding other people and relating to them, but have a hard time working with a computer. Some people are brilliant theoretical physicists, but are basically retards when it comes to social mores and dealing with other people.
I'm not sure if it's true, but I've read that Thomas Edison couldn't even do long division, and had to hire a mathematician to do math for him. He could invent brilliant mechanical contraptions, but couldn't understand higher math. This would explain why his rival Tesla was able to invent so many things involving AC power (transformers, generators, motors, etc.), since that relied on understanding Maxwell's equations well.
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Imagine how hard it is for us crazies above 150 to conceive of why the sub-150s are even allowed to leave the testing room alive.
The interesting (scary for norms) thing about this Chinese hiring practice is I think it is self-defeating. People will find ways to cheat on the test, and then what ? "You can't fire me, I have over 9000 IQ". A more far-fetched idea is that IQ discrimination could soften the public up to the idea of eugenics. Just like 9/11 opened the door for Americans to get repeatedly assf
Re:World is changing (Score:5, Insightful)
I tend to think that most Americans, with an IQ higher than 140 would probably find little interest in going to China to work in an IT shop.
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With the way the American economy is going, don't be so sure.
Just because they have an IQ of 140 doesn't mean they're good at lying and bullshitting and schmoozing, the qualities you need in America to be successful.
Re:World is changing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:World is changing (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, the the high poverty rate, a government that pretty much decides what the truth is, and a bunch of human rights violations will certainly not help them get there.
Yes, China does have a large population/workforce resource... But they got where they are today because that resource was really cheap. China's getting more expensive, and with the issues that the rest of the world has with their government, I don't think it's such a guarantee.
Re:World is changing (Score:5, Insightful)
Transparent government and democracy do not make a superpower, no matter what we enlightened westerners may think.
A dictatorship that controls the flow of information, doesn't skim too much off the top and cracks down on corruption in the lower ranks is a quite efficient way of governing a nation. We may not like it, and it goes against everything we in the west believe in, but that doesn't mean it can't work. No electoral circuses or free press that get in your hair.
As to what extent china will be able to maintain an iron fist when economic prosperity grows is another question, but then he has the guns makes the rules. Heck, a pretty big chunk of the planet isn't quite enamored with the US either and we're still doing business with them.
As for getting where they are because resources are cheap...isn't that pretty much how all current and past superpowers came to be? They either had resources on their own turf to exploit or went elsewhere to do so.
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A dictatorship that controls the flow of information, doesn't skim too much off the top and cracks down on corruption in the lower ranks is a quite efficient way of governing a nation. We may not like it, and it goes against everything we in the west believe in, but that doesn't mean it can't work. No electoral circuses or free press that get in your hair.
So basically, as long as the people at the top have the interests of the nation in mind rather than their own, things will probably go okay?
Re:World is changing (Score:5, Insightful)
Haha! I guess you buy the crap the Chinese government feeds you. You don't know what corruption is until you've gone to China. That's one of the biggest problems, hands down, with doing business in China. And if you're friends with government officials then you've got it made in the shade.
In principle a dictatorship should be able to keep these problems under control, but it reality it almost never works out that way. Usually it's the government and anyone tied to them raping the nation for their own gain. The big difference between a dictatorship and democracy or republic is that a dictatorship is far more effective in controlling the flow of information and thus hiding how bad things actually are.
Re:World is changing (Score:4, Interesting)
I know a couple Chinese expats who would disagree with you. They left China for the US because corruption at the local level of government has become institutionalized to a ridiculous extent in the current Chinese culture. If you want to play within the system and become one of the people who benefit from corruption, sure, it's a pretty sweet gig. If you want to live somewhere that acts as something close to a true meritocracy, where corruption in business and government is actually seen as a problem and occasionally fixed, you're going to have to look somewhere else (for example, the US).
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I heard a report on NPR last week about China and their One Child policy, a generation later. They started it, "Imagine no sister or brother... not only that, but no cousins, no aunts, no uncles... just you, your parents, and maybe your grandparents." Then they went on to talk about life for the children, since each family has only one. Those kids are PUSHED. Their cited example was a girl, taking her Saturday off of regular school to go to tutoring school - she was going to wind up eating supper there,
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Re:World is changing (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a person with an IQ of 140 has pretty good human rights where ever he/she goes.
Ever heard of the Khmer Rouge [wikipedia.org]? A 140 IQ would be enough to have you shot.
Re:World is changing (Score:5, Insightful)
Atlas Shrugged is selling for the same reason superhero comics do: people like power fantasies. I'd imagine that it would sell even more in times like this, when people have their helplessness in the face of "market forces" clearly demonstrated once again.
Maybe we shouldn't be striving for equality, but for elevating the lowest? That is, rather than trying to make everyone equal, simply ensure that even those who are at the bottom of the pile have food, water, clothes, shelter, and generally acceptable standard of living; and, most important of all, have the means to participate in society and improve themselves, which nowadays pretty much requires an Internet connection.
IMHO the best way to do this would be to pay everyone a certain sum per month, enough to live on. One of the many problems with social security systems of today is that they are designed to prevent abuse, which results in them being tremendously complicated and pretty arbitrary. Make sure that people have a certain amount of income they can count on, and you empower them: they can make long-range plans and take whatever opportunity they happen to come by rather than worrying about losing their eligibility for SS. Also, knowing that you'll survive even if you'll become unemployed would cut down a lot on both abuses and stress of working life. Finally, getting an automatic payment with no strings attached would remove the necessity of any bureuecrat to go through your finances to decide whether you're eligible for it.
This, actually, is a very good question, and one which I wish more people would ponder before starting their glorious revolutions for whatever goal.
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More success has been had with programs to ensure other basic needs, such as medical care, child care, etc. that allow people to improve their lives without being burdened by illnesses or family obligations.
That is kind of the point of "citizen pay".
The problem with your "citizen pay" is that it relies on people to spend their money wisely (since it is limited, and only enough to sustain a minimum standard of living as you say).
What would really happen would be many of the non-workers would go to the ca
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This is the assumption behind giving people any amount of liberty. If you don't think they can be trusted to make rational choices, vote for communism.
To put it blu
Who would pay? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then who would work to create all the stuff everyone needs?
If everyone got paid the minimum needed to live on, no one would want to work for minimum wage. Which means that wages would have to be raised even for the simplest jobs. But that would make it more expensive to live on, so everybody would need to be paid more. And wages would have to be raised again...
A socially benevolent government works for rich count
Re:World is changing (Score:5, Interesting)
The ghost of Alan Turing is here; he begs to differ. I'm with him.
I live in the US, where human rights are in fact Pretty Damn Good. But it wasn't that long ago that I was guilty of countless felonies for having sex with my boyfriend (before those laws were finally struck down by the Supremes), and I can still be fired in my state for simply having a boyfriend. Having an IQ of 140 hasn't changed that, and I can't imagine it makes much difference at all in countries where human rights are Pretty Damn Bad.
Re:World is changing (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not aware of any test cases, but the legal reasoning outlined in the majority opinion in "Lawrence v. Texas" (the case that legalized "sodomy") would also apply to statutes like the ones you cite, so you can consider yourself free to engage in lights-on non-missionary heterosex without fear of prosecution, regardless of which U.S. state you're in. As with so many civil rights battles, it wasn't just the obvious victim who benefited from the win.
You're welcome. :)
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Their banks don't cheat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Their banking industry is largely (if not all the way) corrupt. They take the savings of the people (who do indeed have a high savings rate), and then loan them out to largely state-owned enterprises. Who gets the money is largely politically directed, and has little to do with how likely it is the loan will be paid back.
Eventually those savers are going to want their money back, and it won't be there. So, it would be accurate to say that Chinese banks haven't collapsed their economy yet.
So, in the US, all the wasteful spending and foolish loans go to consumers. In China, they go towards state-owned businesses. I'm not sure one way or the other is better.
SirWired
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They also manipulate their currency, direct spending and production at a high level, completely ignoring environmental concerns (to the point pollution is effecting industry) and generally function as a command economy in many ways. Well ok, but I will point out that history shows those don't work in the end. The problems catch up and fuck you over. Will China be different? Maybe, they do have different conditions and their system is an interesting hybrid. However I don't know that I'd bet on it. As I said,
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>> "realistic economy"
Soory you need to know a lot more about economics to stop making an fool of your self, the chinease economy has an artificialy manipulated curency and a corupt stockmarket all the major funds investing in china prefer the HK exchange as its less risky.
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their economy is based on making said non-important things. so with out our unrealistic economy they'd be in a different boat.
also, the banks where only doing what Congress told them to. then, when that went horribly wrong, as most of the "good ideas" Congress has tend to do, they took the money Congress "offered". don't get pissed at the banks. get pissed at the people causing the problem. CONGRESS.
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You clearly don't know what you're talking about. Chinese banks can get away with being quite a bit more abusive than American banks. Get into debt and collectors will start calling your family, friends and employer in order to intimidate you into paying. Debtors have been known to have their homes defaced. That's when they don't hire a thug to physically rough you up. It's like dealing with gangsters.
There have long been concerns about various economic bubbles there. Either the Chinese government has done
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Preferring the Chinese factory worker lifestyle (work 12-16 hours, return to small dormitory,
Feynman (Score:2, Interesting)
with barely 120 points wouldn't have a chance in that company.
Feynman had an "attitude" (Score:2)
"attitude", or the test does not work well... (Score:3, Insightful)
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As someone who took more than a fair share of IQ tests back in the day, I'd say that any test where it's even possible to bring any attitude into it, is a broken test anyway.
A count-the-blocks problem -- useless as it is to predict performance for anything other than counting blocks in isometric 2d -- only gets a number as a result, for example. You get the right number, you pass, you don't, you don't. If it's possible to interpret the picture or the question to truthfully answer any other number, then the
But that's the point really (Score:5, Insightful)
Feynman was an unconventional thinker is so very many ways. That was where a large part of his brilliance came from. He did not work in the world of numbers and equations, despite being a theoretical physicist. He was an examples kind of guy. He always had to have a physical example running in his head of a theory, and was always challenging people to provide them for him. As such he often found errors they could not, as he was mapping the problem in a completely different way.
It was his unconventional methods that made him so very brilliant, that lead him to his Nobel research. It was also part of why he was so good at teaching. He could explain things to undergrads that most people could only explain to others with advanced knowledge. He could do that because he saw through all the equations and such to the real essence of what the theory was, and he could come up with examples because that was what he did anyhow.
That an IQ test can't measure that well is a failing of the test, not of Feynman. The IQ test is one mold for how people can be smart, one particular way. He didn't fit that. So while the test rated him above average, because he was just so smart overall, it could not truly measure the depths of his genius.
It is a good lesson: Don't put too much stock in a single test. Tests test for particular things, they are not generalizable to everything.
As an analog, take a blood test for liver function. A simple test can be done to determine if your liver works right (just takes blood now, they don't need urine anymore as well). It does so reliably and well. However, that's all it does. Passing a LFT doesn't mean you are in good health, it means your liver is doing its job. It doesn't even mean your liver is undamaged, it just means that to whatever extent it has been damaged, it is still currently capable of filtering as needed.
The test is useful, but you must understand its limits for it to be so.
Ok, this is stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
IQ is highly overrated
In practice, it's almost useless...
Google tests are (way) better than IQ, but guess what Google found out: the best performers are the ones who have the lowest scores on their interviews.
IQ is not concerned with
- the candidate knows about the job
- the candidate has good (enough) people skills
- the candidate showers, shaves, etc
Guess they shouldn't bother and go straight here then http://www.kids-iq-tests.com/famous-people.html [kids-iq-tests.com]
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It's a chinese company; they're still trying to figure some of this stuff out. Besides, with the number of applicants they have they can afford to be picky even beyound the 140 requirement.
I mean, here in the USA you'll get bad sorting processes as well.
Remember google's experience? Good performance in a job interview != good performance in the job.
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IQ is not concerned with
- the candidate knows about the job
- the candidate has good (enough) people skills
- the candidate showers, shaves, etc
To understand computers, being able to think in abstract logic is far more important than your EQ so for an IT outsourcing company it's almost "knowing" your job. Now we'd all like perfect employees, but it's much, much easier to find someone to look good in a suit and talk nice to your customers than to find someone competent to do the work. It does not matter how good your "people skills" are, if you take a week to do what should have taken a day.
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Google tests are (way) better than IQ, but guess what Google found out: the best performers are the ones who have the lowest scores on their interviews.
Then maybe Google tests are not that good then. IQ tests show a correlation with income and with education level. Correlation is not causation, but if a company wants someone with good education, IQ is not such a bad instrument.
Re:Ok, this is stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
"Google found out: the best performers are the ones who have the lowest scores on their interviews." [citation needed]
Re:Ok, this is stupid (Score:4, Informative)
IQ is highly overrated
In practice, it's almost useless...
Google tests are (way) better than IQ, but guess what Google found out: the best performers are the ones who have the lowest scores on their interviews.
I'll quote [friendfeed.com] the original source of that claim, Peter Norvig, and his refuting of that interpretation:
What do you know? Valleywag got everything wrong. Google is hiring, not laying off. Also, our interview scores actually correlate very well with on-the-job performance. Peter Seibel asked me if there was anything counterintuitive about the process and I said that people who got one low score but were hired anyway did well on-the-job. To me, that means the interview process is doing very well, not that it is broken. It means that we don't let one bad interview blackball a candidate. We'll keep interviewing, keep hiring, and keep analyzing the results to improve the process. And I guess Valleywag will keep doing what they do...
(emphasis mine)
Eivind.
Re:Ok, this is stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
IQ is highly overrated
In practice, it's almost useless...
It's true that it's not all you need to do well. Citation needed on it being almost useless, in the same way that citation is needed on water not being wet.
Google tests are (way) better than IQ, but guess what Google found out: the best performers are the ones who have the lowest scores on their interviews.
The best performers are those that were hired in spite of having a low score in one interview out of several. These are people that are so impressive for some reason or other that even a low score in an interview does not rule them out. Citation needed on Google tests being way better than just an IQ test - I only know that they are more laborious, not that they outperform 100 years of research into IQ. If they do I expect it's because they include either an actual IQ test or an IQ test by proxy such as riddles or hard subject-specific questions you can't just memorize ahead of time. In any case, citation needed.
IQ is not concerned with - the candidate knows about the job - the candidate has good (enough) people skills - the candidate showers, shaves, etc
... and yet IQ tests still predict performance very well in many jobs. It's both fantastic and fantastically politically unacceptable.
If you are up in arms about IQ, then just wait till you read about the general fitness factor. This is the first link I found on google: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ698164&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ698164 [ed.gov]
Fantastic...and non-PC (Score:3, Insightful)
As the parent says: "IQ tests still predict performance very well in many jobs. It's both fantastic and fantastically politically unacceptable". This is so well known as to be beyond any credible dispute. As an overall predictor of success, IQ is known to be quite good. Here's a nice summary. [iq-tests.eu] Note that the correlation between IQ and professional success is even stronger than the correlation in height between parents and children.
If China uses this policy widely, over a long period of time, it will be inte
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Citation needed on Google tests being way better than just an IQ test
Maybe because one has to do with skills related to the job and the other doesn't. Do you even know what kind of questions google asks? Well, I do.
IQ tests can sometimes outperform subject-specific tests even for determining future performance in that specific subject. This occurs especially when everyone tested is known to already posses the basic knowledge of a field.
It's surprising until you think about it for a bit. People can increase their knowledge if they have a high IQ, but people cannot increase their IQ no matter how much they know of their subject.
and yet IQ tests still predict performance very well in many jobs. It's both fantastic
Depends on the job. Get out of the lab and onto the real world.
Yes, it is generally the case that each job has a certain level of IQ beyond which further
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Disagree: You think this guy [wordpress.com] isn't going to kick some corporate ass for you?
Well... When he's in the office he will.
Re:Ok, this is stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
http://gawker.com/5392947/googles-broken-hiring-process [gawker.com]
And I quote Peter Norvig
One of the interesting things we've found, when trying to predict how well somebody we've hired is going to perform when we evaluate them a year or two later, is one of the best indicators of success within the company was getting the worst possible score on one of your interviews. We rank people from one to four, and if you got a one on one of your interviews, that was a really good indicator of success.
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What do you know? Valleywag got everything wrong. Google is hiring, not laying off. Also, our interview scores actually correlate very well with on-the-job performance. Peter Seibel asked me if there was anything counterintuitive about the process and I said that people who got one low score but were hired anyway did well on-the-job. To me, that means the interview process is doing very well, not that it is broken. It means that we don't let one bad interview blackball a candidate. We'll keep interviewing, keep hiring, and keep analyzing the results to improve the process. And I guess Valleywag will keep doing what they do... - Peter Norvig from Bookmarklet
http://friendfeed.com/peternorvig/7a110005/google-broken-hiring-process-gawker?embed=1 [friendfeed.com]
Re:Ok, this is stupid (Score:5, Informative)
(Repeat of similar post above, where you made this misinterpretation too.)
http://gawker.com/5392947/googles-broken-hiring-process [gawker.com]
And I quote Peter Norvig
One of the interesting things we've found, when trying to predict how well somebody we've hired is going to perform when we evaluate them a year or two later, is one of the best indicators of success within the company was getting the worst possible score on one of your interviews. We rank people from one to four, and if you got a one on one of your interviews, that was a really good indicator of success.
I'll quote [friendfeed.com] the original source of that claim, Peter Norvig, and his refuting of that interpretation:
What do you know? Valleywag got everything wrong. Google is hiring, not laying off. Also, our interview scores actually correlate very well with on-the-job performance. Peter Seibel asked me if there was anything counterintuitive about the process and I said that people who got one low score but were hired anyway did well on-the-job. To me, that means the interview process is doing very well, not that it is broken. It means that we don't let one bad interview blackball a candidate. We'll keep interviewing, keep hiring, and keep analyzing the results to improve the process. And I guess Valleywag will keep doing what they do...
(emphasis mine)
Eivind.
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McDonald's had a training model "green is growing" and that's probably the effect Google is seeing. If you ace every single area, then you might be really smart and motivated... but you're probably not reaching far ENOUGH for challenging work. From an employment point of view, somebody reaching "over their head" is more likely to TRY harder to make themselves better. It would be like paying somebody good in the 100 yd dash to walk your dog.... they could probably DO the job quite well, but they wouldn't bet
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IQ isn't everything (Score:2, Insightful)
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Any test is only going to test a narrow range of things. In the case of an IQ test it is similar to most academic tests in that it tests your logical-mathematical abilities (quantitative computation in particular) and often, depending on the form, your linguistic abilities. Doesn't tend to test much else. Now, while those are useful traits in many ways, there are others that are also useful. One would be interpersonal skills/intelligence. While many smart geek types, generally those with bad interpersonal s
Re:IQ isn't everything (Score:4, Informative)
Basing emplyment on IQ is pointless as it doesn't actually predict "real-world" performance.
Citation needed in the same way that citation is needed for water not being wet.
This is similar to college only accepting students with a score in the top 1% on the ACT/SAT - they can do well on a test, but that doesn't mean they are a good student.
That's true, though it also does not mean that they won't do well. It's a correlation - it doesn't automatically imply any specific outcome, just makes it more likely.
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Basing emplyment on IQ is pointless as it doesn't actually predict "real-world" performance. Citation needed in the same way that citation is needed for water not being wet.
See Outliers [wikipedia.org] by Malcolm Gladwell. It references several studies and anecdotes in which no connection between high iq and success is found. The smartest man in the world works as a bouncer.
Re:IQ isn't everything (Score:5, Informative)
> Basing emplyment on IQ is pointless as it doesn't actually predict "real-world" performance.
IQ does correlate with job performance, especially for higher-complexity jobs.
See, for example:
http://faculty.washington.edu/mdj3/MGMT580/Readings/Week%202/Schmidt.pdf [washington.edu]
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rent smart white people (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/06/29/china.rent.white.people/index.html [cnn.com]
What's next -- tall, smart, white people?
blond, slender, blue eyes, and so on.
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IQ is correlated with height from what I've heard.
URL (Score:2, Funny)
Search for Intelligent Americans. (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe the CIA and SETI should merge.
S.I.A.
CYA
Article missing it's mark (Score:5, Informative)
I think the article missed the reason they are hiring US people. "To speak English"
They aren't hiring people from the US to do CS jobs, they are hiring them to train their mainland China employees on how to communicate in English on the specific topic (computer science) that otherwise would be completely lost on regular "GREAT ENGLISH JOBS IN CHINA TESOL" type of people who may know English but know little about computer science.
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I think the article missed the reason they are hiring US people. "To speak English"
They aren't hiring people from the US to do CS jobs, they are hiring them to train their mainland China employees on how to communicate in English on the specific topic (computer science) that otherwise would be completely lost on regular "GREAT ENGLISH JOBS IN CHINA TESOL" type of people who may know English but know little about computer science.
That's surprising because I would think that there are far more English-speaking Chinese, than Mandarin (or whatever)-speaking Americans.
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Re:Article missing it's mark (Score:4, Interesting)
To give you an idea of why the "Western" part of that sentence is important, a teacher in the UK will be on £25,000 per year on average. The Chinese average wage is roughly £5200 per year. You'll be earning 5 x a regular person, while paying Chinese prices for consumer goods and services.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who cares? Unless you want to criticize the government or practice Falun Gong, they're probably not going to restrict any of the freedoms you actually care about. You're free to dress the way you want and go about your normal business there.
This is different from, say, Saudi Arabia, where if you're a female you'll be restricted from many freedoms you take for granted in the West: dressing in a Western manner, driving a car, reading a paper, being without a male escort, etc. Even if you're male, you have
the cult of the iq test (Score:5, Interesting)
the iq test tests very narrow ranges of iq, such as topological intelligence, the ability to manipulate 3D shapes in your head
but it has zero ability to measure something like social intelligence, the ability to manipulate people
i don't know that the ability to play 12 games of chess at the same time in your head is as valuable as the bedrock ability to communicate well, especially in the realm of business. the iq test certainly has its uses, but i think people ascribe way too much significance to it when determining someone's worth. someone with a very high traditional iq score can be quite useless in a business sense. the idea of something being useful is a relative term of course: you can be quite useful to an asocial pursuit that could very well be important to mankind in abstract ways with a traditional high iq
however, in your average business environment, the ability to simply and effectively communicate is a basic need, and pretty much trumps every other area of intelligence, since a business is nothing more than an efficient social organization. the more efficient a business is socially, the more efficient a business is economically, all else being equal. someone who gets well below 100 on a traditional iq test can be quite charismatic, persuasive, and capable of leading people. while someone who scores well above 100 on a traditional iq test can be unresponsive, aloof, distant, and confusing. so for the specific case of a business environment, a high traditional iq would seem not very useful at all
the ability to lead people is perhaps the most important iq of all possible areas of human intelligence, especially in business, but there is no test for it
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"but it has zero ability to measure something like social intelligence, the ability to manipulate people" -- that's what low IQ people say, they are full of social intelligence and are good at manipulating people, they usually end up working in HR.
x and y axes (Score:5, Insightful)
there are people with
1. high traditional iq, high social iq,
2. high traditional iq, low social iq,
3. low traditional iq, high social iq,
4. low traditional iq, low social iq
your inability to conceptualize more than one axis in the formulation of your comment doesn't speak very well for your iq, any iq
pop quiz: (Score:3, Insightful)
how many presidents have we had with a PhD?
answer:
one. Woodrow Wilson
yes, Barack Obama is someone with a high traditional iq and a high social iq
but as GW Bush demonstrates that you can be well below 100 on both social iq and traditional iq and still become president. you just need to score high on the nepotism iq test and the oil money iq test
Affirmative action (Score:2)
yay!
IQ Test for the Submitter (Score:2)
Country A has a population of x.
Country B has a population of x*4.
Which country will have a larger pool of job applicants with an IQ above 140?
Smart enough to cheat and steal (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Smart enough to cheat and steal (Score:5, Funny)
Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
Affirmative action for white dudes! Where can I sign up?
US has a smaller pool... (Score:2)
I suspect that the number of US applicants is smaller because: a much smaller percentage of US citizens want to work in Shanghai than Chinese nationals. Given that they lowered the qualifying score for Americans means they want Americans. Sorta says something positive about Americans in general.
There is no such thing as intelligence, ... (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no such thing as intelligence, only interest. - Richard Feynman (IIRC)
Mensa is packed with idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest idiots I know are in Mensa. Just a bunch of incompetent morons who like taking IQ tests.
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By the same principle, no person with an IQ over 100 would be willing to work in the United States, which is obviously not true. Maybe you overestimate the prevalence of humanists..
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If you are dumb enough not to know better I understand, but an intelligent person can surely see past the paycheck.
Or maybe they're smart enough to realize that as long as they follow the rules they'll be fine and don't care about the human rights violations otherwise?
Or perhaps they're hoping to do their own little bit to change the way things work by actually going there. See the issues for themselves, while earning a paycheck so they don't screw up their finances or have to do the tourist thing.
Smart doesn't automatically equal ethical, or even 'progressive'.
Re: (Score:2)
I think most slashdotters actually think that that a $80K local developer is much better the $10K developer in place with different time zone outside of the normal management chain and support system.
I personally suspect (though I admit that I have no evidence to back it up) that projects originating in India oprobably are equally good as those originating in the US.
Re:Someone's hiring smartly! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is especially surprising because the average slashdotter is doing the same crap that the average developer in India is doing.
Everything built today is short-term throw-away crap, often because the cultural, organisational, specification and documentation requirements won't translate (and the people involved in outsourcing don't care anyway).
Try discussing a real-world requirement with a well-spoken Englishman who has lived in the same area as you and experienced the same social and workplace culture and worked with you in the company on similar projects, then try communicating it to a man living in India who has experienced none of the above. Sit down with that man in a quiet room and prepare, say, an API together; now do the same with Bob from Bangalore over MSN. If you don't experience /any/ barrier then your need is so simple you'd be better off spending the next hour fulfilling it yourself.
Outsourcing is often used because the guy who got the bonus from apparently saving money in the short term knows that he'll be long gone by the time the shit hits the fan. Sometimes it works really well, but just as often it's a cruel joke. Its essential premise is: let's move work to an area with a greater supply of desperate workers and fewer workers protections because that'd be cheaper. It assumes that saving, say, $500,000 on the salary line of the budget for some project is not going to be offset by the disadvantages of not having someone with a local understanding. Communication takes longer, requests are more likely to be misinterpreted, there is no link between robustness of output and long-term advancement of the worker so his code is likely to suffer worse engineering practice, etc.
In some cases (where IQ's much higher), the worker may come up with solutions radically faster.
Or mull around over-engineering. Or not make much difference because the IQ test didn't identify skills applicable to the problem.
Hence it makes sense to link pay to IQ (at the start) and pay to IQ and results as time passes.
Why don't we link pay to colour? And any other number of immutable measures of an individual which have some correlation with intellectual performance.
Probably done by people with a higher IQ than you (Score:5, Insightful)
Or at least the ability to write more interesting and useful posts. Seriously, what is with shit like this and why does it get moderated up? Are you trying to make a statement of some kind? Then make it, don't sit there and be obtuse about it. Or are you just trying to make yourself appear smart by "predicting" something that is quite obvious?
Seriously, this is worthless. You have something to say on using IQ tests, say it. Don't try and be obtuse as though that somehow makes your post more interesting.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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Races will never disappear.
Erm, okay. I assume you misinterpreted "division by race" rather obtusely as "existence of races" rather than discrimination due to race. But you're fairly wrong anyway: we're interbreeding more than ever; to the extent that distinct races can be defined, they're disappearing.
There are stupid people and smart people. It's a fact.
The error is fixing people on a line, or fixing people in any way by some small set of parameters. There's nothing wrong with asserting, say, "my daughter has severe mental retardation" (which is another way of saying "my daughter is s
Re:IQ doesn't measure drive.. (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, your real problem is that you don't understand what anecdotal evidence is.