
The Myth of the Underachieving Genius - orborde
http://www.skorks.com/2010/02/high-academic-results-make-better-programmers/
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harpastum
It seems to me that the author is arguing against a straw man. As far as I can
tell, very few people are arguing that people with lower grades are _better_
than those with good grades.

I think the prevailing sentiment is that it's a poor filter to simply
disregard those that didn't do well in school -- the idea is not to abandon
high-GPA students for lower-GPA students, but to consider _both_.

~~~
what
I would agree that on their own grades are poor filter.

You could have less than stellar grades, but may have something else to show
your ability (side projects or what not).

On the other hand, a high GPA might only demonstrate your mastery of bulimic
studying; Memorize and regurgitate.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Or that you learned to game the system.

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alan-crowe
I find that throw-away comment is a revelation to me.

The American education system teaches its bright students to game the system.
Then they go to work for Enron or Goldman-Sachs, and game the system.

I've lived my life viewing the world through a peculiarly British narrative.
Upper class twits preside over a broken system with perverse incentives. Why
doesn't it fail? Partly because of the plucky grammar school boy who grows up
to occupy a key technocrat role and who heroically resists the lure of
perverse incentives and does the right thing. Partly because of the inherent
decency and solidarity of the working class, who will not shaft each other
even if the system pays them to.

So the American experience, in which mainstream people are always looking for
an angle and a way to game the system, seems quite alien to me. Duh! It is the
way they have been brought up.

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hnhg
> Partly because of the inherent decency and solidarity of the working class,
> who will not shaft each other even if the system pays them to.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Why are you romanticising the
working class? Personally speaking, the breadth of my family oddly encompasses
the upper and lower classes, and after being close to all of them over the
years I can tell you there is nothing inherently wrong or right about a
specific class. Some of the most admirable people I have met you would label
as "upper class twits," and likewise there are others from more humble
backgrounds that you would point to as evidence of an exclusive core of
decency within the lower classes.

In summary, good and bad people exist in the same proportions in every
arbitrary class we would wish to create.

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jswinghammer
It's sort of silly to suggest that people assess someone based on grades when
first meeting them (or ever). No one has ever asked me about my grades in any
level of education-they're average to below average compared to my peers
(2.5-3.0). Most people assume that I did very well in school because I spend a
great deal of time reading about a wide variety of subjects so I tend to know
a lot about whatever topic comes up at lunch or whatever.

I've met some people who got good grades but can't do anything useful so they
go nowhere. I've met some people who make my grades look excellent and they're
much more capable than I am in terms of programming skills (in my estimation
at least). In my experience the ability to influence people in an organization
and read people's feelings is far more important to success than grades. Even
the smartest people I know whose social skills are bad tend to have problems
getting where they want to go in life.

I assume that people who write these kinds of articles did well in school
(Joel Spolsky's made this point before so I'm mostly thinking of him). I think
that people who did poorly in school are less likely to write this sort of
article and thus if they did I'd pay closer attention to what they're saying.
These sort of statements strike me as self serving and defensive.

If you did well in school you played by the rules and you got your reward
already. Your parents were happy with you, your teachers didn't ever give you
the lecture that went like this "If you only tried a little bit you'd be
getting an A in this class", your friends admired your achievement, etc. I'm
not sure I feel any need to give you anything more than you already have
received. I don't resent your success at all but it's hard for me to feel
sorry for you if people notice the underachievers who made it before they
notice you.

~~~
akshaybhat
I agree, Ppl with good grades have hard time accepting someone without them to
be as good or even better than they are. For them grades become like a company
whose share they hold. And any one making an arument against their fallibility
even in special situation makes them extremely self conscious!

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eru
They may be some people who are like this. But I know enough people with good
grades, who are much more tolerant; and some even see their chase of high
grades as a waste of time.

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thewileyone
Honestly, I've seen more the former, not what you've described.

~~~
eru
I guess we both have our sampling biases.

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asher
It would be wise to approach this topic with some detachment, as if debating
whether red or black ants have longer lifespans.

There is a risk of feeling one's self-image threatened by this thesis (and its
opposite). That perception of threat often ends rational thought.

I think we all suspect that any correlation, positive or negative, between GPA
and programmer "value" is merely aggregating several trends which may oppose
each other.

Thus, there may be a current of brilliant, rebellious tinkerers who never get
good grades but write good code; there may be a current of lazy underachievers
who get bad grades and write bad code.

And people change with time. Someone who gets bad grades at 19 but writes
great code at 29 may have changed into a "good grades" type.

I'm not sure we'd even agree on what a good programmer is. The truly bad is
obvious, but one man's elegant virtuosity is another's unfixable nightmare.

~~~
shadowsun7
I agree with you on everything except the last bit. I believe the literature
on what a good programmer is has been fairly clear - Fred Brooks first wrote
about it in the Mythical Man-Month, and since then there has been a large body
of empirical evidence supporting his claims on the variance between good and
bad programmers.

Good programmers are simply more productive. They ship more code, given the
same amount of time. That's a simple way of looking at things, for sure (you
may argue about readability and maintainability and so on so forth), but when
the difference is 20 times the average programmer, people begin to sit up and
take notice.

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natmaster
And apparently this "genius" thinks implication is the same as equivalence.

I don't think anyone claims everyone who has mediocre grades is a genius - it
is not a sufficient condition, or even necessary. So now he hoists up a straw
man, and then attempts to reverse it once again to not only claim that because
mediocre grades do not mean someone is a genius, mediocre grades must mean
they are NOT a genius, but also that good grades are a sufficient condition
for genius.

In conclusion, don't bother reading this author's rubbish. I can't say if he
grades are good, but I know for a fact he isn't a genius.

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colonelxc
Original Blog Title: High Academic Results Make Better Programmers

Personal anecdote about laziness and grades: My freshman year of college, I
had a semester where I decided that video games were more important than
school. I got a terrible gpa, lost all my scholarships, etc. I spent the next
several years making it up. Now I didn't quite just rebound to high 3's and
4.0's, it took a few semesters to overcome my bad habits first (3.2,3.5,etc).
Eventually I ended up with a cumulative 3.5.

While I do regret getting that poor of grades, it does provide some talking
material for an interview (provided your lower grades don't pre-filter you).
It shows that you realized your mistakes, worked to improve yourself, and with
your high junior/senior level grades, that you actually are smart enough to do
the work (well, as much as college can prepare you for that).

So, I guess my point is that even if you have had bad grades, you still have
time to prove yourself, and may even end up with interview talking points.

~~~
nickpinkston
FWIW: I always thought that this case would make a great visual resume for a
quant. A "stock" chart of your GPA improving over time using the visual
analogy of a successful company turnaround.

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rosshudgens
The thing about "grades" is that the mindset that revolves around getting them
can change instantly. They aren't necessarily a sign of intelligence, more of
work ethic.

If a person is shown progress or potential in an area of motivation, they can
express the same "care" that got the person a 4.0 great grades.

Of course, the person who got the 4.0 shows more historical evidence of
continued motivation towards excellence, but I think there's something to be
said for such a broad number that's more an implication of ability to solve
thousands of fragmented problems than a person who is capable of solving one
problem extremely fucking well.

Also, how many startups are really back-checking grades when recruiting? I can
see big companies with HR departments and stuff doing so, but I imagine many
just-ins don't have the resources/time/care to do so.

So, lie, programmers. Lie.

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blintson
I don't think grades/school should be used for employment at all.* Grades may
coincide with good skills but they are _COMPLETELY_ orthogonal.

1\. Most programmers in the US go through 16 years of school. The final 8 have
an effect on where you end up. Of the first four(high school) only about 1/3
of your time is spent on math/science* * . Of the final 4(at the two colleges
I attended) only about 2.5 years are spent on math science. Of that 2.5 years
only about 1.5 are computer-science specific.

This means you're determining somebody's programming competence based on
information (What college and grades) that is less than half(48%) based on
math/science proficiency and less than quarter(19%) based on computer science.

2\. They're subjective. Especially liberal arts(i.e. MOST of school).* * *

3.It's incredibly expensive. Computer science and math cost next to nothing,
but for some reason I'm supposed to give some school 60k over 4 years to spend
about a quarter of my time studying what I'm interested in.

4.If you test out of a class it doesn't count for grades. If I work very hard
and do 16 weeks of calculus in 3 and take a test, I get credit. If do nothing
and just ace the class I get an A to pad my transcript. This creates a DIRECT
incentive to do less.* * * *

* I am absolutely all for hearing about research/coding/contests I don't think schools opinions should matter at all.

* * I mention high school grades because high school grades determine which school you go to.

* * * Yes, math and science in high school/college can be and frequently are subjective as well. Teachers give credit for effort/showing work on problems/homework/etc. etc.. My high school algebra grade was a C despite getting 90+% right on exams because I didn't do the homework and the teacher wasn't satisfied with my explanations.

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araneae
"Grades may coincide with good skills but they are _COMPLETELY_ orthogonal."

No, they are not orthogonal. A moron cannot get good grades, at least not when
competing in the same classes.

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thewileyone
“The tragedy of a team of perfect people is that they will all be so desperate
to maintain their sense of perfection, their 4.0 in life, that when faced with
the pressure of an important project their selfish drives will tear the team
apart”

I've seen this happen in real life ... very relevant ...

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psych101
What the author says is sometimes true, but for a very small proportion of the
underachievers. A very large proportion of the underachievers, however, will
think that they are part of that small proportion.

It is the same with IQ: IQ and cleverness are not always very well correlated,
but those with a high IQ will think that there is more correlation than there
is while those with a low or average IQ will think that there is less.

Meh. Show me one person who isn't in denial about their abilities in one thing
or another, and I'll show you someone who's better at hiding it than you are
at detecting it.

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nsoonhui
One thing I'm pretty sure; good academic results don't mean you can code, but
poor results mean you can't code.

That's what happens here in Malaysia.

~~~
thewileyone
In Malaysia, good academic results don't mean anything because the education
system is built on rout memorization, not creative thinking.

~~~
nsoonhui
Well said

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nraynaud
Do you advise suicide or normalisation for average grade students ?

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bobbin
Straw-man.

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bonsaitree
Tachikomas!

~~~
devinj
Yeah, I want to know why they're there too.

