Despite the answers below, it’s not an IQ question (I likely have an above average IQ, but nothing remotely special).
If I see a problem, particularly in a business context (I’m not a trained scientist curing cancer here), I can solve it. Whether that’s marketing, product, sales, devops, engineering, you name it. I don’t mind jumping between disciplines, getting my hands dirty, and doing the work that needs doing (no matter how unglamorous).
And if I work for companies with hundreds of employees and I’m one of the go to people for any problem, big or small, I know I have something special that sets me apart.
I’m on my fifth company of my career. Every job I’ve joined as an IC.
My first job I got because I interned and they wanted me to join full time.
My second job I joined as a straight SE.
My third job was via an acquisition of the second company, and I started as an IC and became a Sr Director.
My fourth job I was a co-founder that did a little of everything.
My fifth job I joined as a senior IC, and basically pitched where I could have the most impact during my first week and then have just run from there.
The only thing that matters when joining a company is really your salary, as they are unlikely to fix that quickly. Role, title, focus, manager, etc, can all be changed quickly if you present a solution to leadership that makes sense to them.
Oh, and regarding what type of companies. For me the primary factor right now is remote. I plan on being remote for the rest of my career. That’s my number one priority when looking at companies to join.
Disagree totally with this. My psychometric IQ has been stable for a long time, yet my problem solving ability has increased significantly.
Some ways to modulate it might be reading material such as George Polya's "How to Solve It," taking your own notes on heuristics and techniques you've found useful and continuously reapplying and iterating them, and simply delving deep into many hard problems (be they directly coding related or not).
Agreed. Problem solving is a skill separate from IQ and unlike IQ it can be developed over time. If you want to level up your problem solving skill, carry around a small notebook and pay attention to the problems you see in other people, or in the office, in public, or in yourself. Write down the problem and its cause, continually drilling down into root causes. Then make a graph of problems and root causes, with directed edges showing causation.
Within one or two years of doing this you will recognize patterns others do not see. I have improved my problem solving skill by at least 7-8% by doing this. The key is iteration.
My IQ has been stable like yours, around the 96th percentile, and despite being a Tier 1 top-talent engineer, I’ve had to actively improve my problem solving ability over time.
Interesting that you are you self-aware you can tell the difference between a 6% and a 9% increase is something as nebulous as "problem solving ability."
Edit: Oh, the account is nothing but troll comments. Nevermind.
This betrays a lack of familiarity with the literature on intelligence. Fluid intelligence doesn’t change much if at all between 14 and 27, when it starts its long slow decline. Crystallized intelligence can keep rising for decades after that. The number of fields where fluid is more important than crystallized is very small if very important. Having a vast knowledge base, built on a foundation of experience, is more important for most full time academics, never mind those of us not engaged in research. You can’t play at all if your fluid intelligence isn’t high enough but there are a lot of people out there who’re smart and vastly less successful than dumber people who worked consistently at something. At the top are the smart, hard working and lucky but intelligence is not the be all and end all.
If that were true, everyone with a very high IQ would be a great poker player, a great negotiator, a great writer, a great leader, a great investor.. etc.
IQ is as proxy for problem solving if the problems look like a standardized test. The problems people face in the real world require more specialization and a more complex combination of skills and traits.
It's not. It was originally used to find profoundly disabled children. But know extended to be the be all and end all of intelligence. It's weak science.
Well... There is fluid intelligence and crystalized intelligence.
What you're pointing out is that crystalized intelligence is what matters.
Fluid intelligence mediates the ability to gain crystalized intelligence.
Higher IQ in theory means you should get further faster. Though even without if you are dedicated enough to obtain the same level of crystalized intelligence you might be able to do so. I suspect at some point the cognitive ceilings are different, but who knows by how much.
IQ is one of the strongest predictors we have for many life outcomes, such as career success, wealth, lower risk of death. This doesn't mean "everyone with a very high IQ will blah blah blah" but it does mean that those with high IQs are more likely to achieve certain things.
I might be pulling things out of my ass here but IIRC the correlation is up there with that of your parents’ wealth. And in current political discussion lots of time is spent on how to deal with the latter. It may in fact still be a weak predictor, but that obviously doesn’t make it meaningless.
Please stop. Your self pity is annoying. You have an engineering degree. There’s no way you’re not in the top quintile of intelligence and you’re probably in the top decile. Enough of the pity party. If you hate yourself go join a boxing club or start running marathons or something else that will put the petty bullshit of work life in perspective besides the fact that you’re young and you have a beautiful, working body.
First, understand that IQ tests can be biased and can shaft minorities. Second, they are tools and are only as good as the person making use of them.
Third, eat right, exercise, live right, etc. Performance is impacted by health and even supposedly high IQ people will perform worse if they are sick, short of sleep, etc.
IQ isn't a useless concept, but I'm somewhat well versed in the history of IQ tests, etc, and it's got a lot of issues with it.
It's both fluid and crystalized intelligence that are required.
The better you can pattern match the faster you will be able to acquire crystalized intelligence by being able to connect the dots and you'll likely be able to leverage superior pattern matching abilities to utilize less crystalized intelligence to draw the same conclusions in certain cases. But if you have no or very little crystalized intelligence in the domain you're trying to problem solve in then you aren't going to get very far.
The amount of times I've solved something no one else could, just because I went the extra check of looking up the manufacturers documentation when the companies fell short...
Don't mean this to be a mean comment but how did you assess this?
I think i am good problem solver but i don't know if i am better than anyone else.