IQ tests are not only politically incorrect they are illegal in the US. It is illegal discrimination to make hiring decisions based on IQ scores. You can only use a test that shows those with higher scores perform better at the job. A general IQ test can not be shown to do that. Basically you can not ask questions that test skills that would not be used in the job the candidate is applying for.

You must be able to defend the metric you use for hiring and that it is not discriminatory. If you give an IQ test that is unrelated to the job and say no one below 100 IQ will be hired you must prove that someone with 101 IQ can do the job but someone with 99 IQ can not properly do the job

> It is illegal discrimination to make hiring decisions based on IQ scores. You can only use a test that shows those with higher scores perform better at the job.

There is more scientific evidence that IQ predicts job performance than for most of the more qualitative criterions that employers use in practice. The source of the illegality of using IQ tests is not legislative (intelligence is not a protected class[1]). It comes from the precedent of Griggs v. Duke Power Co., in which the IQ test was being used as a barrier for jobs where IQ was not a good predictor (not programming), and prior to thorough research on the subject. There have been hundreds of studies showing that IQ tests predict job performance (though not super strongly) at the beginning of careers, even though this fades once they have more experience. This[3] meta-analysis approaches these studies very critically, and concludes that many inflate the effect, and that it doesn't validate the IQ test (i.e. there may be non-cognitive reasons for it) but that the correlation still exists. (For what it's worth, I suspect they're right about the non-cognitive part since the correlation has become much stronger over time, particularly around the 1970s. However, when your goal is to test for something and not to explain it, correlation is good enough.)

> Basically you can not ask questions that test skills that would not be used in the job the candidate is applying for. ... You must be able to defend the metric you use for hiring and that it is not discriminatory.

No, the burden set in Griggs and later elaborated in a modification to the Civil Rights Act is not to prove that a test is not discriminatory at all. Instead for tests that are discriminatory in practice (though not obviously in design, like IQ), you must show that the test is truly indicative of job performance. If this were not the case, you couldn't ask if people went to college, due to the racial disparity in college graduates. Also you can ask things you can't prove are related to job performance if it isn't discriminatory (not that this is really useful).

> If you give an IQ test that is unrelated to the job and say no one below 100 IQ will be hired you must prove that someone with 101 IQ can do the job but someone with 99 IQ can not properly do the job

Of course you don't have to show that anyone who fails your test will 100% be worse on a case by case basis than someone who passes. If that were the case you couldn't justify pretty much any test other than "applicant is not dead or in a coma." You just need to show that it is clearly less likely. I would find it really surprising if there wasn't some kind of IQ threshold effect for programming (i.e. the closer you are to the middle of the spectrum, the better a predictor of programming performance IQ is). That would make it easy to justify using an IQ test as a predictor, especially in combination with the more general studies.

I don't think IQ would be terribly useful to weed out programmers because I suspect there are more related ways to judge applicants that would already weed out those in the region where IQ is useful, but it is not as simple as "IQ testing for a job is illegal."

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. [3]: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10888691.2014.98...

Reading the Wikipedia link on Griggs it seems to have been about requiring a high school diploma for jobs that didn't need that as a way of keeping blacks out. That seems a different matter to wanting to hire intelligent people to programme?

Yes, that's precisely my point. Griggs (and some later ruling and legislation along the same lines) established when an employer can use a test to evaluate applicants that indirectly discriminates against a protected class. From the article:

> The Supreme Court ruled that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, if such tests disparately impact ethnic minority groups, businesses must demonstrate that such tests are "reasonably related" to the job for which the test is required.

For programmers (as well as many other jobs), IQ (within a certain range) could be borne out as being reasonably related. GP was claiming that it is illegal to administer IQ tests during interviews in the US, which is not true.

>IQ tests are not only politically incorrect they are illegal in the US. It is illegal discrimination to make hiring decisions based on IQ scores.

Oh come now. Every company in the valley emphasizes "cultural fit" and that's about as subtle a dog-whistle as an '88' neck tattoo.

It's pretty obvious that nobody here cares about even the most clear-cut discrimination against protected classes (and it's not at all clear to me that less intelligent people are a protected class.)

The difference is that "cultural fit" means a different thing at every different company, so it would have to be proven to be discriminatory on a case-by-case basis. That takes too much work, so it doesn't happen very often.

IQ tests are well known to have a disparate impact on some protected classes, so you are treading on extremely thin ice to use one.

>IQ tests are well known to have a disparate impact on some protected classes, so you are treading on extremely thin ice to use one.

Really? I mean, I know that the racists have been going on about how some races are dumber than others for as long as the idea of race has existed... but is this an idea that would be taken seriously by the courts?

Absolutely. The concept is known as disparate impact. A test which results in members protected classes being less likely to be selected is not allowed unless you can demonstrate that the test is connected to job performance. There is a famous case from the 70's where the company wasn't even allowed to require a high-school diploma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

I was expressing doubt at the idea that intelligence correlates with ethnicity.

Intelligence, perhaps not. IQ tests certainly do. And regardless of correlations with ethnicity, IQ tests would correlate with some mental disabilities, and people with those mental disabilities are also members of a protected class.

I accepted an offer at IBM a few months ago and had to take an IQ tests of sorts. It was mostly focused around pattern recognition with some algebra problems thrown in. At best it seemed only tangentially related to programming ability.. I'm not sure that attempting to measure whether a candidate is "smart" or not is a good hiring strategy.

A good analogy for this type of interviewing is like trying to judge how good someone is at basketball by measuring how tall they are. Is it related? Sure. But it certainly doesn't give you the whole picture and might not be a useful information at all. Watching them play a few games would be a better strategy.

Fortunately there a quite a few startups working on this problem. Lytmus is one in particular that I think looks very promising.

The best way to show that you get things done is to have a record of things you've done to point to.