unidentified thoughts

I think there’s a missing thing in the linked article: IQ != good grades.

Depending on the school system, those with high IQ could be great at doing few things that require their brain power. While they could be very bad at things that require more social skills, physical coordination, or maybe artistic.

If the school is designed to measure grades on multiple aspects of intelligence, this person with high IQ may not have good grades in overall. They will get bored with the mundane tasks of school, and wander around with other things outside school. This kind of people are usually very great at few things, but very bad at other things.

When they’re in college, they will face similar issue. They will only focus on courses that they felt are aligned to their way of thinking, and ignore or being lazy with the rest.

At work, they could have the potential to be bad at teamwork, because they may have less tolerance for different way of thinking. They will choose to work alone, to eliminate those “interruptions”. They could be very good as a freelancer or working in small teams, while they will perform badly under large organizations. Inflexibility is their enemy.

So, I don’t really think high IQ will kill startup. In fact, it may help a startup to innovate, if they are assigned to the right task.

But, what I agree with is, those who could get away easily with good grades at school tend to be underperforming, when they’re outside.

Very few of these underperforming people will choose engineering or any type of work that require persistence as a career. Because engineering requires hard work, and cheating doesn’t always work.

So, my conclusion is IQ != grades != performance.