Please do this, teens who watch Stefan Molyneux. Please. Please show up at your job interview with a printout of your IQ test results. This is a really good idea. We adults have been hiding it from you because it's so good and normal. pic.twitter.com/fNE2PpkCJo
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) May 21, 2018
Used to be, Proud Traditionalists (a/k/a Angry White Men) will tell you, that job interviews were based on obvious merit. In more honest terms, an interviewer could be certain at a glance that a prospect was (a) pale-skinned, and (b) probably in possession of a penis. More intense scrutiny (Brooks Brothers tailoring? the “right” tie & shoes?) plus a glance at the applicant’s credentials (approved school / fraternity / country club) would cement the bond — or dismiss a pretender.
Now that “political correctness” has diminished the value of such forms (i.e., made it possible for people of color and those of alternative genders to acquire ‘prestige’ educations or professional credentials) the Proud Traditionalists are reduced to seeking out identity documents forms that, however meaningless they may be, can be presented as proof that their holder is… the Right Sort. Like an expensive “professional” IQ test!
If the person interviewing you asks a question you aren't prepared to answer, just yell "NOT AN ARGUMENT" at them.
— The Inglourious Gent (@thesnarkygent) May 21, 2018
#OtherMolyneauxResumeIdeas
Carefully prepare your answer to the classic question "what would you say your biggest weakness is?" Suggestions: "I am too tolerant of inferiority in others." "I do not spend enough time pursuing a mate adequate to carry my seed."— HerebyDemandHat (@Popehat) May 21, 2018
But srsly, guys…
2/ I have a great deal of empathy for anyone cut off from the job market – a long-term lack of access to work can be soul-destroying and really does kill people – but if you are seeking advice on this front from people telling you to announce your IQ to potential bosses, don't
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) May 21, 2018
Is spending a couple hundred dollars for a professional IQ test something you can actually do?
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 21, 2018
They subtract 10 points for anyone willing to pay hundreds of dollars for an IQ test
— Tony Biasotti (@TonyBiasotti) May 21, 2018
We may have found out how a certain ‘ambulatory cream cheese sculpture’ keeps getting employment:
In response to school shooting in Texas, Hugh Hewitt proposes a ban on trench coats https://t.co/h6A18x8VdP pic.twitter.com/2CNCWFAzWT
— Media Matters (@mmfa) May 21, 2018
Doug R
I have an old WISC test from about grade 6, will that do?
NotMax
Coming soon to a cineplex near you: Fast Times at Speedo High.
Waldo
Also, if you’re making eye contact with your interviewer, you’re probably sitting too close.
NotMax
Brr. Heading on the way down into the 50s tonight, temperature-wise. Tres unseasonable.
B.B.A.
When I hear the word “IQ” I reach for my gun.
Peale
@Doug R: I have a filled in Times Crossword…from a Thursday even.
frosty
Dunno if you’re snarking, but I’ve done job interviews in engineering for 45 years and your comment is utter bullshit in my line of work.
— Old Bald Fat White Guy
SiubhanDuinne
@Peale:
In ink or GTFO.
cynthia ackerman
Yawn
frosty
Well, my comment is in moderation. Help me Anne Laurie, you’re my only hope! Even though I dissed (dragged?) you in my comment. Sorry ’bout that, Chief.
ETA: Crashing for the night now.
Brachiator
“Professional” IQ test? And paying a couple of hundred dollars? You would be stupid to listen to this dope. Rejecting his “advice” is a good sign you could handle most jobs.
Mike J
White guys also tend to not like it when you tell them English majors make better programmers than compsci people.
NotMax
All this IQ chatter now making me want to rewatch some QI.
:)
Snippet for those unfamiliar with one of the most addictively entertaining (and informative) romps on TV. And another.
NotMax
@Peale
Anyone can fill in a crossword. No trick at all.
Oh, you meant correctly?
Never mind.
/E. Litella
hervevillechaizelounge
I have absolutely no idea who Stefan Molyneaux is, but let me hazard a guess—he’s head of a corporation that sells wildly expensive IQ tests, right?
I swear, everything is a scam with these people.
patrick II
@Brachiator:
I’m going to guess his brother-in-law owns a professional IQ test company, in which he is a secret shareholder.
bystander
Just watched Ari Melber’s segment on Michael Cohen’s business partner taking a plea deal. A really good discussion that ended with Maya Wiley making the observation of a prosecutor: Is the Trump Organization in fact a criminal enterprise? She is always so acutely insightful.
One of the best parts of being in France is you-know-who is never discussed. Especially not while eating.
NotMax
Strictly for fun, yet another QI snippet, this one coming at Sherlock Holmes aficionados.
Brachiator
@hervevillechaizelounge:
I went to his Wikipedia page. Oh, Lord…
A Canadian podcaster, he probably operates Stefan’s House of Poutine and IQ testing.
He’s been accused of being the leader of a “therapy cult.” Wonder if an IQ test is required to join it.
NineDragonSpot
I saw that Philip Roth died today.
I admit that my first thought was, “I suppose we’ll all be able to read about it in his next novel.”
Mike J
@Brachiator: Not related to Peter Molyneux is he? Brilliant game designer. Great ideas anyway, even if the games themselves sometimes disappoint.
NotMax
@NineDragonSpot
Did the obit happen to mention how many pounds of liver were found in his fridge?
;)
hellslittlestangel
Save yourself a couple hundred bucks and simply say, “Allow me to introduce myself: Wile E Coyote, Super Genius.”
NotMax
Currently Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple night on TCM. Have probably seen each of the movies a dozen times, and still enjoy them when they’re on.
Love the jazzy harpsichord music too.
Mike J
@NotMax: Pissed I missed the cheesy Bonita Granville Nancy Drews. Another race night spent coaching skill building (translated: took a newb out and got trounced beginning to end because I was teaching how to sail and not how to sail fast.)
raven
Damn, I had to get up and look. EVERYONE I voted for won from governor to school board!!!!!!
Brachiator
@Mike J:
They don’t appear to be related.
? Martin
@bystander:
Unless it changed in the last 30 years, yeah.
raven
I take it back, the race against the asshole Jody Hice was won by a woman who was pretty much unheard of here in Athen but to have African American women candidates for gov and congressperson is just fine!
Anne Laurie
@frosty:
What I’ve heard — from both male & female engineers — is that for the first part of your parameters, there weren’t all that many non-white applicants, and the few female ones did NOT have an easy time of it.
Obvious snark was, I thought, obvious. But on the other hand, when an Old White Guy huffs ‘We never had this issue in *my* line of business!’… he’s kinda opening himself up to mockery, y’know?
(Re the spam filter: for reasons, only front-pagers are allowed to use the word ‘penis’. Even when a commentor is innocently quoting a front-pager, no p-word!)
Platonailedit
If we gonna fp all the white dudes’ stupidity….
Anne Laurie
@raven: Congratulations! Let us know what (if anything we can do to help carry your luck forward in November!
NotMax
@raven
Based on the bits and bobs have read, heard or seen regarding some of the Rs running in Georgia, y’all have a bumper crop of bottom-dwelling poltroons this year.
Joey Maloney
What happened to the dueling immigrant-deport-o-mobiles? There was one guy who had a great big truck for the purpose and an even bigger douchemeteoroid who had a whole school bus.
Ramiah Ariya
I worked with an alt-righter kind of guy a few years back. He was into IQ too much; libertarian; and Ayn Rand fan, which is not unusual in IT. We were all properly impressed with him initially since he spoke well about “process” and that sort of thing. One day this other department called me upto complain, because our “process” guy had updated their production database without telling them. They found out from their audit and confronted him.
Apart from this, he was utterly useless – at one point, I had to literally yell instructions to him line by line on his work. But he clearly believed he was a superior specimen. It was sad.
WereBear
And they think that is all that is required.
raven
@NotMax: The local asshole, Brian Kemp, is the won who racked a shotgun and pointed it at a kid on a tv ad. For me the worst thing is that the kids of our dear friend who passed away a couple of years ago are supporters of this punk. She was very progressive and a quaker and it’s unreal.
raven
@Anne Laurie: I’m sure Stacy Abrams is going to garner a great deal of attention nationally, she’s really good but I fear these fucking goobers won’t budge. Tabitha Johnson-Green is unknown to me but I’ll be checking her out soonly.
Here’s a profile from the UGA Student paper.
raven
And this one is especially sweet, she’s an old friend and wasn’t given much of a chance.
NorthLeft12
@frosty:I have been an Engineer since 1980. Only recently, last ten years or so, have I seen much diversity creep into our line of work. To believe that all hires in Engineering are just based on merit and are colour/gender blind is delusional bullshit of the worst kind.
So you are saying that Engineers are not biased regarding people?
Frosty, you need to take a hard look at your own biases and think for a few minutes about why our industry was/is dominated by white males for so long.
Raven
Amir Khalid
@B.B.A.:
I asked a psychologist once what it is that IQ tests measure. I couldn’t get a straight answer out of him. So I see no reason for anyone to brag about their IQ score..
This paleface named Hugh Hewitt apparently believes that guns don’t kill people, trenchcoats kill people.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Wait — are implying there’s a different way to do them? I call bullshit.
SFAW
@NorthLeft12:
Because wimmins can’t worry their purty little heads over doing things like figgerin’ out numbers and stuff?
And their e-mails, of course.
Brachiator
@Raven:
I would think that strategy depends on the particular state or congressional district. Georgia is 31 percent African American. This probably gives you a strong core of Democratic voters, especially in this age of Trump.
bemused
Hilarious post. Love the tweets but I’m exhausted and fed up with the whackadoodle plague infecting this country. It’s nuts that Hewitt is still on msnbc. Any and every carnival barker gets airtime on tv from trump on down.
I had never heard of Molyneux. What a piece of work. His wife is a therapist! She was found guilty of professional misconduct by Ontario College of Psychologists for participating in a podcast with her husband advocating Defooing, cutting off contact with parents and family. Lovely libertarian couple.
I’m reading “Asking for a Friend” by Jessica Weisberg profiles of three centuries of professional advice givers, outright dangerous kooks to hypocrites and narcissists to the “well-intended who tend to get in the way of their own noble instincts”. Weisberg mentions trump as “one of the more notable advice-giver in last decades, a person and brand that has become almost synonymous with deceit”. She qualifies this statement as not political: “every reality star traffics in flash”.
Sm*t Cl*de
@NorthLeft12:
See, if engineers were more diverse, they could design better sarcasm detectors.
Ken
@Joey Maloney: Probably like the Tea Party cosplayers, their mysterious sources of funding dried up after the election.
zhena gogolia
@Mike J:
We watched the first Nancy Drew. It was a snoozer, although Bonita was cute.
NatashaWhilk
@SiubhanDuinne: And London Times, not NYT, right?
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
You’re probably not around, but this is hilarious!
Ken
@NatashaWhilk: Can’t hurt, especially if you’re applying for a cryptanalyst position at MI-6.
SFAW
@NatashaWhilk:
Does one need to wear a deerslayer when doing the London Times x-word, Natty?
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Torchy Blane extravaganza starting at 8:45 EDT.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@frosty: I am with Frosty, what White Male Patriarchy are you talking about Anne Laurie?
jonas
I’m around a lot of very smart people in the course of my work and one thing they never do is mention what their IQ might be. Kind of like the closet virgin who goes around the locker room bragging about all the chicks he’s totally banged, it’s usually a sign you’re not a smart person, just an insecure one. Which is why Trump does it a lot. Not great employment material in most fields.
Also, a lot of innate intelligence is no indicator that you know how to use it well, which is why you still need an education. You can still suck at basketball, even if you’re 6’8”.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
*blushes*Enhanced Voting Techniques
@NorthLeft12: Yes it quite male dominated, but walk into an interview and the only questing being “do you look good” that’s comical. What is the hilarious irony is fine being “old white guy” easier in the New Diverse Silicon Valley(tm) because all the minorities and women just assume I am awesome sauce.
SFAW
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
You mean you’re NOT! [Sound of me falling over]
FlyingToaster
@frosty: Having a “gender-neutral” name got me some interviews I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Since I wasn’t actually applying for a job (I’m a specialist, so consultant or sub-contractor, not an employee), and they were generally desperate, they took me on. A couple got cheesed off when I wouldn’t go make coffee or put pastries on a tray — “I’m pretty sure that’s something your salaried employees do, not your contractors at $/hour.”
There are some fairly toxic middle-managers out there, and you wouldn’t have known what resumés they’d stashed in their drawer.
afanasia
@SFAW: I think you mean “deerstalker”. Unless this is a complicated allusion to James Fenimore Cooper and Natty Bumpo that went over my head.
SFAW
@afanasia:
Apparently it didn’t. But you can decide which is right, and which is an allusion.
[I was originally going to use deerstalker, then decided to amuse myself. Simple minds and all that.]
ETA: I forgot to insert “and your hawk eyes spotted it” at the end of the first sentence. Damn.
Groucho48
I remember, back at the height of the rabid puppy movement to mess with the Hugo awards, checking out Vox Populi’s site. He was one of the ringleaders. The latest post, at the time, was one where he discussed that he noticed a distinct difference when talking with folks with an IQ above 150 or so. That he didn’t have to explain every little detail to them. A half dozen or so of his syncophants chimed in to say they had noticed the same thing, and how tedious it was having to explain things to folks who were only in the 120-150 range. Trying to talk to females was even worse. (I’m sure they were right about that part, but, not for the reason they thought.) Meanwhile, judging from the contents of their posts, cumulatively, their IQ might exceed 150. On a good day.
SFAW
@FlyingToaster:
Toasters have gender? Learn something new every day, I guess.
Ruckus
@jonas:
I’ve worked with 3 guys that were 6′ 10″. Not one of them could play basketball worth a darn. Great guys otherwise. We all have our talents. Some people’s talent is thinking that they are the shit. Funny thing is most of them are shit. Although working in professional sports I noticed that some people who are extremely talented in one area can suck as humans. Takes all kinds I guess.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
I know, but I have work to do!
Interrobang
If I didn’t have two liberal arts degrees, I wouldn’t have been able to do some of the amazing things I’ve done in my career. Having a project boss call me one day and tell me I’d “turned safety theory on its ear” because I applied formal logic to it, which the single-subject STEM safety geeks couldn’t do because they didn’t have the background, was probably the highlight.
Personally, I think dweebs like Molyneux hate liberal arts education for two reasons: The name contains the word “liberal,” and those kinds of subjects are generally coded as feminine-gendered (as opposed to the masculine-gender-coded STEM subjects). And why does Canada have to have both him and Jordan Peterson? Can we trade them to you for two wingnuts to be named later?
henqiguai
@Enhanced Voting Techniques (#55):
Probably the same one in which I grew up. And as an old fat Black engineer, I saw/experienced/worked against everything she wrote. Not *quite* as bad now, but I’m in a Massachusetts software bubble where anybody who can even recognize code is looked at.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
Probably a dead thread, but IQ tests are good at detecting learning deficits and disabilities. They gave me an IQ test as part of the battery of tests to see if I had ADHD (spoiler alert: I do) and it had the characteristic plunge in score when we got to the portion that tests the use of memory.
J R in WV
Prob a dead thread. I worked with a really smart guy once, who bragged about it. He wrote obfuscated code, with hidden external routines, so no one could work in his area but him. Arrogant and condescending twit who always drove the latest hot mustang to attract the very young girls he dated and loaned his car to while he was at work. Like High School young girls, inexperienced drivers.
Which car was wrecked more often than the average car.
SO SO glad I left that job before he did. He supported the state personal income tax system, and enjoyed it. You know that when other tax dept programmers tried to work on his systems, which as I said had external called assembler modules that weren’t documented, nothing was documented, it was a cluster. I wouldn’t have touched it with a very long stick.
Mensa? Memory fails me, had the condescending parts down for sure. IQ is not the answer, no matter what the question is.
SFAW
@henqiguai:
As an old fat mech/mfg engineer, I am sometimes amused when software people call themselves “engineers.”
I’m kidding, of course, but I have worked with some so-called “software engineers” who were little more than fast typists. [Yes, I know, “not all software engineers…. “]
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
So does that mean, if we want to get you off some extended tirade, we should just type-yell “SQUIRREL!!!!” ?
Jack the Second
@NorthLeft12: Software engineering especially!
It’s a field where Everyone Knows that credentials are worthless, full of braggadocio, and even people who have a solid grounding or who can answer interview brain-teasers can be utterly worthless at actually developing software. And that’s without people outright lying!
None of that makes it easy to separate your gut “I think this person can program” from your overt or covert biases.
Jack the Second
@SFAW: My rule of thumb is “Real Engineers(tm) Use DiffEQ”.
henqiguai
@SFAW (#71):
Yeah, me too. My career started (out of a physics program) as a semiconductor devices construction/failure analysis engineer for NASA, went on into weapons and weapon systems design and manufacturing. The software part came when the minicomputer and general hardware industry tanked, hard, here in Massachusetts. Made a run as a statistician, but the money, even when having both technical and managerial responsibilities, was barely up to what I made as a staff engineer. So moved on over into the easier activity of software.
mapaghimagsik
@Mike J: can. So much of it is what inspires them. English literature majors, of which I might be one, also can make shitty programmers.
So in college, long before I conceived of my current career, a fellow student said they were going to catch hackers. I asked what programming languages they knew. They had no interest or understanding of the question, which kind of illustrates just how fucked the world of cyber-security is – as it turned into where failing realtors go to scam a buck.
Rand Careaga
Liberal arts majors can be engineers too!
“The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks…. And therefore I raise my glass to you, writers, the engineers of the human soul” (Joseph Stalin, “Speech at home of Maxim Gorky,” 26 October 1932)
Mart
@Anne Laurie: I conducted ten or so interviews for an engineer position (I am not one) and the best candidate by far was a woman. When I told my engineer boss, he said no split tails, a term I was not familiar with, but instantly found horrifying. He ended up picking an old buddy who was awful. Another woman candidate was unusually attractive and interviewed in high heels, a short skirt, and see through blouse with lace black bra. Not appropriate for the job she was seeking… but of course a colleague came over while she was taking the asinine head test out of view and loudly asked where is the smoking hot broad, I was told I can’t miss her? So yeah, like Frosty, in my 38 years I have never seen much misogyny with engineers. (It has gotten more better.)
SFAW
@henqiguai:
Wow, sounds like a lot of neat stuff in your career. (Minis in MA – were you a DECcie?)
So many potential snarky comments come to mind — not directed at you — that I’d better shut up.
JDM
I always felt kinda sorry about a contestant on Teen Jeopardy a few years back who loudly announced during the interview segment “I’m a really smart person”, then finished a distant third (out of three) that day. But only kinda cause he was so arrogant. Hopefully he learned to not do that so won’t do that during a job interview.
Basically, any good interviewer – job, cop, whatever – will hear any out of the blue statement about the applicant’s amazing intelligence, honesty, etc. as actually indicating the opposite. At the very least a job interviewer would know the applicant is an arrogant jerk who will be a poor fit in any group effort.
JDM
@Mart: I’ve heard, from people who knew, that in my youth – not all THAT long ago – some engineering buildings on campus had no women’s bathrooms. The assumption was that there could never be a need for one.
Mnemosyne
@SFAW:
I’m sorry, I spotted something shiny — what were you saying? ?
JustRuss
@JDM: The STEM buildings on our campus often have pictures of the graduating class from years past hung in the hallways. Prior to the 80s, it’s pretty much all white guys with maybe one woman. Still aren’t a lot of females in those majors.
henqiguai
@SFAW (#79):
I am of the opinion that at least 1/3 of all technologists, of a certain age, here in New England is an ex-DECcie, me included.
Edited to fix a typo.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@SFAW:
I have 30 years of job reviews that beg to differ. But my skills or lack of it isn’t my point; my point is it’s these very minorities who are now enforcing White Privilege in ways that back In The Day(tm) was never done.
Spc123
@Mike J: and engineers usually suck at marketing (as do many marketing MBAs).
wuzzat
@JDM: In the 90s, one of our 8-story engineering buildings decided to convert some of the men’s rooms to ladies’ rooms. They gave us two, two-stall rooms for the entire building and the male professors never stopped whining about the concession.
Spinoza is My Co-pilot
Done a brazillion job interviews over several decades now (been in Engineering/Construction management since the early 80s).
One that still stands out is an individual who my boss and I interviewed a long time back (separately; team interviewing a la “the Bobs” in “Office Space” hadn’t become a thing yet) for an engineering position. Said individual made a big deal — to both of us — about being a member of MENSA. When we compared notes on this guy (of course it was a guy — we’d get 1 applicant out of 100 for an engineering position in those days who was a woman) we both got stuck on this MENSA-brag. I mean, who does that?
My boss was more turned off by it than I was, but even I found it an extraordinarily off-putting thing to do in an interview (and I’ve seen my share of such things). So, even though he was eminently qualified, no dice. As it turned out, we did eventually hire him (a year later, for a different position; he actually worked out well for the job) but the “pick me, pick me, I’m ever so smart!” MENSA deal (which he didn’t do second time around) definitely spiked his first opportunity.
So, this ridiculous, anti-intellectual (the snarky “arts degree” thing) “pro-tip” from Stefan Molyneux (whoever the fuck that is)? No. Just, no.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
Saying? About what? I forget. But how about them
MetsRed Sox?SFAW
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
OK, but here’s what you wrote:
Moron that I am, I assumed you were saying it in the vein of “Boy, have I got THEM fooled.” Apparently I misinterpreted.