The Myth of the Underachieving Genius | Hacker News Reader

The Myth of the Underachieving Genius

skorks.com

39 pointsorborde34 comments

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.

This is true, but you wouldn't know it from the common rhetoric. We praise the comeback kid; the author points out that we need to remember that it's a far better bet never to fall behind in the first place.

> "we need to remember that it's a far better bet never to fall behind in the first place."

True in principle, but since when did low/mediocre grades become associated with "falling behind"?

I think that's the cognitive disconnect between the two camps - the pro-academic crowd sees poor grades as a general failure, the rest of us do not.

Addressing the article directly:

> "Those who get good grades are the ultimate survivors."

That's awfully generous, if not quite self-congratulatory. As a staunch believer in the disconnect between academic achievement and real programming competence, I would suggest that the comment is true - but you've survived an arbitrary system constructed to achieve very little. It's a little bit like finding your way out of a garden maze - amusing and interesting perhaps, probably difficult, but the relation of this accomplishment to anything else is hazy.

> "They enter an environment, evaluate it critically to figure out what skills they need to succeed and thrive in said environment."

Perhaps - but assuming the goal is to be a great programmer (or whatever else your passion may be), why would you spend all your time and effort defeating this arbitrary system as opposed to pursuing things that actually make you a better programmer? (or carpenter, or doctor, or what-have-you).

That's the disconnect that I see. Academic performance is measured in such a way that doesn't shed light on real ability, and in fact much of the curriculum for a lot of degrees/certificates bear little relevance to the job they supposedly train for. Beating this system is IMHO meaningless, since it contributes little to your professional abilities.

Which is also why I think the medciore grades sometimes get a lot of love - I know more than a few people who eschewed academia in exchange for actually getting their hands dirty and writing a lot of code. They learned what they needed to learn from school, and spent the rest of the time perfecting their craft instead. IMHO these people make stronger programmers than those who spent their time and effort optimizing for something that isn't their end goal.

When I was in college, I knew a few people who were hardcore academics. They hit the books really hard, got great grades, aced exams regularly, and generally were kicking ass. What they were not doing was developing their professional abilities - so they graduated with little to no practical experience under their belt. They were rudely surprised when their intensely deep knowledge of a great number of theories weren't at all attractive to employers who needed people to get things done.

I also knew this one guy who was academic and spent a lot of time honing his real, executable skills. He's a superstar.

Given that, I would say that the real discerning variable here is how much practice you've had at programming - the variable of academic achievements is really largely independent from competence as a hacker.

> "there is nothing that stops a high achiever from being a passionate, free-thinking, risk-taker"

I would agree with this point with some caveats, but this comment strikes me as particularly arrogant:

> "good grades make better anything"

Really man, really? Wow, thanks for reinforcing the ivory-tower holier-than-thou stereotype that academics surely must love having.

[edit] At the risk of being inflammatory, a lot of this "high grades make better everything" hubbub seems like sour grapes from people who optimized for the wrong variable, and are now frustrated that the "losers" from before have become the winners (insofar as employment goes anyhow), and that the variable they were taught to religiously optimize turned out to be a bit pointless (for the purposes of employment, anyhow).

Out of my circle of friends, I undoubtedly left college with the lowest grades. Some of my friends were straight-A students (and we were at an academically challenging college). But 10+ years out it's arguable that I've achieved more in my career than any of them and there is a very weak correlation between career success and high grades in that group of friends.

And yes, while we were still close, I had to deal with a lot of resentment along the way. I heard all kinds of nasty things about how I 'magically' became successful after years of lackluster academic performance.

It's silly to say people who do well in school are flawed or are wasting their energy. I think there are many compelling reasons to do well in school. But in my experience there is a sense of entitlement that develops along the way that often leads to a lot of friction and disappointment down the road.

Also, after years of hiring and training people, I firmly believe that grades do not predict ability in any meaningful way.

>As far as I can tell, very few people are arguing that people with lower grades are better than those with good grades.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028272

There's some one arguing just that. While I don't see it a lot I have certainly seen the point argued, generally right beside some one claiming Einstein was bad at math.

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.

Or that you learned to game the system.

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.

> 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.

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.

Well, the average working class person doesn't have the means to gain from the system in that way. So when they decide to cheat, they do so in more basic ways, like becoming burglars, thieves, dodgy tradesmen, and other kinds of low-level career criminals.

I don't buy your romantic view of "the decency and solidarity of the working class". People in all walks of life are decent - with, always, a small percentage who are not so decent. That's as true of the "working class" as of other classes, if you want to make that split.

With the possible exception of lawyers and politicians of course.

I don't know. My brother and me are a nice case study, of course that's just one more anecdote and not exactly science but still. People said that I would go to university and do all kinds of stuff, nobody paid much attention to Maurice. But he was the one to end up going to university, I dropped out in high school.

Family circumstances at the time had a lot to do with all this, but still, he's the one with the degree in history and I only have a typing diploma and a driving license as my 'educational record'.

Better grades or lower grades doesn't enter in to it.

The educational system works well if you're in the middle of the pack, if you are at one or the other extreme you have a problem.

I'm not sure if a university degree would have helped me in any way, I'll never know and I'm resigned to that.

But I do know that there is more to school than 'subject knowledge', and that in my dealings with people I could have benefited from a deeper immersion in to social structures and how to deal with all kinds of situations.

See my post the other day about my past mistakes, I'm pretty sure a few of those are rooted in my checkered history. I wouldn't trade my life for any other, and in the hiring policies of my company I always tried to look past the grades and to the person behind them and their motivation.

If I got the feeling they wanted to move ahead in life then that was usually the deciding factor, and for the most part they did not disappoint me, even the ones with good grades ;)

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.

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!

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.

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

I guess we both have our sampling biases.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

“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 ...

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.

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.

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

Well said

Not true. If you've been reading the rest of this thread, the argument has largely been that academic results aren't good indicators of programming ability.

In fact, the way the Malaysian education system is set up, I would argue that it's probably only possible to be a good programmer by getting poor results. (Unless you're a particularly good exam hacker). Becoming a good programmer takes practice, and practice takes time, and being a straight-A student in Malaysia involves going to school and going to tuition and memorizing garbage - all of which eats into possible programming time.

Do you advise suicide or normalisation for average grade students ?

Straw-man.

Tachikomas!

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

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