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Dahlen comments on Open thread, Aug. 10 - Aug. 16, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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What examples are there of jobs which can make use of high general intelligence, that at the same time don't require rare domain-specific skills?
I have some years of college left before I'll be a certified professional, and I'm good but not world-class awesome at a variety of things, yet judging by encounters with some well and truly employed people, I find myself wondering how come I'm either not employed or duped into working for free, while these doofuses have well-paying jobs. The answer tends to be, for lack of trying on my part, but it would be quite a nasty surprise if I do begin to try and it turns out that my most relied-upon quality turns out not to be worth much. So, better to ask: how much is intelligence worth for earning money, when not supplemented by the relevant pieces of paper or loads of experience?
Programming is a skill, but not a particularly rare one. Beyond a certain level of intelligence, I don't think there's much if any correlation between programming ability and intelligence. Moreover, I think programming is one area where standard credentials don't matter too much. If you have a good project on GitHub, that can be enough.
gwern wrote something related before:
Personally, I think going off raw intelligence doesn't work so well, especially if you'll be reinventing the wheel because of your lack of domain knowledge. Getting rare skills which are in demand is a smart strategy, and you'd be better off going that route. Here's a good book built on that premise.
A manager :-) A business manager, a small business owner, a civil servant, a dictator, a leader of the free world :-/
Generally speaking, there is something of a Catch-22 situation. The low-level entry jobs are easy to get into, but they don't really care about your intelligence. But high-level jobs where intelligence matters require demonstration not only of intelligence, but also of the ability to use it which basically means they want to see past achievements and accomplishments.
There are shortcuts, but they are usually called "graduate schools".
In Germany technical telephone support would be a low-level job where intelligence is useful but I don't know to what extend that exists in the US where the language situation is different.
In the US those jobs tend to be outsourced to other English speaking countries with lower wages, most commonly India.
There are plenty people in MENSA who don't have high paying jobs.
Possibly, but how about any job at all?
Apply your general intelligence to figuring out what you are especially good at, then see if there are relevant paid jobs.
I think he's trying to do that, by making this post.
@OP: the best place I've seen for lazy smart people to make money is in coding jobs. If 4 year college is out, go to an online code learning place and get some nonsense degree. (App Academy, or whatevs). Then apply a bunch. If you have a friend who is a coder, see if they have a hookup.
Once you have a job the only way to lose it is to be aggressively inept or engage in one of the third rail categories of HR, racism sexism or any other ism.
Or for the company you work for to go bust.