Lumifer 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?
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.