I interviewed at IBM back in the mid-90s right out of college for "Internet consultant". I was given an aptitude test and the hiring manager said that I scored one of the highest he had ever seen. He then proceeded to not give me the job because I didn't have enough experience, which is something they already knew before making me jump through hoops. It was so dumb, but it pretty much exemplifies IBM-thinking.

At least he didnt came out with a measuring tape and tried to measure your skull.

That's silly! Everybody knows it's the shape that shows the intelligence, not the circumference!

Thats a particular type of insane that might have been fun to take the offer

This can't have been recent. Or perhaps it was and they violated the law. A standard IQ test is probably quite good at assessing if you'll be good at a programming job but it is also quite illegal unless it has passed through a battery of compliance paperwork - which it actually cannot pass because it would require the output of IQ tests to be race-equal and they cannot be both an IQ test and race-equal. This is literally a Title VII violation.

I'm a broken record about this, but no, it's not illegal to administer IQ tests in white-collar employment, and it doesn't take a battery of compliance paperwork to do so. This is an Internet myth.

Not only Internet. It's held view among risk-management-heavy enterprises, some of which might even insist, beyond the claim in this thread, that "any anbility assessment is illegal". To be fair, maybe someone in HR read it on Facebook or LinkedIn, showed risk management a (doesn't have to be real) legal risk they could head off. So they ban people evals, even for skilled trades.

Not even brain teasers or IQ. Just: can applicant FizzBuzz? Verboten!

This is how, in a mass job application world, enterprises end up with >80% of coders, all making 6 figures, that can't FizzBuzz.

A hack to get the enterprise to assess is find the third party SWE test providers to big brand logos the board recognize, brands under the same risk governance / regulatory regimes, and ask "what do we know they don't?" First, the board know and respect those brands. Second, the question makes the board consider what they think about those in charge of the failing capabilities internally. This is something now both easy for the board to discuss, and obviously done by good references. Ok, let's try empirical evals.

Countless such broken record warranting beliefs clanging around 100k employee enterprises. McKinsey, BCG, PWC, KPMG -- all they need to do to justify 8 figure bill for the year is undo any one of them.

I can believe that. When we (devs) implemented an interactive design/coding screening questionnaire, we had an uphill battle to get HR to approve us giving it to candidates. Apparently, the company had an internal rule of "No tests." We got past it by convincing them that it didn't have pass/fail criteria: it was an evaluation of their thought process and programming ability.

Well, you and rahimnathwani up there have convinced me. Now I have to go around and deprogram everyone I said this to...

It's a really widespread myth, hard to fault anybody for believing it. There's even a kernel of truth to it (Griggs).

Would you mind helping me understand what degree the truth is? More here about my confusion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49171999

"illegal unless it has passed through a battery of compliance paperwork"

"This is literally a Title VII violation."

Griggs v. Duke Power Co. held that "The [Civil Rights] Act [of 1964] does not preclude the use of testing or measuring procedures, but it does proscribe giving them controlling force unless they are demonstrably a reasonable measure of job performance."

Why do you believe that prior documentation is required, and that the absence of such documentation would make the testing illegal?

> Why do you believe that ...

Check his blog and find out. I particularly enjoyed the part where the best way to improve public transport is to keep poor people out, not to increase frequency.

Is there a specific page on his blog that answers my question?

His suggestions for improving public transport are not relevant to this discussion.

You might alternatively prefer the ones about how health insurance never denies care, Luigi Mangione was a bad guy, or Democrats have made it profitable to be a victim.

From your descriptions they don't seem relevant to this discussion.

It identifies a certain type of person.

Wow, I am entirely wrong here, huh? I thought that "demonstrably a reasonable measure of job performance" was held to the standard that it had to be proven fair (and consequently documented to have proven job impact).

EDIT: Hang on, I decided to just test the idea with the usual suspects and I don't see how you could design this in a way that works. You'd need some kind of non-contaminated testable outcome - lines of code etc. don't work - that is considered job performance which is scientifically validated in order to be able to survive the litigation that would follow the test.

I suppose the part that was wrong was that I claimed you can't run an IQ test. That's not true. You can. It just legally exposes you to a paperwork burden involving proof that it is required for job functionality - proof which you'll almost certainly fail because software engineer productivity isn't mechanically solved yet.

Is that the distinction? Listen, I've read your stuff and generally trust you and in any case I'm open to having my mind changed on this subject, but it seems like the actual thing is "Possible, but if you do it, you're going to find yourself in a massive paperwork and legal headache".

Several (not many relative to the total industry, but several) large household-name companies publicly do general cognitive testing for white collar roles, and the companies that administer these tests have logo crawls just like any SAAS company of their clients. These companies have enormously deep pockets and would be juicy targets for employment law practices. But nothing happens, because this is mostly not a real thing.

The reason more companies don't do this is that the tests don't work well for this purpose.

It seems to be quite accurate that many of these tests are publicly referenced. e.g. (PDF warning) https://www.pwc.com/m1/en/careers/documents/assessment-proce...

and the provider is https://www.shl.com/

I took the practice test to completion that PWC recommends and just to give people an idea of these cognitive tests. It was a series of questions that went:

> Which statement describes you best?

> 1. I usually make decisions only after I have collected all relevant information.

> 2. I usually think of all factors when I am trying to understand a business issue.

> 3. I change my interaction style based on the personality of whom I am speaking to.

With a warning when you "go too fast". The test is supposed to take 16 minutes but finishes quite fast. I must imagine that these cannot be the only category. It also wasn't even clear how someone takes one of these to practice since it's impossible to get 'better' on them. There is no evaluation provided at the end. So one must conclude that 'practice' involves 'gaining familiarity with the testing system'.

Presumably the psychometric tests are wordsum, shape rotation, something numeric, but I couldn't find one for free to look at without applying so I'm content to just accept that it exists and move on with my life.

I am positive that I have answered exactly this set of questions as part of a screening test to be allowed to take a Management Certificate course about 15 years ago.

Haha, they aren’t what I’d call an IQ test. More like a personality quiz perhaps. Did you also do a more IQ-like test that tested cognitive ability rather than evaluated inclination?

Your last statement is closer to the real situation, but you make it sound like it's certain that you will be called upon to defend the legality of your actions.

But I'm not aware of any evidence showing that is true.

And, even if it were true in the past, it seems that the DOJ believes that was based on a misinterpretation of the law. So it is less likely be true since June 2026: https://www.justice.gov/olc/media/1444871/dl

Got it, thanks. That's helpful.

I can add that the original anecdote here wasn't in the US. It happened to me in Japan, I think in 2009.

(The CEO doing the testing wasn't Japanese though - maybe Russian at a guess.)