When you’re trying to have an impact, it's useful to know how successful you'll be in different careers so you can pick the right one. But how can you do this? There are a few predictors of success that have been studied by psychologists, but the results aren’t widely known. The scientific consensus is that the best way to predict someone’s career success is to assess their general mental ability (GMA), which is similar to what most people mean by “intelligence”.
There is a plethora of data and research available that outlines *exactly* how companies can build a hiring process for software engineers that's truly predictive of their future, on-the-job performance. Yet, the tech industry at large has all but ignored these practices opting instead for antiquated hiring processes with low preditive validity.
I have done roughly 2,000 interviews in my life. When I started recruiting, I had so much confidence in my ability to assess people. Let me just throw a couple of algorithm questions at a candidate and then I'll tell you if they are good or not! Over time I've come to the (slightly disappointing) realization that knowing who's going to be good at their job is an extremely hard problem.