Are there any IT Skills that require high intelligence

[northernladuk]

As I said in another post, I found out I was autistic a few years ago, and I am currently evaluating whether this might have adversely affected my career progression. Clearly, being autistic is likely not only to adversely affect these soft skills, but also adversely affect one's ability to acquire these skills, no matter how hard one tries to acquire them.

How far on the spectrum are you? My eldest is also autistic, he's far enough in to be awkward at social interaction but has an affinity for maths. He's more comfortable doing the MI5/MI6/GCHQ quizs than sitting with a bunch of half strangers. They are particularly looking for people neuro diverse people because they think out of the box.

Articles on it here.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a9163996.html
https://www.gchq.gov.uk/information/...d-be-different

You could check out their page about their open sourced offerings to see if anything pings.
https://design.sis.gov.uk/

That was a quick look around from what I know from my lad but will need further research. Reach out to them and see what they say?

[GJABS]

for most roles intelligence is not the measure, it's how you solve problems and break them into logical stages that is. Probably not so much now with kids growing up with easy to program kit, but not so long ago only about 10% of candidates could think like programmers, no matter how smart (or occasionally dumb!) they were in the real world. That way of thinking extends to most of the architecture and process creation stuff, although that also needs you to be able to talk to people and explain things in simple terms. It's the managerial roles that are the other side of the coin; clearly you need smarts to run a team and solve problems as they arise (usually by referring to someone intelligent for their opinion) but you don't need to be a Einstein (and very few are that I've worked with!)

So IMHO it's how you think as much as anything, provided you do actually think. I knew a spectacularly bright PhD microbiology graduate in my first job, but he was absolutely dangerous on the workbench, to the extent he set one lab on fire...

But isn't "thinking style" something that can be trained? i.e. most non-programmers could be trained in the approach to problem solving that us coders employ, with a little bit of effort, so they can think like a programmer.
Whereas conversely I am looking for a skill to learn, where most people simply don't have the aptitude to learn it in the first place because it is too difficult.

Funny you should mention the workbench thing. I had a summer job once where, while I didn't set anything on fire, I managed to drop and break two or three large flasks of concentrated nitric acid (or was it hydrochloric acid?). Butter fingers to be sure, and this didn't leave them with a good impression..

[GJABS]

How far on the spectrum are you? My eldest is also autistic, he's far enough in to be awkward at social interaction but has an affinity for maths. He's more comfortable doing the MI5/MI6/GCHQ quizs than sitting with a bunch of half strangers. They are particularly looking for people neuro diverse people because they think out of the box.

Articles on it here.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a9163996.html
https://www.gchq.gov.uk/information/...d-be-different

You could check out their page about their open sourced offerings to see if anything pings.
https://design.sis.gov.uk/

That was a quick look around from what I know from my lad but will need further research. Reach out to them and see what they say?

Sounds like I'm a similar level to your son, in that I'm awkward in social situations with anyone I don't know all that well, but have proved a solid academic aptitude years ago.
The MI5/MI6 puzzles are a possibility, but I think they require an intelligence that is characterised by having a breadth of thinking ability, lateral thinking. Whereas I think I don't have an advantage in this area, instead I can think deeply about a complicated but self-contained scenario like quantum physics or relativity - ideas that are somewhat abstract and hard to understand.

I hope your son makes it to be a spy

[northernladuk]

Sounds like I'm a similar level to your son, in that I'm awkward in social situations with anyone I don't know all that well, but have proved a solid academic aptitude years ago.
The MI5/MI6 puzzles are a possibility, but I think they require an intelligence that is characterised by having a breadth of thinking ability, lateral thinking. Whereas I think I don't have an advantage in this area, instead I can think deeply about a complicated but self-contained scenario like quantum physics or relativity - ideas that are somewhat abstract and hard to understand.

There is a graphic on their site that has neurodiversity at the centre and all the bubbles around it, ASD being only one of them. Each has a different approach to thinking which they are interested in. They'll want a bit of all, not just lateral thinking so worth a bit of investigation IMO

I hope your son makes it to be a spy

I bloody hope not

[malvolio]

But isn't "thinking style" something that can be trained? i.e. most non-programmers could be trained in the approach to problem solving that us coders employ, with a little bit of effort, so they can think like a programmer.

snip...
Not sure you can. The boss is an ex-manager of a microbiology lab for a major teaching hospital and is many ways is way smarter than me. But we approach problems on things like "If john has twice as many pebbles as Fred and Fred has three more than Wilf" in entirely different ways. She goes for the empirical approach on first principles, I go for the obvious (to me) solution of looking for the lowest common denominator.

You can teach the coding techniques, but I'm not sure you can teach lateral thinking, a lot of people's brains aren't wired that way.

But to answer the original question and given good maths skills and understanding, if you're good at retaining knowledge and detail, look at system architecture, if you're good at pure maths then look into data science, if you're good at problem solving and finding elegant, direct solutions look at Service Management consultancy. And Data Science - analysing correlations and relationships in large disparate datasets - is where the money and the hard work is.

[lecyclist]

GJABS wrote

I'm looking into acquiring some new skills in IT. For the past 20 years I've been a SQL developer/DBA, but it occurs to me that I might not be using my intellect, what's left of it, to best effect.

I'm not sure how you could do that job for 20 years without becoming incredibly frustrated.

I would not describe myself as particularly smart, but after 1 year of specialising purely in high performance tuning of Oracle databases in the late 90s, I was becoming frustrated. After 2 years i had had enough, and needed a new challenge. I lasted 1 more year as I transitioned over to different skills. I cannot imagine 20 years of this.

If your thinking velocity is still high, I would suggest participating in some coding dojos or codewars/ competitions. Not necessarily a destination to what you want to achieve, but perhaps a gateway to something more fulfilling you will discover along the way.

Good luck.

[Lance]

someone with high intelligence will do any job better than someone with low intelligence.
If you think you intellect is not being used, try harder to do a better job.

[northernladuk]

someone with high intelligence will do any job better than someone with low intelligence.
If you think you intellect is not being used, try harder to do a better job.

I don't agree with that. As has been mentioned many times styles of thinking can vary greatly. This an argument that high intelligence people can often be lacking in common sense so if they are in a role that isn't aimed at their level they may struggle to apply other skills/common sense that a lower intelligence person would have.

It's a massive area to cover with just two sentences but I don't think that's true as you've stated. Doing a better job doesn't always mean apply more intelligence. You could need to apply other types of thinking like time management, risk, stakeholders and other ways of thinking to do a better job and high intelligence isn't likely to help in those areas. Competency approaches can help more than intelligence for a start. Depends on the job I guess but I think, having a son similar to GJAB's, doing the wrong job for them, better, isn't the answer in this case.

[SueEllen]

someone with high intelligence will do any job better than someone with low intelligence.
If you think you intellect is not being used, try harder to do a better job.

You don't want someone with high intelligence working on a factory production line as you don't want someone who will daydream or trying to find a shortcut to doing what is a very mundane task.

And in some jobs you can't try harder to do a better job. For example with many creative jobs people don't tend to try harder.

[edison]

As per some previous replies, many IT roles don't require 'intelligence' per se, at least not in a traditional intellectual sense.

Based on recruitment I've done with several clients across all of IT, I'd say the data science and AI/machine learning areas are the ones that hiring managers wanted 'intelligence' in the form of higher qualifications like masters degrees.

In a broader sense, emotional intelligence is the skill to work on IMHO. It's often in short supply in IT and if combined with business domain knowledge along with your functional technical skills, it makes you a very rounded individual.