Are Programmers Actually That Smart?🧐

Photo by Sam Carter @samdc on Unsplash

Software engineers think that they’re the smartest in a room full of people from different occupations.

This is a problem because software engineers aren’t necessarily that smart, as I’ll explain in this article.

Wisconsin Men’s Henmon-Nelson IQ Distributions for 1992–94 Occupation Groups with 30 Cases or More http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/cdewp/98-07.pdf

So according to Wisconsin Men’s Henmon-Nelson IQ Distributions for 1992–94 Occupation Groups with 30 Cases or More shown above, “Computer Occupations” (which presumably includes software developers) have a median IQ of around 110.

Now, if you’ve ever sat through a meeting where someone suggested rewriting the entire codebase in a new language because the project wasn’t written their way, you might question whether programmers are intellectual elites. And, well… they aren’t.

Smart, But Not That Smart

100 is the average IQ. You should be able to function perfectly well in most situations with an IQ of 100 and probably even negotiate your way through most days at your local large tech corporation as a programmer.

That’s because at 110 the average software developer isn’t exactly likely to win a Nobel Prize in Physics. The typical programmer is roughly as smart as your high school AP Math teacher, and that’s said without malice to either group. 

The tech bros are perpetuating the idea that they have a galaxy-sized genius brain and that isn’t (on average) true at all.

Sure, IQ isn’t about problem solving skills or an ability to navigate the Kafkaesque horror of Jira but it can give a rough idea of cognitive horsepower. The fact is programmers are smart, but not as smart as they would have you believe. 

How Do Programmers Compare?

They are sitting in a respectable spot in the intelligence hierarchy. Yet they’re not at the very top of the pyramid, so let’s look at where they lie:

Smarter than

Truck drivers, clerks, salespeople, and police officers.

On par with

Accountants, schoolteachers, and middle managers.

Outclassed by

Doctors, engineers, scientists, and college professors.

Does It Even Matter?

I think it does. As a group we’re smart enough to build complex systems but not quite smart enough to predict how they’ll break.

You might think IQ does not predict work performance. I’d counter that IQ does predict job performance, and when accompanied by EQ the indicator gets even stronger (and I’ve found engineers with strong EQ really rare in tech). 

Some of the best engineers I’ve worked with weren’t the ones who aced math competitions or rattled off algorithms from memory. They were the ones who:

• Knew how to break down problems logically.

• Had an eye for debugging and fixing things efficiently.

• Understood how people (not just computers) work.

• Could actually explain things without sounding like a condescending robot.

A genius who can write a recursive Fibonacci function in five different languages is useless if they refuse to document their code or can’t work with a team. Conversely, someone with an average IQ but great debugging skills, patience, and solid communication will be a fantastic developer.

Am I smart?

I have worried that I’m not smart enough to be a developer. The problem is I actually am quite smart. I have a master’s degree so likely am above the average IQ:

https://t.co/1uHTM9GdlG

Plus I’m able to solve problems. I talk to people and get things done. I’m good enough, and perhaps at some point it is enough.

Like many things in software development for IQ we should maybe be aiming for good enough rather than looking to try to beat everyone else?

If you can break problems down methodically, write maintainable code, and communicate with people, you’re going to outperform the so-called genius who insists that everything should be rewritten in Rust for performance reasons.

Conclusion

The myth of the 10x programmer isn’t about IQ — it’s about habits, experience, and a little bit of madness. Because at the end of the day, coding is less about being a genius and more about being stubborn enough to keep trying until the damn thing works.