So then why don't startups hire based on the results of IQ tests, isn't this a meritocracy? You actually made my overall point stronger, because you demonstrated that this community clearly doesn't define "merit" to be "raw intelligence". It is a much, much more nuanced concept and it includes, I suspect, a large number of characteristics that are heavily influenced by gender, culture, and class. When we say "merit" we do not simply mean "how smart are you?", if we did, then according to your evidence, more companies would use IQ tests for screening potential employees.
Unless I plan to teach someone how to code, I also need to know if a person can code. In the era lkrubner was describing (the IBM/mainframe era), no one could code due to the small number of people with a mainframe in their basement.
Nowadays we hire people who already know how to code - I don't have time to teach someone to code. That's why I'm a big fan of github-as-resume. I want you to write code to make my company money so show me your code. But since women choose not to write open source, this form of work-sample test is criticized as discriminatory as well.
Also note that certain large meritocratic institutions (trading desks, some tech firms) do hire more or less on IQ. They can't actually give an IQ test themselves due to Griggs vs Duke Power so they outsource it to elite colleges instead. That's basically what is happening when they say "must come from a top school".
In companies I worked for in the past, I definitely had to do IQ-ish tests such as puzzles and brain teasers. Many people in the tech industry have encountered this.
The cultural mythology of Google (and earlier, Microsoft, when they were the ascendant, 800-lb gorilla) was about their puzzle based interviews, and how they didn't care about your specific skill set but only raw intelligence. (We can debate about whether that was the best way to select and hire people, but I don't think there's much dispute that this was something these companies did.)
It's probably worth noting that the companies that used the brain teasers and IQ-proxy tests also did a "cultural fit interview" - basically, trying to answer honestly the question "would I be cool with spending 8 hours a day working with this person, or would I be seeking ways to kill myself?"
The problem is that those tests probably DO have cultural or gender biases. GP was pretty specific about the fact that only SOME intelligence tests have been shown to be effective and free of cultural and gender bias. So then we're back to my original comment.
I agree that an a in-house puzzle, brainteaser, and math test would probably be shown have some biases if it were analyzed according to the same processes that are used to analyze IQ tests and other psychometric tests.
