The programming talent myth

Right but that talent in practice on the job seemed to be uncorrelated with the ability of an interviewee to answer a pop quiz, whether the interviewee did well or poorly on those kinds of questions didn't predict whether they were good at their jobs so they are useless for screening.

I'm not sure it is. I'm very slow at picking up arbitrary new skills: I tend to need a lot of time and a lot of sleep, and am quite likely to forget the lot. What I *can* do is almost never forget anything in an area I *have* picked up (and am interested in), and rapidly correlate anything I do manage to learn with what I know (and if I manage to do that, I won't forget it). More generally, most adults are bad at picking up arbitrary new skills quickly -- if you want *that*, find a young child, they're information sponges.

I think the talent needed is picking up skills *related to your existing experience base* quickly, not arbitrary new skills. This is, of course, a talent of wide general utility, and is in general why older people aren't worse at everything than younger ones despite the loss of cognitive reserve -- for many years the increased experience base more than makes up for it.