Don't mean this to be a mean comment but how did you assess this?
I think i am good problem solver but i don't know if i am better than anyone else.
If I see a problem, particularly in a business context (I’m not a trained scientist curing cancer here), I can solve it. Whether that’s marketing, product, sales, devops, engineering, you name it. I don’t mind jumping between disciplines, getting my hands dirty, and doing the work that needs doing (no matter how unglamorous).
And if I work for companies with hundreds of employees and I’m one of the go to people for any problem, big or small, I know I have something special that sets me apart.
My first job I got because I interned and they wanted me to join full time.
My second job I joined as a straight SE.
My third job was via an acquisition of the second company, and I started as an IC and became a Sr Director.
My fourth job I was a co-founder that did a little of everything.
My fifth job I joined as a senior IC, and basically pitched where I could have the most impact during my first week and then have just run from there.
The only thing that matters when joining a company is really your salary, as they are unlikely to fix that quickly. Role, title, focus, manager, etc, can all be changed quickly if you present a solution to leadership that makes sense to them.
Some ways to modulate it might be reading material such as George Polya's "How to Solve It," taking your own notes on heuristics and techniques you've found useful and continuously reapplying and iterating them, and simply delving deep into many hard problems (be they directly coding related or not).
Within one or two years of doing this you will recognize patterns others do not see. I have improved my problem solving skill by at least 7-8% by doing this. The key is iteration.
My IQ has been stable like yours, around the 96th percentile, and despite being a Tier 1 top-talent engineer, I’ve had to actively improve my problem solving ability over time.
IQ is as proxy for problem solving if the problems look like a standardized test. The problems people face in the real world require more specialization and a more complex combination of skills and traits.
Pattern recognition in obviously helpful when problem solving.
What you're pointing out is that crystalized intelligence is what matters.
Fluid intelligence mediates the ability to gain crystalized intelligence.
Higher IQ in theory means you should get further faster. Though even without if you are dedicated enough to obtain the same level of crystalized intelligence you might be able to do so. I suspect at some point the cognitive ceilings are different, but who knows by how much.
I think a person with a high IQ could be a great poker OR a great negotiator OR a great writer. Perhaps 2-3 total.
It's both fluid and crystalized intelligence that are required.
The better you can pattern match the faster you will be able to acquire crystalized intelligence by being able to connect the dots and you'll likely be able to leverage superior pattern matching abilities to utilize less crystalized intelligence to draw the same conclusions in certain cases. But if you have no or very little crystalized intelligence in the domain you're trying to problem solve in then you aren't going to get very far.
It's very much a combination of the two.
