- CloudKitchens CTO Brian Attwell said testing for intelligence is necessary for some tech roles.
- He said that Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick's startup is considering using IQ tests for more roles.
- Attwell said such tests would "help weed out people very early."
CloudKitchens CTO Brian Attwell said he has considered a way to shake up the startup's hiring process by implementing one of the oldest kinds of tests.
"It probably wouldn't hurt if you slapped an IQ test in front of the PM in your process," Attwell told podcaster Ryan Peterman during a recent episode.
Attwell said it's difficult to design a perfect interview process, particularly one that can't be gamed. He said that CloudKitchens, Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick's $15 billion ghost kitchen startup, is conducting 20 experiments at any given time to improve its interview process.
"The reason that companies don't do it is, it just takes a ton of work to build a good process," he said. "Like in a tech org, you have dozens of different roles and each one needs different interviews, so the leadership team needs to be really, really dedicated to it."
In particular, Attwell said hiring project managers is more difficult than hiring software engineers, because some of the tasks a PM performs are "generally less well-defined than the engineering role."
Adding an IQ test wouldn't solve everything, but Attwell said such intelligence tests can help cull the initial field of applicants. He said that CloudKitchen's accounting team already uses IQ tests in its hiring process.
"It wouldn't help differentiate between the excellent and super excellent, but it would help weed out people very early, and then you could spend more time differentiating between the good versus excellent and the rest of your process," he said.
Companies like CloudKitchens need such a rigorous process, Attwell said, to make sure they're hiring quality engineers.
"Like an interview that tests your ability to recall things, your experience, or just your mindsets, does not build a strong engineering team," he said. "An interview that anyone can pass regardless of IQ, if they can practice enough that does not build a strong engineering team."
Correction: December 1, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misspelled CloudKitchens CTO Brian Attwell's name.
