I've participated in programming olympiads and worked with people of varying skill and I would say that overall the correlation between competitive programming and software engineering in a business environment is probably like 0.2 or less.
I find that questionable. What does "software engineering in a business environment" require that a competent competitive programmer couldn't also learn?
Specification. For any real business, it takes huge effort for a group of people across many domains to consolidate what should be done. That's only the what part.
Not saying competitive programming contest easy or something, but just pointing out that in a contest with timing constraint, the requirement realization phase cannot be fitted in.
When I was a kid in the 80s - I convinced my dad he needed a 286 for his construction company - so he could do his books. And he'd need a modem - its the new fax.
(This was so I could play populous, BBS to San Jose and get Grounded for a month for running the phone bill up to 926 for long distance calling into PCLink...
My dad yelled at me for playing video games "WHAT THAT EVER GUNNA DO"
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years later I left my shift at Intel running the game lab.. to meet my dad for dinner.
He apologized to me for telling me that games and computers would never do anything.
I was touched he remembered.
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These dumb olympiads will never amount to much, id bet.
