

Ask HN:  How do companies weed out perfectionist programmers in job interviews? - amichail

Do companies like Google and Facebook do anything specifically to weed out perfectionists in the interview process?
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spooneybarger
what do you mean by 'perfectionist programmers'? i want all my programmers to
be strive for perfection while recognizing that is an unattainable goal and in
the end, the software exists to serve business needs and sometimes technical
debt needs to be accumulated ( but closely monitored so it can be taken care
of later. ) if you don't have a desire to strive towards perfection, you
aren't the type of programmer i want working for me. i think what you mean by
perfectionist programmer and my idea are probably different, rather interested
in what it means to you.

~~~
amichail
A perfectionist programmer is never happy with the code and will never want to
release a product with bugs -- no matter how minor those bugs are and no
matter how urgent the deadline is.

~~~
spooneybarger
I've never met anyone like that. I don't know any programmers who think that
code perfection is the end goal of what they do. Code quality? Yes, but not
perfection.

------
machrider
Having just gone through the Google process: no. And IMO that's probably a
good thing. Finding a balance between perfection and time pressure is
something that should happen at a team level, not an individual level. I
wouldn't consider it a mark against a programmer that he's a perfectionist,
but I might seek to guide him toward being more pragmatic when the situation
requires it.

~~~
amichail
But isn't perfectionism a sign of something more serious such as OCD?

~~~
billswift
Even if it were (it's not), it is impermissible to "weed-out" people with OCD
or a host of other problems in the US; it is an ADA violation.

------
nailer
Speaking from a recent interview: ask them if they'd be happy to maintain a
highly visible deployment app for all the code in an investment bank using
bash exclusively.

The role paid GBP 650+ a day. That's a thousand US dollars a day. Although the
spec asked for python the guys doing the interviewing really didn't actually
want anyone using anything the other members of the team didn't already know.

------
HilbertSpace
Well, they should "weed them out" or at least understand them well enough to
understand what positions to put them in and how to 'manage' them if that is
possible.

'Obsession' is having thoughts involuntarily that don't even want to have.
'Compulsion' is doing things that don't intend to do and really don't want to
do. Commonly these two go together and, when appropriately serious, are called
'obsessive-compulsive disorder' (OCD). Am I a psychiatrist? Thankfully, no. Do
I know some things about this subject? Unfortunately, yes. Some of what I have
had to come to believe can be important up to crucial to know but is not yet
widely available.

Yes, 'perfectionism' can be a less serious description than OCD but be
describing much the same thing. Still, OCD has a fairly wide range of
symptoms, and 'perfectionism' is not always involved. So, OCD doesn't much
imply perfectionism, but a lot of perfectionism can suggest OCD.

OCD, and likely most 'perfectionism', are regarded as 'anxiety' diseases, that
is, caused by some vulnerability to anxiety. Causes can be both 'nature' and
'nurture', but it is accepted that the 'nature' cause is more fundamental
(yes, among the animals, at least dogs are vulnerable).

The 'nurture' cause? The 'nature' part implies genetics and inheritance, so
parents with anxiety disease can have behavior that constitutes a 'nurture'
cause thus reinforcing the 'nature' cause in children. Sure, this point should
be tested by, say, a separated twins study.

Related, anxiety diseases include one being too ready to conclude others are
plotting against them (the old term 'paranoia' -- false alarm rate set too
high), overreacting emotionally (the old term 'hysteria' -- 'gain' set too
high), and a kind of 'passivity' ('feedback' set too low to avoid
confrontation), and more.

So, what's to be 'afraid' of? One common case is 'criticism', especially from
important, powerful, influential people, especially ones who pass out a lot of
criticism.

Yes, one symptom can be fear to submit work. Instead, keep working on the
work, keep dotting i's and crossing t's. So, yes, the sense of 'perfect' being
pursued can be a bit silly and oblivious to the larger situation of 'reality'.
E.g., the work is not 'perfect' when it's a year late. Yes, with enough
anxiety, it can be tough to face reality.

Here I am omitting references and details; so what I am saying is vague.
Still, encounter a real case of OCD 'perfectionism', and some of the symptoms
will not be vague.

For a company like Google that prides itself on hiring 'brilliant, super-
experts' (in itself a poor understanding of capabilities and not very
'brilliant', really more arrogant than brilliant) the chances of hiring
'perfectionists' and/or OCD cases is unusually high. And in hiring, the threat
is beyond Google. E.g., the PBK, Woodrow Wilson, the NSF, and graduate school
admissions committees leap to make this mistake. Thus this thread should be
taken seriously.

It is accepted that OCD and intelligence are not related. Still, OCD and
academics are close: An unusually high fraction of people making the best
grades in academics are OCD cases. A good place to find OCD cases is in the
list of PBK members (not me; not a chance!). And one Mensa member (again, not
me!), for a time high in Mensa, finally concluded and confessed that nearly
everyone in Mensa has some serious problems facing reality.

The connection between really high grades and some of the unfortunate behavior
from OCD is so strong that, OCD or not, it has long been suspected in hiring
that people who do really well in academics can be separated a bit too far
from reality. Indeed, when I was graduating from college, as a last 'lecture'
the college said that student permission was needed to report grades, class
standing, etc. since many employers regarded really high grades as a
disqualification. Of course they confessed this on the last day of college,
not the first!

Yes, gender plays a role: Anxiety disease is about four times more common in
human females than human males. In particular, and more important for females,
the fear of criticism can be close to 'social phobia', that is, unreasonable
fears and high stress under the view of other people.

Then, in practice, especially for a married women, a 'solution' can be to
avoid being under the view of other people, stay at home as much as possible,
work very hard to please her husband, get rivers of praise from her husband,
and, net, get some security against the anxieties from a kind of 'emotional
dependency'. Related solutions involve working closely under her husband's
supervision in a family run business. Fear of criticism? Not from her husband,
who showers praise (he BETTER -- learn it here if not elsewhere). From others?
She sees her husband as the target of any such criticism, not herself. This
situation can work. My conclusion is that such situations, actually, are FAR
more common, and more important and effective as responses to female anxiety,
than it is now 'politically correct' to accept.

Indeed, at present, a huge fraction of the counselors anxiety-ridden women
will see are radical feminists who just insist that the only acceptable path
for such a patient is to have the patient throw off any hint of dependency,
hopefully throw off her husband and marriage (the counselors have contempt for
marriage, laugh at marriage vows, and refuse to see marriage is part of the
solution), and charge forth in 'men's' world as independent, autonomous, self-
sufficient, 'assertive', and 'equal', crashing through glass ceilings. Of
course, the good news is that in a few more generations, Darwin will solve
this problem as such counselors and their patients will be weak, sick, or dead
limbs on the tree. Ugly but effective.

Generally dealing with the anxiety causes stress, and too much stress causes
depression including clinical depression and suicide. For the depression, some
drugs are prescribed that increase the risk of suicide. Semi-brilliant.

Such anxiety in women is so common that it has likely had 'reproductive
advantage' but is a double edged sword: On the one hand, it can push her to
get married and be a very 'dutiful' wife, stay in a home behind a white picket
fence, and more likely be a devoted mother; on the other hand, without such a
home, it can kill her. There is some question about the effects on being a
good mother from none, some, or a lot of OCD.

OCD in women can be difficult to diagnose: She can look fine in high school.
College can begin to cause problems. Age 22-25 can make the symptoms strong.
She can be very good at hiding any problems and deny anything is wrong for
some years.

Me? No, not a chance. Still, I'm NOT guessing here.

There is a connection with academics and computing: Consider a student going
for a Ph.D. Well, it is broadly accepted that the main requirement and
challenge of a Ph.D. is the original work of the dissertation supposed to be
"new, correct, and significant". Then for such graduate study in D. Knuth's
'The TeXBook' we can see:

"The traditional way is to put off all creative aspects until the last part of
graduate school. For seventeen or more years, a student is taught
examsmanship, then suddenly after passing enough exams in graduate school he's
told to do something original."

So, a PBK student can get fellowships to graduate school. If their PBK was
heavily from 'perfectionism', then for the original work (1) it is no longer
clear just what is to be done or how good it has to be and (2) there is no
simple, short deadline as was nearly universal in college. So, the work can go
on for years, with the student being afraid to submit it, with both stress and
depression rising. Universities need to be sensitive to this situation,
especially for women.

To be clear, a student, tormented by anxieties, social phobia, etc. and afraid
to submit work, can STILL be brilliant but, in front of others, STILL be
nearly paralyzed. The emotions can overwhelm both brilliance and rationalism.

What is better for the dissertation or any such advanced, creative work, is
for the person to take the attitude:

"That old stuff, it's from not so good down to junk. What I want to do is to
pick a good problem, figure out a good solution, finally understand the area
more generally, and 'clean it up'. Currently the area is a mess, and I'm
driven heavily by my own curiosity to clean it up.

"Criticism from others? If they really understood, then they would have solved
this problem and cleaned up this area long ago. So, they won't understand my
work before I have the area cleaned up. So, I can't take their criticism too
seriously. Besides, in any good research university, graduate students have a
LOT of freedom.

"For the Ph.D., I'm fairly sure my solution will be publishable, and that's
enough to keep the list check box clickers off my back for now.

"Criticism from others? It likely won't be very serious. Praise from others?
That will be like looking for hens' teeth until I have all the work in print.
In the meanwhile, I'm working based on my own understanding, where I can see
my way clear, to the goal I actually CAN see on the horizon, and for my own
curiosity."

Yes, this attitude can be good for Ph.D. research and more but can cause
problems in college and 'high quality' high schools where the anxiety-ridden,
perfectionistic students, too afraid to try anything new, tend to win,
especially in front of teachers who don't understand research and can't see
past the textbook.

Uh, the main reason the problem is not solved yet is that only a small
fraction of the population can solve it so that necessarily anyone who
actually can do such work will likely have to be heavily 'self-motivated' and
able to work largely alone, be able to see their way clear to solutions, and
STILL know the difference between good work and the rest. This involves,
mostly just between one's own ears, knowing the destination, seeing how to get
there, and getting there, fairly independently of what anyone else thinks. For
someone with an anxiety disease, the uncertainty here, and chances of
criticism and lack of praise along the way, can throttle the work.

