Isn't that a sure way of not getting anybody competent ? Isn't that the hallmark of incompetence to think that you are better than everybody else.
When I was younger, I was also producing software faster, doing in 1 week what the senior were expecting in 1 month. Well, in reality it took the rest of the month to make it really works, but in my mind at the time I made it faster.
Nowadays I would still beat the deadlines with working software most of the time. Most of the time is the kicker. I know that I could need 1 month even though I will likely do it faster.
The more I know the more I find stuff that I don't and the less I would present myself as "the best".
Unreliable, delusional, unexperimented people, ... will reply to that offer.
>>Isn't that a sure way of not getting anybody competent ? Isn't that the hallmark of incompetence to think that you are better than everybody else.
Not necessarily.
There are two extremes. The first one is the Dunning-Krugger effect, where the person is so incompetent that they are not able to even recognize their incompetence, and instead think they are awesome. The second one is the opposite, called the Imposter Syndrome, where the person is extremely competent but believes that they are actually a sham who just got lucky.
There are many extremely competent people who are aware of their own competence, though.
What you're describing is know as the Dunning-Kruger effect explained in Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments (1999).
Correct. And it seems people have only figured that out recently. Companies that really do only hire the top 1% are starting to post jobs that look like a whole lot more people are qualified for. See Instagram, for example:
Tons and tons and tons of people meet those requirements, and they surely get a mountain of resumes, most of which never even get a phone screen. But they don't scare away people who are actually qualified but just don't see themselves as 'rockstars' or 'ninjas' or 'the best in the World' - even though they are.
But they don't scare away people who are actually qualified but just don't see themselves as 'rockstars' or 'ninjas' or 'the best in the World' - even though they are.
Yah, they select against self-awareness. I think the dirty truth is that thinking you're the best in the world is more important to these companies than actually being good. If you have an outsized self-perception, you'll put up with unreasonable deadlines and terrible conditions on account of pride. That's attractive to someone who's in the business of exploiting naivete.
I'm a mediocre (96-97th percentile) software engineer whose expertise pertains more to the software ecosystem and economy. Knowing it (and myself) as well as I do, I know I'm not the best in the world. I even have that rare trait of knowing what I'm missing, and there's quite a lot in that category. But I'm more than good enough for 99.8% of the tasks that people need done, given reasonable learning time.
These percentiles are a bit shady, I'll admit, because "programmers" isn't a well-defined group. I have a pretty strong sense that I'm 1.7-1.8 on the software engineer scale but a weak sense of how to define the population. Whether I'm 96th percentile vs. 99th depends more on how tightly or loosely we define "programmer". I tend to think of myself as about 94th because I define it tightly, but I would usually say that I'm 96-97th in congruence with the looser definition that a lot of people use.
Compared to the average programmer, that's about 5-6x. I'd imagine the Google Fellows are 40x or higher. I'm not down on myself at all, but I recognize that I have a long way to go.
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Isn't that a sure way of not getting anybody competent ? Isn't that the hallmark of incompetence to think that you are better than everybody else.
When I was younger, I was also producing software faster, doing in 1 week what the senior were expecting in 1 month. Well, in reality it took the rest of the month to make it really works, but in my mind at the time I made it faster.
Nowadays I would still beat the deadlines with working software most of the time. Most of the time is the kicker. I know that I could need 1 month even though I will likely do it faster.
The more I know the more I find stuff that I don't and the less I would present myself as "the best".
Unreliable, delusional, unexperimented people, ... will reply to that offer.
>>Isn't that a sure way of not getting anybody competent ? Isn't that the hallmark of incompetence to think that you are better than everybody else.
Not necessarily.
There are two extremes. The first one is the Dunning-Krugger effect, where the person is so incompetent that they are not able to even recognize their incompetence, and instead think they are awesome. The second one is the opposite, called the Imposter Syndrome, where the person is extremely competent but believes that they are actually a sham who just got lucky.
There are many extremely competent people who are aware of their own competence, though.
What you're describing is know as the Dunning-Kruger effect explained in Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments (1999).
Correct. And it seems people have only figured that out recently. Companies that really do only hire the top 1% are starting to post jobs that look like a whole lot more people are qualified for. See Instagram, for example:
http://instagram.com/about/jobs/mobile-engineer
Tons and tons and tons of people meet those requirements, and they surely get a mountain of resumes, most of which never even get a phone screen. But they don't scare away people who are actually qualified but just don't see themselves as 'rockstars' or 'ninjas' or 'the best in the World' - even though they are.
But they don't scare away people who are actually qualified but just don't see themselves as 'rockstars' or 'ninjas' or 'the best in the World' - even though they are.
Yah, they select against self-awareness. I think the dirty truth is that thinking you're the best in the world is more important to these companies than actually being good. If you have an outsized self-perception, you'll put up with unreasonable deadlines and terrible conditions on account of pride. That's attractive to someone who's in the business of exploiting naivete.
I'm a mediocre (96-97th percentile) software engineer whose expertise pertains more to the software ecosystem and economy. Knowing it (and myself) as well as I do, I know I'm not the best in the world. I even have that rare trait of knowing what I'm missing, and there's quite a lot in that category. But I'm more than good enough for 99.8% of the tasks that people need done, given reasonable learning time.
I am curious, how did you assign yourself such a precise percentile (96-97th)?
The model is here: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/programmer-au... . I don't claim that it's perfect, but it's the best simple model of devonomics I can come up with.
These percentiles are a bit shady, I'll admit, because "programmers" isn't a well-defined group. I have a pretty strong sense that I'm 1.7-1.8 on the software engineer scale but a weak sense of how to define the population. Whether I'm 96th percentile vs. 99th depends more on how tightly or loosely we define "programmer". I tend to think of myself as about 94th because I define it tightly, but I would usually say that I'm 96-97th in congruence with the looser definition that a lot of people use.
How is 96-97th percentile mediocre?
Compared to the average programmer, that's about 5-6x. I'd imagine the Google Fellows are 40x or higher. I'm not down on myself at all, but I recognize that I have a long way to go.