8 ms·

A long time ago I noticed a trend in job listings. Words you would associate with perfectionism (detail-oriented, accurate, etc.) are usually used with lower-p

A long time ago I noticed a trend in job listings. Words you would associate with perfectionism (detail-oriented, accurate, etc.) are usually used with lower-paid and lower-status jobs. For example: admins, data-entry, etc. Words you see in higher-paid and higher-status jobs often focus on strategy and planning in a complex goal space, as you note. What's interesting about our education system is we focus a lot on precision and accuracy and not that much on strategy and planning. It seems like a system built to produce accountants and actuaries more than a new generation of entrepreneurs.

ghurtado 10y ago
>Words you would associate with perfectionism (detail-oriented, accurate, etc.) are usually used with lower-paid and lower-status jobs. It may surprise you to hear this, but I have encountered a lot of perfectionism (the negative kind) in software development. I have struggled with perfectionism for essentially all of my life, and I find that the uncertainties of this particular trade (the lack of well established standards and the constant barrage of tool choices, to name two) make this a fertile ground for perfectionism hell.
- kctess5 10y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if software engineering tends to attract perfectionists. Writing code requires a very high level of specificity - you have to think about all the ways that your code might not be perfect or there will inevitably be bugs. Computers are not particularly good at dealing with underspecified goals.
  - munchbunny 10y ago
    While that's definitely true, there's also a great degree of "many ways to skin the cat." What I've found is that while engineers will often focus on getting the implementation just right, they will just as often get stuck on murky architectural decisions. All things considered the decision is murky because the alternatives aren't clearly better, so the correct path is "pick one, try it, reflect later" rather than "debate hypotheticals until an impasse." I've seen many engineers who are good at these murky architectural decisions, and I've also seen otherwise detail oriented engineers lock up a team on the debate around architectural decisions for so long you could have tried both ideas by then.
    - kctess5 10y ago
      Interesting point. I suppose that decisive perfectionism is the goal then. This is definitely more difficult when the scale increases, and the time between deciding the path and seeing the results increases. I've been working on a project involving some highly optimized C++ code, where the smallest architectural mistakes can cause serious slowdown. My architectural strategy thus far has been to 'just try' all of the decent options and then pick which one is the fastest. It's been working out well, but luckily my code is ~1K lines and the cost of doing this is minimal. (fun fact: template classes >> polymorphism in terms of speed, also, cache yo trig functions) In contrast, I worked on a partial refactor of a fairly large (~150KLOC) code base, and the 'just try it' approach was definitely not an option due to the person-months work required to even make a small dent. That took quite a lot of thinking to figure out a reasonable path forward. And a lot of diagrams...
    - inimino 10y ago
      I think it's about perfectionism in the user experience vs. perfectionism everywhere else. This is the difference between a Steve Jobs-like quality focus and the kind of irrevant perfectionism that often plagues software development.
  - splicer 10y ago
    Getting into programming helped me isolate my perfectionist tendencies. As long as I have something I can obsessively polish, I can relax in other areas of my life.
surreal 10y ago
> What's interesting about our education system is we focus a lot on precision and accuracy and not that much on strategy and planning. It seems like a system built to produce accountants and actuaries more than a new generation of entrepreneurs. You're spot on (nearly). Seth Godin will tell you[1] that it's a system quite literally built to produce compliant workers for factories during the industrial revolution: https://youtu.be/sXpbONjV1Jc https://youtu.be/sXpbONjV1Jc [1]: as will many others. But I like how he puts it in this video.
- supahfly_remix 10y ago
  > it's a system quite literally built to produce compliant workers for factories during the industrial revolution: https://youtu.be/sXpbONjV1Jc https://youtu.be/sXpbONjV1Jc Maybe initially it was, but I can't see how a today's college-prep / AP sequence prepares kids for working in a factory. In fact, the opposite has happened: too many kids are going to college when many would be better off financially learning a trade.
- amalcon 10y ago
  That seems a bit off. The Industrial Revolution was considered to have taken place from around 1760-1840 per Wikipedia, but compulsory education began in places in the 1500s, and public schools started popping up in the 1600s. The reason for this is actually quite well documented: early Protestants, dissatisfied with the Catholic clergy's stranglehold on religion at the time, wanted to encourage literacy so that everyone could read the Bible. Indeed, the primary reason that the stereotypical factory worker in the early industrial revolution was a girl was that girls were not yet required to attend school. I would totally believe that deliberate elements of compliance were added at some point, but those seem to have mostly appeared in the late 19th and early-mid 20th centuries: clearly well past the Industrial Revolution.
appleiigs 10y ago
Interesting observation! I'm not disagreeing with you as I don't know what is the best approach to education is. However, with my nephews, they need to learn accuracy before they get to higher level thinking. Accuracy and speed is the foundation. When their dad reviews their homework, the excuse the nephews most often give is "but it's just a simple mistake". Too many of these simple mistakes.
nostrademons 10y ago
There might be a reason for that: if the modern corporation is built upon breaking work down into ever-tinier units, hierarchically, then the vast majority of positions available will focus on performing one very specialized, tightly-defined task with exceptional accuracy and consistency. And then because there are fewer positions that involve strategic planning at the top of the pyramid, the relative status and financial compensation for those positions will be higher. The causality runs from hierarchy -> job descriptions -> pay scales & status -> educational system, not the other way around. As all the folks who graduated college/gradschool with loads of student debt but no positions available know, it does no good for everyone to train to be at the top when the top only has so many positions available. It's an interesting thought experiment to imagine what the world would look like if we got rid of hierarchy entirely. YC was built on this premise [1]; it will be curious to see if it actually succeeds in eliminating hierarchy or if it just replaces one set of hierarchies with a different one, with different folks at the top. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html
- Joof 10y ago
  A different distribution of hierarchy could be beneficial.
flukus 10y ago
> What's interesting about our education system is we focus a lot on precision and accuracy and not that much on strategy and planning. It seems like a system built to produce accountants and actuaries more than a new generation of entrepreneurs. Because it is? That's not necessarily a bad thing, the world only needs so many entrepreneurs.
- pdonis 10y ago
  > the world only needs so many entrepreneurs. This might be true in principle, but in practice I would say our current world suffers from a huge undersupply of entrepreneurs, not an oversupply. Far too few people see the purpose of their jobs as creating wealth.
Radim 10y ago
Let me offer an opposing point of view. In all the people I ever hired and worked with over the years (data entry, devs, bizdev, sales or otherwise), attention to detail was the single most predictive trait for good performance. "Conscientious" is a better word perhaps. People who can't be bothered to understand how things work rarely produce amazing "high level" work either. It's a fallacy to assume you can "skip the details" IMO. It's like inspecting a house: if you see shoddy plumbing and the walls are crooked and all the details are off, it is still possible the construction is amazing in all the attributes you CAN'T inspect so easily. But it's also quite likely the construction company didn't give a shit and were cutting costs left and right, and buying this house would be a safety hazard. Also, you can pay attention to detail in strategic jobs as well. "Attention to detail" and "complex spaces" are not mutually exclusive.
- rukuu001 10y ago
  But I think picking the detail to be conscientious of is the trick. Important details are just as annoying to check as less important details. IMO, it's the ability to discern and apply elbow grease to boring things that matter, and walk away from unimportant things that really predicts good outcomes.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "Conscientious" is one of the 'big five' character traits, somewhat different than attention to detail. Though I think I understand exactly what you are trying to say an wholeheartedly agree. "Conscientious" people are probably naturally more inclined to detail to make sure that their work is good. But I would point out a small delineation point: some things are just a matter of focus. Typists, some kinds of accountants - it's a matter of 'process focus' - that they are focused and attentive to their work, and make few procedural errors. This I think is a behaviour and can hardly be learned - and is often not very well correlated with 'creativity' or 'big picture thinking' at all. But I really do agree - the 'overall more conscientious' types - no matter the trade - are the best people, unless you need star talent, but even then ... They care about outcomes, not just 'handing off' some thing, or 'fulfilling their narrow duties' etc.. You know what's paradox: older people tend to be far more conscientious: they pay their bills on time, more likely to do the things they say, less averse to going off topic with hyperbole, get along with others, punctual, they vote, they volunteer, etc. etc. - and yet there is a strong bias against them in some workplaces. Though it could be related to the idea they may not want to learn new things, or 'keep pace' etc.. I know otherwise highly conscientious people who miss emails, are are a little absent minded at times. You can't have that for someone who is managing your schedule. :)
princeb 10y ago
by the time you get to the higher-paid and higher-status job applicants, you hope that the low-level requirements of job performance - detail-orientedness and accuracy - should have already been met.
pdonis 10y ago
> It seems like a system built to produce accountants and actuaries more than a new generation of entrepreneurs. Perhaps that's because (a) nobody knows how to educate people to become entrepreneurs, and (b) the kind of people who will make good entrepreneurs are the kind of people who won't be very happy in a one-size-fits-all education system like the one we have.
- CN7R 10y ago
  An education system that would promote entrepreneurship would one that focuses on group projects and encouraging students to take risks with new ideas. At the moment, there is too much pressure and no incentive for students to solely focus on objectives besides grades.
  - pdonis 10y ago
    > An education system that would promote entrepreneurship would one that focuses on group projects and encouraging students to take risks with new ideas. I'm not sure an "education system" could do this. The whole point of having a "system" for education is uniformity: everyone learns the same things. There is some variation, but not much, because no "system" can handle much diversity. But the whole point of entrepreneurship is diversity: everyone tries different things.
mcguire 10y ago
Imagine what the world would be like if everyone were entrepreneurs...
derefr 10y ago
I would think that's just a representation of why people decide to hire employees. Most employee roles start as assistant roles: someone hired to take the less-important work off someone else's plate, so they can concentrate on the more-important work. Assistants aren't expected to be better at their job than the person hiring them would be—rather the opposite—but are employed anyway, because they have a comparative advantage in doing that thing. They're usually valued by the company strictly less than the person delegating the work to them. On the other hand, there are specialist roles: people hired specifically to do a particular type of work better than a generalist (e.g. the person hiring them) could have done it; or hired to do something a generalist couldn't have done at all. These people can extract a lot of value from a company if they know their own worth; people like lawyers, trade-workers, etc. can all command high contracting rates. But corporations tend to think a lot more in terms of the assistant role than the specialist role. There are a lot of jobs in companies that started off as assistant roles, and then kept the low pay and low status even after they became specialist roles. Companies have a hard time noticing that the people in their assistant roles are actually specialists, as long as they don't actively revolt and point out their worth. This is, I think, a big part of why you can get an average salary as a programmer at a BigCorp "through the front door", but can get a much higher salary from the same BigCorp by building a startup that they acquire. BigCorps hire assistants, but acquire specialists, and that informs how they think of you; what they're willing to pay; and what they'll employ you to do.
sandworm101 10y ago
>> Words you would associate with perfectionism (detail-oriented, accurate, etc.) are usually used with lower-paid and lower-status jobs. For example: admins, data-entry, etc. Except for the traditional "professions". Everyone wants their doctors, lawyers and pilots to be heavily 'detail-orientated'. Such professions bake in a degree of perfectionism. (I'm suffering it now as I have trouble even posting an online comment without going over it six times for spelling and grammar.)
marrs 10y ago
Yes, but don't forget that you are expected to progress from the lower paid job to the higher paid one, so it should be no surprise that the respective job descriptions will be different for the junior and senior candidates respectively. You have to learn to be a good practitioner before you can progress to a leadership role. The junior-role skills are omitted from the senior role, not because they are no longer required, but because it is taken as read that the senior candidate has already acquired them.
marvin 10y ago
Very interesting observation. This resonates well with me and puts into words something I've been contemplating for years. I used to describe myself as a perfectionist, but today I'd rather be described as a pragmatist. You can't ignore critical details, but neither can you be so focused on getting every detail perfect that the big picture ends up worse. This is typical when designing software: There's limited time and resources available, and you often need to make a difficult tradeoff between the time taken to create something that's (perfectly?) maintainable long-term, and saying "enough is enough, we're losing money every day that we don't release". I get the impression that people are rarely able to keep both of these concerns in mind. Many skilled developers ignore the long-term opportunity cost of taking a long time to write "perfect" code, whereas many managerial types ignore the long-term technical cost of shipping poor-quality, difficult-to-maintain code.
andrei_says_ 10y ago
Education focuses on the production of blue collar workers in poor areas, white collar workers in affluent areas and on business decision makers in expensive private schools. Years ago I read the results of a study comparing teaching approaches in the listed environments, with a very clear conclusion about the intentional training of execution vs. creativity vs. leadership and big-picture thinking.

ghurtado 10y ago

>Words you would associate with perfectionism (detail-oriented, accurate, etc.) are usually used with lower-paid and lower-status jobs. It may surprise you to hear this, but I have encountered a lot of perfectionism (the negative kind) in software development. I have struggled with perfectionism for essentially all of my life, and I find that the uncertainties of this particular trade (the lack of well established standards and the constant barrage of tool choices, to name two) make this a fertile ground for perfectionism hell.

kctess5 10y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if software engineering tends to attract perfectionists. Writing code requires a very high level of specificity - you have to think about all the ways that your code might not be perfect or there will inevitably be bugs. Computers are not particularly good at dealing with underspecified goals.
- munchbunny 10y ago
  While that's definitely true, there's also a great degree of "many ways to skin the cat." What I've found is that while engineers will often focus on getting the implementation just right, they will just as often get stuck on murky architectural decisions. All things considered the decision is murky because the alternatives aren't clearly better, so the correct path is "pick one, try it, reflect later" rather than "debate hypotheticals until an impasse." I've seen many engineers who are good at these murky architectural decisions, and I've also seen otherwise detail oriented engineers lock up a team on the debate around architectural decisions for so long you could have tried both ideas by then.
  - kctess5 10y ago
    Interesting point. I suppose that decisive perfectionism is the goal then. This is definitely more difficult when the scale increases, and the time between deciding the path and seeing the results increases. I've been working on a project involving some highly optimized C++ code, where the smallest architectural mistakes can cause serious slowdown. My architectural strategy thus far has been to 'just try' all of the decent options and then pick which one is the fastest. It's been working out well, but luckily my code is ~1K lines and the cost of doing this is minimal. (fun fact: template classes >> polymorphism in terms of speed, also, cache yo trig functions) In contrast, I worked on a partial refactor of a fairly large (~150KLOC) code base, and the 'just try it' approach was definitely not an option due to the person-months work required to even make a small dent. That took quite a lot of thinking to figure out a reasonable path forward. And a lot of diagrams...
  - inimino 10y ago
    I think it's about perfectionism in the user experience vs. perfectionism everywhere else. This is the difference between a Steve Jobs-like quality focus and the kind of irrevant perfectionism that often plagues software development.
- splicer 10y ago
  Getting into programming helped me isolate my perfectionist tendencies. As long as I have something I can obsessively polish, I can relax in other areas of my life.

surreal 10y ago

> What's interesting about our education system is we focus a lot on precision and accuracy and not that much on strategy and planning. It seems like a system built to produce accountants and actuaries more than a new generation of entrepreneurs. You're spot on (nearly). Seth Godin will tell you[1] that it's a system quite literally built to produce compliant workers for factories during the industrial revolution: https://youtu.be/sXpbONjV1Jc https://youtu.be/sXpbONjV1Jc [1]: as will many others. But I like how he puts it in this video.

supahfly_remix 10y ago
> it's a system quite literally built to produce compliant workers for factories during the industrial revolution: https://youtu.be/sXpbONjV1Jc https://youtu.be/sXpbONjV1Jc Maybe initially it was, but I can't see how a today's college-prep / AP sequence prepares kids for working in a factory. In fact, the opposite has happened: too many kids are going to college when many would be better off financially learning a trade.
amalcon 10y ago
That seems a bit off. The Industrial Revolution was considered to have taken place from around 1760-1840 per Wikipedia, but compulsory education began in places in the 1500s, and public schools started popping up in the 1600s. The reason for this is actually quite well documented: early Protestants, dissatisfied with the Catholic clergy's stranglehold on religion at the time, wanted to encourage literacy so that everyone could read the Bible. Indeed, the primary reason that the stereotypical factory worker in the early industrial revolution was a girl was that girls were not yet required to attend school. I would totally believe that deliberate elements of compliance were added at some point, but those seem to have mostly appeared in the late 19th and early-mid 20th centuries: clearly well past the Industrial Revolution.

appleiigs 10y ago

Interesting observation! I'm not disagreeing with you as I don't know what is the best approach to education is. However, with my nephews, they need to learn accuracy before they get to higher level thinking. Accuracy and speed is the foundation. When their dad reviews their homework, the excuse the nephews most often give is "but it's just a simple mistake". Too many of these simple mistakes.

nostrademons 10y ago

There might be a reason for that: if the modern corporation is built upon breaking work down into ever-tinier units, hierarchically, then the vast majority of positions available will focus on performing one very specialized, tightly-defined task with exceptional accuracy and consistency. And then because there are fewer positions that involve strategic planning at the top of the pyramid, the relative status and financial compensation for those positions will be higher. The causality runs from hierarchy -> job descriptions -> pay scales & status -> educational system, not the other way around. As all the folks who graduated college/gradschool with loads of student debt but no positions available know, it does no good for everyone to train to be at the top when the top only has so many positions available. It's an interesting thought experiment to imagine what the world would look like if we got rid of hierarchy entirely. YC was built on this premise [1]; it will be curious to see if it actually succeeds in eliminating hierarchy or if it just replaces one set of hierarchies with a different one, with different folks at the top. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html

Joof 10y ago
A different distribution of hierarchy could be beneficial.

flukus 10y ago

> What's interesting about our education system is we focus a lot on precision and accuracy and not that much on strategy and planning. It seems like a system built to produce accountants and actuaries more than a new generation of entrepreneurs. Because it is? That's not necessarily a bad thing, the world only needs so many entrepreneurs.

pdonis 10y ago
> the world only needs so many entrepreneurs. This might be true in principle, but in practice I would say our current world suffers from a huge undersupply of entrepreneurs, not an oversupply. Far too few people see the purpose of their jobs as creating wealth.

Radim 10y ago

Let me offer an opposing point of view. In all the people I ever hired and worked with over the years (data entry, devs, bizdev, sales or otherwise), attention to detail was the single most predictive trait for good performance. "Conscientious" is a better word perhaps. People who can't be bothered to understand how things work rarely produce amazing "high level" work either. It's a fallacy to assume you can "skip the details" IMO. It's like inspecting a house: if you see shoddy plumbing and the walls are crooked and all the details are off, it is still possible the construction is amazing in all the attributes you CAN'T inspect so easily. But it's also quite likely the construction company didn't give a shit and were cutting costs left and right, and buying this house would be a safety hazard. Also, you can pay attention to detail in strategic jobs as well. "Attention to detail" and "complex spaces" are not mutually exclusive.

rukuu001 10y ago
But I think picking the detail to be conscientious of is the trick. Important details are just as annoying to check as less important details. IMO, it's the ability to discern and apply elbow grease to boring things that matter, and walk away from unimportant things that really predicts good outcomes.
jomamaxx 10y ago
"Conscientious" is one of the 'big five' character traits, somewhat different than attention to detail. Though I think I understand exactly what you are trying to say an wholeheartedly agree. "Conscientious" people are probably naturally more inclined to detail to make sure that their work is good. But I would point out a small delineation point: some things are just a matter of focus. Typists, some kinds of accountants - it's a matter of 'process focus' - that they are focused and attentive to their work, and make few procedural errors. This I think is a behaviour and can hardly be learned - and is often not very well correlated with 'creativity' or 'big picture thinking' at all. But I really do agree - the 'overall more conscientious' types - no matter the trade - are the best people, unless you need star talent, but even then ... They care about outcomes, not just 'handing off' some thing, or 'fulfilling their narrow duties' etc.. You know what's paradox: older people tend to be far more conscientious: they pay their bills on time, more likely to do the things they say, less averse to going off topic with hyperbole, get along with others, punctual, they vote, they volunteer, etc. etc. - and yet there is a strong bias against them in some workplaces. Though it could be related to the idea they may not want to learn new things, or 'keep pace' etc.. I know otherwise highly conscientious people who miss emails, are are a little absent minded at times. You can't have that for someone who is managing your schedule. :)

princeb 10y ago

by the time you get to the higher-paid and higher-status job applicants, you hope that the low-level requirements of job performance - detail-orientedness and accuracy - should have already been met.

pdonis 10y ago

> It seems like a system built to produce accountants and actuaries more than a new generation of entrepreneurs. Perhaps that's because (a) nobody knows how to educate people to become entrepreneurs, and (b) the kind of people who will make good entrepreneurs are the kind of people who won't be very happy in a one-size-fits-all education system like the one we have.

CN7R 10y ago
An education system that would promote entrepreneurship would one that focuses on group projects and encouraging students to take risks with new ideas. At the moment, there is too much pressure and no incentive for students to solely focus on objectives besides grades.
- pdonis 10y ago
  > An education system that would promote entrepreneurship would one that focuses on group projects and encouraging students to take risks with new ideas. I'm not sure an "education system" could do this. The whole point of having a "system" for education is uniformity: everyone learns the same things. There is some variation, but not much, because no "system" can handle much diversity. But the whole point of entrepreneurship is diversity: everyone tries different things.

mcguire 10y ago

Imagine what the world would be like if everyone were entrepreneurs...

derefr 10y ago

I would think that's just a representation of why people decide to hire employees. Most employee roles start as assistant roles: someone hired to take the less-important work off someone else's plate, so they can concentrate on the more-important work. Assistants aren't expected to be better at their job than the person hiring them would be—rather the opposite—but are employed anyway, because they have a comparative advantage in doing that thing. They're usually valued by the company strictly less than the person delegating the work to them. On the other hand, there are specialist roles: people hired specifically to do a particular type of work better than a generalist (e.g. the person hiring them) could have done it; or hired to do something a generalist couldn't have done at all. These people can extract a lot of value from a company if they know their own worth; people like lawyers, trade-workers, etc. can all command high contracting rates. But corporations tend to think a lot more in terms of the assistant role than the specialist role. There are a lot of jobs in companies that started off as assistant roles, and then kept the low pay and low status even after they became specialist roles. Companies have a hard time noticing that the people in their assistant roles are actually specialists, as long as they don't actively revolt and point out their worth. This is, I think, a big part of why you can get an average salary as a programmer at a BigCorp "through the front door", but can get a much higher salary from the same BigCorp by building a startup that they acquire. BigCorps hire assistants, but acquire specialists, and that informs how they think of you; what they're willing to pay; and what they'll employ you to do.

sandworm101 10y ago

>> Words you would associate with perfectionism (detail-oriented, accurate, etc.) are usually used with lower-paid and lower-status jobs. For example: admins, data-entry, etc. Except for the traditional "professions". Everyone wants their doctors, lawyers and pilots to be heavily 'detail-orientated'. Such professions bake in a degree of perfectionism. (I'm suffering it now as I have trouble even posting an online comment without going over it six times for spelling and grammar.)

marrs 10y ago

Yes, but don't forget that you are expected to progress from the lower paid job to the higher paid one, so it should be no surprise that the respective job descriptions will be different for the junior and senior candidates respectively. You have to learn to be a good practitioner before you can progress to a leadership role. The junior-role skills are omitted from the senior role, not because they are no longer required, but because it is taken as read that the senior candidate has already acquired them.

marvin 10y ago

Very interesting observation. This resonates well with me and puts into words something I've been contemplating for years. I used to describe myself as a perfectionist, but today I'd rather be described as a pragmatist. You can't ignore critical details, but neither can you be so focused on getting every detail perfect that the big picture ends up worse. This is typical when designing software: There's limited time and resources available, and you often need to make a difficult tradeoff between the time taken to create something that's (perfectly?) maintainable long-term, and saying "enough is enough, we're losing money every day that we don't release". I get the impression that people are rarely able to keep both of these concerns in mind. Many skilled developers ignore the long-term opportunity cost of taking a long time to write "perfect" code, whereas many managerial types ignore the long-term technical cost of shipping poor-quality, difficult-to-maintain code.

andrei_says_ 10y ago

Education focuses on the production of blue collar workers in poor areas, white collar workers in affluent areas and on business decision makers in expensive private schools. Years ago I read the results of a study comparing teaching approaches in the listed environments, with a very clear conclusion about the intentional training of execution vs. creativity vs. leadership and big-picture thinking.