4 ms·

Why less competent may rate their own ability higher than more competent

44 points by sinc 16y ago

Groxx 16y ago
Not much on "why", just that it exists. The "why" is essentially a re-statement of the situation: illusory superiority and illusory inferiority. A common "why" theory that I personally subscribe to: the less competent don't know enough to know what they don't know.
- sinc 16y ago
  You are right, I should not have put the "why" there (and can't change it anymore). If someone with editing abilities sees this, could you please change the title to "The Dunning–Kruger effect", or what you think is more appropriate. Thanks.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  This happens often in music, where subjectivity comes into play. What's not immediately obvious: programmers use subjective measures of quality all the time. We have to do so to get our work done in a timely fashion. Those who want to be truly great should be humble. They should also check themselves as much as possible with objective measures and feedback from trusted and respected fellow practitioners. Come to think of it, I suspect this phenomenon affects the implementation of programming languages. A lot of second tier CS talents implement languages because they have enough ego to get through the ordeal.
- sunkencity 16y ago
  Yep it's whether you are an active information-seeker or not: If you never question your current model of thought it is a lot harder to learn, you'll mostly learn things that match what you know and the ideas and perspectives you can apply to a problem will be fairly limited. Contrast with a competent person, that have a knack for picking up new stuff, they are used to learning stuff so they know that they don't know everything.
known 16y ago
There is scientific evidence that social rejection massively reduces the intelligence & injects aggressiveness in kids. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051 http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051
c00p3r 16y ago
“There are, in effect, two things: to know and to believe one knows. To know is science. To believe one knows is ignorance.” "Their misconception is fueled by the fact that they are completely unaware of their own ignorance. This unawareness or unwillingness to admit their ignorance subconsciously prods them to make (wrong) assumptions in order to fill the void in their knowledge." "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." "What we do not understand we do not possess." "We're even wrong about which mistakes we're making."
elblanco 16y ago
Even more disconcerting, it can sometimes be very hard to tell the competent from the incompetent until you have them in the door working for you. I once worked with a guy (not in an engineering discipline) who could talk circles around much more competent people. He knew all the buzz words, and even knew most of the topics about one level deep. When he spoke, he spoke with an absolute air of authority on whatever subject he was talking about. He managed to convince division manager after division manager (he jumped around a lot and it was a very large company) that past failures were just because of circumstances out of his control. However, he didn't actually know anything and every project he was put in charge of either failed disastrously, or was caught from the brink at the last minute by colleagues who worked double shifts to do the project (which of course allowed him to point to those same colleagues as incompetents that he had to deal with on his project and hence the reason for failure). The really sad thing is, I could never figure out if he knew he was grossly incompetent and just spinning things to keep a job far above the level he should have had, or actually believed the yarns he wove about what he knew.
- billybob 16y ago
  I'm curious: is this not solved by a solid technical interview? I would have guessed that if someone impresses HR, you could find out if they really know their stuff by getting a KNOWN competent person to ask them lots of hard technical questions, make them solve problems on the spot, etc. A friend recently gave me a great example of how to do open-ended questions and probe someone's knowledge: ask a question like "when you type in a web address and hit enter, what happens?" The answer can range from "your computer loads the page" to delving into DNS, IP routing, HTTP headers, server load management, server-side processing, sessions, database access, cookies, browser rendering, etc etc. If the candidate gives a simple answer, you can continue to probe different areas to see how much they know in each one. The trick is that the interviewer has to be competent enough to tell what the candidate knows and whether he/she will BS rather than admit not knowing something (which is also important to find out). If you don't already have anyone competent enough to conduct the interview - maybe you're hiring your first programmer - you could temporarily hire someone who comes highly recommended to help you with the interview process. So, was this guy vetted like this on technical merits, or did he just talk impressively to non-technical people? I'm curious to know how he slipped through.
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."
tokenadult 16y ago
HN discussion of posting of same Wikipedia article from 92 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1063287 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1063287
padmanabhan01 16y ago
Will knowing this concept affect the meta-cognitive ability of a person? Will those that were underestimating their ability start to correctly/over estimate it? i.e if they buy this concept. Will those that were over estimating their abilities before, start to realize they were over estimating? Will those that want to look/sound smart start to fake humility, since underestimating one's ability may give the idea that he is smart? Oh well, ...
gte910h 16y ago
The skill you're looking for here is called meta-knowledge. It is knowledge of your level of knowledge about a given topic. It is a teachable trait, arguably what very selective schools with hard grading curves teaching difficult things teach people to develop (as you have to determine what you don't know to pass/excel/etc there). I've always personally believed the test: "What would you need to get going on these 5 projects?" Is a great question. If talking about researching X Y or Z don't come out of the candidate's mouth (and it's not an old solved problem, like self-contained embedded C code), you mark them down as less meta-knowledgeable. (Doesn't mean unhireable, but you don't want them in highly independent positions or constantly learning new things; people with low meta knowledge appear to actually be quite happy in places that high meta people hate, such as long term maintenance programming). In software particularly, study of estimation (and it's continual use) can teach people the practice of evaluating all risks, including metaknowledge. I like the book: http://www.amazon.com/Software-Estimation-Demystifying-Practices-Microsoft/dp/0735605351 http://www.amazon.com/Software-Estimation-Demystifying-Pract... (non-aff link) for getting people going with the practice.

44 points by sinc 16y ago

Groxx 16y ago

Not much on "why", just that it exists. The "why" is essentially a re-statement of the situation: illusory superiority and illusory inferiority. A common "why" theory that I personally subscribe to: the less competent don't know enough to know what they don't know.

sinc 16y ago
You are right, I should not have put the "why" there (and can't change it anymore). If someone with editing abilities sees this, could you please change the title to "The Dunning–Kruger effect", or what you think is more appropriate. Thanks.
stcredzero 16y ago
This happens often in music, where subjectivity comes into play. What's not immediately obvious: programmers use subjective measures of quality all the time. We have to do so to get our work done in a timely fashion. Those who want to be truly great should be humble. They should also check themselves as much as possible with objective measures and feedback from trusted and respected fellow practitioners. Come to think of it, I suspect this phenomenon affects the implementation of programming languages. A lot of second tier CS talents implement languages because they have enough ego to get through the ordeal.
sunkencity 16y ago
Yep it's whether you are an active information-seeker or not: If you never question your current model of thought it is a lot harder to learn, you'll mostly learn things that match what you know and the ideas and perspectives you can apply to a problem will be fairly limited. Contrast with a competent person, that have a knack for picking up new stuff, they are used to learning stuff so they know that they don't know everything.

known 16y ago

There is scientific evidence that social rejection massively reduces the intelligence & injects aggressiveness in kids. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051 http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051

c00p3r 16y ago

“There are, in effect, two things: to know and to believe one knows. To know is science. To believe one knows is ignorance.” "Their misconception is fueled by the fact that they are completely unaware of their own ignorance. This unawareness or unwillingness to admit their ignorance subconsciously prods them to make (wrong) assumptions in order to fill the void in their knowledge." "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." "What we do not understand we do not possess." "We're even wrong about which mistakes we're making."

elblanco 16y ago

Even more disconcerting, it can sometimes be very hard to tell the competent from the incompetent until you have them in the door working for you. I once worked with a guy (not in an engineering discipline) who could talk circles around much more competent people. He knew all the buzz words, and even knew most of the topics about one level deep. When he spoke, he spoke with an absolute air of authority on whatever subject he was talking about. He managed to convince division manager after division manager (he jumped around a lot and it was a very large company) that past failures were just because of circumstances out of his control. However, he didn't actually know anything and every project he was put in charge of either failed disastrously, or was caught from the brink at the last minute by colleagues who worked double shifts to do the project (which of course allowed him to point to those same colleagues as incompetents that he had to deal with on his project and hence the reason for failure). The really sad thing is, I could never figure out if he knew he was grossly incompetent and just spinning things to keep a job far above the level he should have had, or actually believed the yarns he wove about what he knew.

billybob 16y ago
I'm curious: is this not solved by a solid technical interview? I would have guessed that if someone impresses HR, you could find out if they really know their stuff by getting a KNOWN competent person to ask them lots of hard technical questions, make them solve problems on the spot, etc. A friend recently gave me a great example of how to do open-ended questions and probe someone's knowledge: ask a question like "when you type in a web address and hit enter, what happens?" The answer can range from "your computer loads the page" to delving into DNS, IP routing, HTTP headers, server load management, server-side processing, sessions, database access, cookies, browser rendering, etc etc. If the candidate gives a simple answer, you can continue to probe different areas to see how much they know in each one. The trick is that the interviewer has to be competent enough to tell what the candidate knows and whether he/she will BS rather than admit not knowing something (which is also important to find out). If you don't already have anyone competent enough to conduct the interview - maybe you're hiring your first programmer - you could temporarily hire someone who comes highly recommended to help you with the interview process. So, was this guy vetted like this on technical merits, or did he just talk impressively to non-technical people? I'm curious to know how he slipped through.

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."

tokenadult 16y ago

HN discussion of posting of same Wikipedia article from 92 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1063287 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1063287

padmanabhan01 16y ago

Will knowing this concept affect the meta-cognitive ability of a person? Will those that were underestimating their ability start to correctly/over estimate it? i.e if they buy this concept. Will those that were over estimating their abilities before, start to realize they were over estimating? Will those that want to look/sound smart start to fake humility, since underestimating one's ability may give the idea that he is smart? Oh well, ...

gte910h 16y ago

The skill you're looking for here is called meta-knowledge. It is knowledge of your level of knowledge about a given topic. It is a teachable trait, arguably what very selective schools with hard grading curves teaching difficult things teach people to develop (as you have to determine what you don't know to pass/excel/etc there). I've always personally believed the test: "What would you need to get going on these 5 projects?" Is a great question. If talking about researching X Y or Z don't come out of the candidate's mouth (and it's not an old solved problem, like self-contained embedded C code), you mark them down as less meta-knowledgeable. (Doesn't mean unhireable, but you don't want them in highly independent positions or constantly learning new things; people with low meta knowledge appear to actually be quite happy in places that high meta people hate, such as long term maintenance programming). In software particularly, study of estimation (and it's continual use) can teach people the practice of evaluating all risks, including metaknowledge. I like the book: http://www.amazon.com/Software-Estimation-Demystifying-Practices-Microsoft/dp/0735605351 http://www.amazon.com/Software-Estimation-Demystifying-Pract... (non-aff link) for getting people going with the practice.