Back when the dot-com boom was going on, anyone with HTML on his resume could get a job in the tech industry. When the bubble burst, those people were naturally weeded out of the industry as they couldn’t find sustainable employment in the post-boom and post-9/11 economy.
Fast forward to eight years later, and we’re in the midst of Web 2.0. Google is the undisputed king of search, and Microsoft does a lot more than just make Office these days. The people who work for companies like Google and the cadre of Web 2.0 startups are typically highly educated and highly skilled. This is a stark contrast with the previous boom of internet companies.
The disturbing aspect of this second boom is the evaluation of potential employees, both in the measurable (advanced degrees) and immeasurable (intelligence). There is almost a clique-like mentality emerging from these companies, all of which want to hire the best. FogCreek, Google, and Xobni are just a few of the companies who go on about how they’re looking for the best and the brightest.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting smart and highly educated people to work in your company. There’s nothing wrong with spending your time and money seeking out these people. The problem is the sanctimonious attitudes of the people who work for these companies.
Let me single out Steve Yegge, whose pompous post entitled “Done, and Get Things Smart” (a riff on Joel Spolsky’s “Smart, and Gets Things Done” mantra) is so full of self-righteous wank that it’s nearly impossible to wade through the whole thing.
Steve spends 5022 words telling us how we should only hire the best (superheroes, he says).
Ok Steve, we get it. Google hires smart people. Everyone wants smart people. Nobody wants to hire an incompetent and inexperienced person to do a job that requires significant skill and innovative thinking. But listen: you’re a search engine company. You’re not NASA. You’re not working on a cure for cancer. You’re not trying to find a way to end world poverty. You’re not trying to find a way to detect catastrophic weather in east Asia.
You make a search engine. It’s a damn fine search engine, but it’s still just a piece of software. Get over yourself.
One thing I do have to concede to, however, is Steve’s citation of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which proves Darwin’s assertion (and the conventional wisdom) that the people who know the least think they know the most. This is true in every industry, every society, every community, everywhere. Does anyone truly want to admit to himself that he’s incompetent, when we’re constantly told that we’re all special in our own way?
I don’t know if the Dunning-Kruger effect applies to me. I think I’m smart, but should I not? Am I actually incompetent because I think I’m smart? Or am I actually smart because I know what I’m not good at?
At the end of the day, I just try to do the best job I can for my company and my customer, and I derive personal pleasure from that success. And that, in my humble opinion, defines competence.
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