Looking for the perfect match

Lately, I passed through many selection processes, and I still will go through some more. Did I meet a company where I really wanted to work at? Surely, for many I could have made a positive impact working there. But none was a perfect match. ¹I’m not talking about cultural fit here

Why do we look for the perfect match? We should already know that such a thing doesn’t even exist. Lasting couples aren’t a perfect match. How can colleagues be a perfect match to each other? For n colleagues, that would require n * (n - 1) / 2 perfect matches. Insane.

I don’t look for the perfect match with my colleagues, but I must confess that I’m often relieved to get rejected by colleagues which present to me in the testudo formation.

How do you expect to find a new team mate if, as soon as a discussion arises, you close ranks and state you know better. Nonetheless, they keep looking for the perfect match, which boils down to a developer with the biggest experience to write quality code without spoon-feeding her, and the smallest experience to follow orders with humbleness.

That, or likemindedness. Isn’t it a known problem to hire like minded people?

Such practices can ²I stroke this through also lead to groupthink where all go along with decisions for the sake of team harmony. Creativity, innovation and growth can ³I stroke this through suffer in the absence of diversity, vigorous debate and conflict.

I never liked to sheepishly follow others. Decades ago, when I was 10 years old, our school teacher gave us a mathematical problem to solve cooperatively. I immediately found a short solution, and shared it with the others. They dismissed it and decided to elaborate one of their own. How proud I was when our teacher validated my answer and not theirs.

During my job interviews, I genuinely make an effort to understand and value the programming decisions, mostly the architectural ones, that my yet-to-be colleagues made in the projects I’m asked to collaborate in. How could I not show my surprise when they tell me:

• We can’t use Docker / Kubernetes because our setup is too complex
  • What? They are used at Google, I don’t think they have a simpler setup.
• We prefer vanilla JavaScript to React, because it wouldn’t scale for us.
  • What? It’s used at Facebook, I don’t think they have a smaller scale.