The Dark Side of the Force In job interviews, there's a cliché question: "tell me about your weaknesses." It's so over-used, there's a crafty stock answer: "Well, I've been told sometimes I work too hard and I need to slow down. And I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and I have to make sure my colleagues don't resent my pushing for their best work."

In a high-pressure situation, you may prefer to be, as they say, "economical with the truth" when asked a question like this. But privately, everyone has real, actual weaknesses. And every weakness is an opportunity for self-enlightenment and growth.

I don't want to waste your time talking about how I enjoy a leisurely start to the day and have trouble being in the office before 7:00am. Instead, I'm going to generalize and share an observation: every personality trait is simultaneously a strength and a weakness.

For example, I enjoy writing about my feelings on this blog. However, I have to watch the positive to negative ratio: when I spend my time slamming the hoi-polloi, I'm giving in to the negative side of my passion. I'm not alone: there's an entire industry of academics slamming each other's work, so much so that I found this meta-essay: "Considered Harmful" Essays Considered Harmful.

Likewise, I'm passionate about solving hard problems in elegant ways. Bingo! There's a weakness, a hacker mentality, a "he'd rather be slinging Lisp on Linux than grinding Java on Windows NT" attitude. It's true, that's how I usually feel about my work (although I don't use Lisp: a real hacker can write Scheme programs in any language).

By the way, this attitude is not restricted to language weenies. The next time you see a J2EE application with factories, persistence mechanisms, XML-ification of everything, and Inversion of Control, you'll see the handiwork of someone passionate about J2EE architecture.

The trick, I guess, is taking stock of your traits and making sure you minimize the deleterious effects of them while maximizing the benefits. Last year I joined a team working on a J2EE/Oracle application. There were some hard problems to solve, and I was more excited by the 2% of the work that were the hard problems than dismayed by the 98% of the work that was routine.

And there I'll stop. The important thing is to constantly look for the 2% of your world that fuels your passion in a positive way!

Labels: passion

  ¶ 4:26 PM