> I'll take a stab and say most of this community isn't perfectionist but more efficiency-ists.
I know everyone loves to hate MBTI, but I’ll translate to “most of this community is INTJ rather than INTP” because it seems so apt. We did an informal poll at the large tech company I worked at once and I think 70% of the software engineers were INTJ, 20% were INTP, and the rest were something else. So there is at least some predictive value to the test.
But I agree there is definitely a big difference between perfectionists and efficiency-ists. I am a strong perfectionist which leads to problems getting things done on time because I want them done correctly and as accurately as possible. The efficiency-ists get annoyed that the work takes so long, but then again I get annoyed that their approach is riddled with flaws. They view it as a necessary optimization within strict time constraints; I tend to view it as “incorrect and likely to come back to bite you later”.
I know everyone loves to hate MBTI, but I’ll translate to “most of this community is INTJ rather than INTP” because it seems so apt. We did an informal poll at the large tech company I worked at once and I think 70% of the software engineers were INTJ, 20% were INTP, and the rest were something else. So there is at least some predictive value to the test.
But I agree there is definitely a big difference between perfectionists and efficiency-ists. I am a strong perfectionist which leads to problems getting things done on time because I want them done correctly and as accurately as possible. The efficiency-ists get annoyed that the work takes so long, but then again I get annoyed that their approach is riddled with flaws. They view it as a necessary optimization within strict time constraints; I tend to view it as “incorrect and likely to come back to bite you later”.