The Dunning-Kruger Effect

I had a rare dinner night out with a couple of girlfriends. Per usual, we turned the date into a chance to get away from our husbands, and (excluding myself) our children, and to eat the type of food we are usually not allowed to eat. This night, we chose to dine at a Korean BBQ restaurant because our husbands don’t like Korean food. And so, as Kalbi ribs sizzled before our table top grill we turned the night into a vent session, per usual. 

All three of us are well-educated, and competent in our fields. All of us are Asian females working in heavily masculine fields in the Silicon Valley, and to be honest, some of us are not appreciated or respected to the extent that we should be.  

One of my friends is a software engineer. She is known for being a pinch hitter, taking on tasks that others fail to complete after being given weeks or even months. She is then given 24 hours to complete the task, and she will begrudgingly do it, staying up until midnight to complete it.

My other friend is a software product manager. Her mind races and is often miles ahead of her coworkers. People are taken aback by her rapid fire line of questioning. The engineers working on her project love her because she is logical. But its her managers and peers she has more difficulty with, mostly because they lack some of her critical thinking skills.

As for me, I’m a competent engineer whose people skills sometimes get in the way of my career. I sometimes open my mouth when it is best to keep it shut.

Throughout the evening it became clear there was a common thread behind our work woes. You see, all of us are dealing with less competent colleagues. But even more frustrating is that they don’t realize they are incompetent and don't ask for help when appropriate. As explained by my colleague, this is called the Dunning Kruger Effect: When people are so dumb, they don’t know how dumb they are.

I don’t mind when people know that they have shortcomings. I for one, am not the brightest, nor am I the most talented. But at least I have enough critical thinking to realize when I fall short some of the time. I may not progress as quickly as I would like, but at least I know when weak areas exist. What frustrates us is when someone is so clueless, they think they can do the job, but they can’t. And then we have to pick up the pieces.

As the evening wore on, we figured out some strategies for dealing with people with Dunning Kruger, or Dunning Kruger-ites. Here are our: 

Strategies for Managing “Dunning-Kruger”-ites:

1. Keep the Dunning-Kruger-ite busy with something long and menial to get them out of your hair. God forbid if they get bored and start messing around and harming actual work (as was the case with me). They might even be happier doing a task of this sort.
2. Vent and complain to someone astute with office politics. It helps to have the situation acknowledged through a different set of eyes. In my case, I vented with a mentor, who offered some key advice (see #3 below).
3. Actively monitor the Dunning-Krugerite’s work. “You can tell when a task is too hard for someone when they make a lot of excuses, and take too long to finish,” my mentor said. If someone with Dunning-Kruger is doing something they cannot do, they won’t know it. You have to actively monitor their work to see.
4. Try to get someone else to manage the Dunning-Kruger-ite.
5. Be very very nice. Usually the Dunning-Kruger-ite has good standing in your place of work because people feel sorry for them, otherwise they wouldn’t have lasted as long as they have. People have special soft spots for people who are both dumb and nice. The smart person who is mean will usually be punished far worse than the dumb person who is nice.