A story of screwdriver drivers | A journey into a wild pointer

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Any relation between this tale and modern software engineering is entirely up to your own interpretation.

This is the story of a building company CEO named Matthew.<br>Matthew is a simple person: he likes to build buildings, and he likes it when people appreciate his buildings.

Compared to other construction companies, Matthew always checks for quality over quantity.<br>He believes that clients are happier with clean and well-constructed building, and will come back to him more often if the final quality is high rather than just delivered fast.

However, recently, the market changed entirely.

A massive new trend took over the world: screwing things on walls .<br>Clients no longer want standard, empty rooms. They suddenly want custom shelves, heavy cabinets, and complex fixtures screwed onto every available surface.

The trend is so massive that if a building doesn&rsquo;t have hundreds of beautifully screwed-in assets, no one wants to buy it. Stocks of screw manufacturers skyrocketed, and they paid hardware shops to make weird videos on TikTok to promote that, again and again…

This put Matthew in a difficult position.

When he started his company, he built his first houses entirely by himself.

But today, as a CEO, he spends all his time drawing blueprints, managing budgets, and talking to clients. His hands haven&rsquo;t touched a physical tool in years. When he tried to adapt to this new trend, he realized he couldn&rsquo;t just pick up a screwdriver and finish the work himself. Modern screws are complex, he has no time for it, and honestly, he has lost all interest in the repetitive, manual labor of twisting a wrist all day…

On the other side, if he doesn&rsquo;t adapt to the trend quickly, his competitors will steal all his clients.

So, on Monday, Matthew urgently posted an announcement: he is hiring a screwdriver driver with a great benefits package and a high salary. He has the budget for one screwdriver driver, and he wants the best one of all.

By Friday, he already had 100 applications.

Overwhelmed with the number of applications, he decided to close the job posting and to start processing the list of candidates.

Looking at the applicant profiles, they seemed great!

They knew how to use a screwdriver!

They even had their own screwdrivers! AMAZING !

But then, Matthew asked himself:

How can I actually choose the best one among these 100 applications?

Should I take the first one?

Should I take the one who has the most experience with a screwdriver?

Should I take the one who has the most expensive screwdriver?

Or maybe I should take the one with the most used screwdriver?

So many questions made Matthew worried that he couldn&rsquo;t choose the right person for the job…

But, he had suddenly an idea.

The contest

Matthew decided to run a contest.

He already had four buildings waiting &ldquo;to be screwed&rdquo;, for four different clients who were strongly following this #SCREW trend.<br>His idea was to hire four different people for one week , one building per applicant, and choose the one who made his clients the happiest.

Among those 100 applications he chose:

the youngest: very enthousiast to start working, who dream of screwdrivers at night, learned everything on the internet, and spent his time endlessly customizing his screwdriver for years,

the dandy: his profile was incredibly clean, and he had spent thousands of euros on his gold screwdriver… surely he must know how to use it well, right?

the pragmatic: he had recently converted from a hammer driver to a screwdriver driver, but could his past experience translate from one tool to another?

the 10x rockstar: very famous in the Builders community on YouTube (though criticized by another minor community in a specialized forum), known for delivering things fast.

Each applicant was given one job: one building, one client, and a strict list of requirements.<br>The requirements consisted of a plan detailing exactly what needed to be screwed, and where, provided by the client of the building.

The goal was to finish all the screwdriver work in their assigned building within the week.<br>As soon as the week was over, Matthew would visit each building with the clients and listen to their feedback.

All applicants agreed, and the contest started.

In the meantime, Matthew took a week off in the mountains, forgeting his phone and the world behind him.

The first building

One week after, Matthew came back from holidays and visited the first building with his clients, assigned to the youngest applicant.

All the screwdriver work was done! Great!

The clients looked happy at first, but upon closer inspection… it wasn&rsquo;t good at all.

Paintings and kitchen cabinets were not aligned properly.<br>Some small objects had way too many screws, while large shelves meant to hold 100+ kilos of books were held up by only one or two.<br>The clients tested a...