Well, they should "weed them out" or at least understand them well enough to understand what positions to put them in and how to 'manage' them if that is possible.

'Obsession' is having thoughts involuntarily that don't even want to have. 'Compulsion' is doing things that don't intend to do and really don't want to do. Commonly these two go together and, when appropriately serious, are called 'obsessive-compulsive disorder' (OCD). Am I a psychiatrist? Thankfully, no. Do I know some things about this subject? Unfortunately, yes. Some of what I have had to come to believe can be important up to crucial to know but is not yet widely available.

Yes, 'perfectionism' can be a less serious description than OCD but be describing much the same thing. Still, OCD has a fairly wide range of symptoms, and 'perfectionism' is not always involved. So, OCD doesn't much imply perfectionism, but a lot of perfectionism can suggest OCD.

OCD, and likely most 'perfectionism', are regarded as 'anxiety' diseases, that is, caused by some vulnerability to anxiety. Causes can be both 'nature' and 'nurture', but it is accepted that the 'nature' cause is more fundamental (yes, among the animals, at least dogs are vulnerable).

The 'nurture' cause? The 'nature' part implies genetics and inheritance, so parents with anxiety disease can have behavior that constitutes a 'nurture' cause thus reinforcing the 'nature' cause in children. Sure, this point should be tested by, say, a separated twins study.

Related, anxiety diseases include one being too ready to conclude others are plotting against them (the old term 'paranoia' -- false alarm rate set too high), overreacting emotionally (the old term 'hysteria' -- 'gain' set too high), and a kind of 'passivity' ('feedback' set too low to avoid confrontation), and more.

So, what's to be 'afraid' of? One common case is 'criticism', especially from important, powerful, influential people, especially ones who pass out a lot of criticism.

Yes, one symptom can be fear to submit work. Instead, keep working on the work, keep dotting i's and crossing t's. So, yes, the sense of 'perfect' being pursued can be a bit silly and oblivious to the larger situation of 'reality'. E.g., the work is not 'perfect' when it's a year late. Yes, with enough anxiety, it can be tough to face reality.

Here I am omitting references and details; so what I am saying is vague. Still, encounter a real case of OCD 'perfectionism', and some of the symptoms will not be vague.

For a company like Google that prides itself on hiring 'brilliant, super-experts' (in itself a poor understanding of capabilities and not very 'brilliant', really more arrogant than brilliant) the chances of hiring 'perfectionists' and/or OCD cases is unusually high. And in hiring, the threat is beyond Google. E.g., the PBK, Woodrow Wilson, the NSF, and graduate school admissions committees leap to make this mistake. Thus this thread should be taken seriously.

It is accepted that OCD and intelligence are not related. Still, OCD and academics are close: An unusually high fraction of people making the best grades in academics are OCD cases. A good place to find OCD cases is in the list of PBK members (not me; not a chance!). And one Mensa member (again, not me!), for a time high in Mensa, finally concluded and confessed that nearly everyone in Mensa has some serious problems facing reality.

The connection between really high grades and some of the unfortunate behavior from OCD is so strong that, OCD or not, it has long been suspected in hiring that people who do really well in academics can be separated a bit too far from reality. Indeed, when I was graduating from college, as a last 'lecture' the college said that student permission was needed to report grades, class standing, etc. since many employers regarded really high grades as a disqualification. Of course they confessed this on the last day of college, not the first!

Yes, gender plays a role: Anxiety disease is about four times more common in human females than human males. In particular, and more important for females, the fear of criticism can be close to 'social phobia', that is, unreasonable fears and high stress under the view of other people.

Then, in practice, especially for a married women, a 'solution' can be to avoid being under the view of other people, stay at home as much as possible, work very hard to please her husband, get rivers of praise from her husband, and, net, get some security against the anxieties from a kind of 'emotional dependency'. Related solutions involve working closely under her husband's supervision in a family run business. Fear of criticism? Not from her husband, who showers praise (he BETTER -- learn it here if not elsewhere). From others? She sees her husband as the target of any such criticism, not herself. This situation can work. My conclusion is that such situations, actually, are FAR more common, and more important and effective as responses to female anxiety, than it is now 'politically correct' to accept.

Indeed, at present, a huge fraction of the counselors anxiety-ridden women will see are radical feminists who just insist that the only acceptable path for such a patient is to have the patient throw off any hint of dependency, hopefully throw off her husband and marriage (the counselors have contempt for marriage, laugh at marriage vows, and refuse to see marriage is part of the solution), and charge forth in 'men's' world as independent, autonomous, self-sufficient, 'assertive', and 'equal', crashing through glass ceilings. Of course, the good news is that in a few more generations, Darwin will solve this problem as such counselors and their patients will be weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree. Ugly but effective.

Generally dealing with the anxiety causes stress, and too much stress causes depression including clinical depression and suicide. For the depression, some drugs are prescribed that increase the risk of suicide. Semi-brilliant.

Such anxiety in women is so common that it has likely had 'reproductive advantage' but is a double edged sword: On the one hand, it can push her to get married and be a very 'dutiful' wife, stay in a home behind a white picket fence, and more likely be a devoted mother; on the other hand, without such a home, it can kill her. There is some question about the effects on being a good mother from none, some, or a lot of OCD.

OCD in women can be difficult to diagnose: She can look fine in high school. College can begin to cause problems. Age 22-25 can make the symptoms strong. She can be very good at hiding any problems and deny anything is wrong for some years.

Me? No, not a chance. Still, I'm NOT guessing here.

There is a connection with academics and computing: Consider a student going for a Ph.D. Well, it is broadly accepted that the main requirement and challenge of a Ph.D. is the original work of the dissertation supposed to be "new, correct, and significant". Then for such graduate study in D. Knuth's 'The TeXBook' we can see:

"The traditional way is to put off all creative aspects until the last part of graduate school. For seventeen or more years, a student is taught examsmanship, then suddenly after passing enough exams in graduate school he's told to do something original."

So, a PBK student can get fellowships to graduate school. If their PBK was heavily from 'perfectionism', then for the original work (1) it is no longer clear just what is to be done or how good it has to be and (2) there is no simple, short deadline as was nearly universal in college. So, the work can go on for years, with the student being afraid to submit it, with both stress and depression rising. Universities need to be sensitive to this situation, especially for women.

To be clear, a student, tormented by anxieties, social phobia, etc. and afraid to submit work, can STILL be brilliant but, in front of others, STILL be nearly paralyzed. The emotions can overwhelm both brilliance and rationalism.

What is better for the dissertation or any such advanced, creative work, is for the person to take the attitude:

"That old stuff, it's from not so good down to junk. What I want to do is to pick a good problem, figure out a good solution, finally understand the area more generally, and 'clean it up'. Currently the area is a mess, and I'm driven heavily by my own curiosity to clean it up.

"Criticism from others? If they really understood, then they would have solved this problem and cleaned up this area long ago. So, they won't understand my work before I have the area cleaned up. So, I can't take their criticism too seriously. Besides, in any good research university, graduate students have a LOT of freedom.

"For the Ph.D., I'm fairly sure my solution will be publishable, and that's enough to keep the list check box clickers off my back for now.

"Criticism from others? It likely won't be very serious. Praise from others? That will be like looking for hens' teeth until I have all the work in print. In the meanwhile, I'm working based on my own understanding, where I can see my way clear, to the goal I actually CAN see on the horizon, and for my own curiosity."

Yes, this attitude can be good for Ph.D. research and more but can cause problems in college and 'high quality' high schools where the anxiety-ridden, perfectionistic students, too afraid to try anything new, tend to win, especially in front of teachers who don't understand research and can't see past the textbook.

Uh, the main reason the problem is not solved yet is that only a small fraction of the population can solve it so that necessarily anyone who actually can do such work will likely have to be heavily 'self-motivated' and able to work largely alone, be able to see their way clear to solutions, and STILL know the difference between good work and the rest. This involves, mostly just between one's own ears, knowing the destination, seeing how to get there, and getting there, fairly independently of what anyone else thinks. For someone with an anxiety disease, the uncertainty here, and chances of criticism and lack of praise along the way, can throttle the work.