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. 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. 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. 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’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’t touched a physical tool in years. When he tried to adapt to this new trend, he realized he couldn’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’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’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 “to be screwed”, for four different clients who were strongly following this #SCREW trend. 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. 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. 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’t good at all.

Paintings and kitchen cabinets were not aligned properly. 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. The clients tested a few fixtures, and they immediately fell off the wall. Worse, some screws had punctured holes in the plumbing, causing water to leak in several places.

Matthew asked the applicant “Why did you do this? Did you followed the requirements?”
The applicant simply answered that he might not have understood the requirements. In the end, it was clear he didn’t even understand the client’s actual needs, he needed support and mentoring, even if he built a lot of stuff on his own at home.

The second building #

Matthew moved on to the second building, full of hope, to meet the dandy applicant.

The screwdriver work wasn’t done… in fact, it wasn’t even 20% finished. The clients were not happy at all and demanded to know why the delivery was so late.

Matthew asked the applicant “But, why are you so far behind?”
The applicant replied that the original requirements were weak, so he had to rework a lot of things himself. He handed Matthew a brand new plan, which looked nothing like the original. Some of the building’s foundations had been entirely redesigned from the ground up because the applicant felt structural modifications were necessary.
At the end of the discussion applicant asked for one more week just to finish planning, before he could even start the real work.

The third building #

Matthew moved to the third building, feeling desperate, to meet the pragmatic builder.

The screwdriver work was 80% done, but things were slightly out of place. Matthew and the clients were annoyed, and Matthew asked the applicant “Why didn’t you finish the work? And why did you change a bit the plan?”

The pragmatic applicant explained his reasoning. The original plan was just theory: it assumed everything had a perfect place for a perfect reason. However, he explained that some things needed to deviate slightly from the plan. For instance, some screws were originally planned to go dangerously close to pipes, while others were supposed to be driven into brittle materials. He spotted these risks based on his broad knowledge of building materials and his past experience with hammers.
In his defense regarding the timing issue, he had tried to call Matthew several times but, as he was on holidays with no phone, he couldn’t get the answers in time.

The applicant explained he needed two more days to finish the work, but only after Matthew and the clients answered a list of clarifying questions to fix the flawed requirements.

The clients and Matthew understood, agreeing that the changes were ultimately necessary. Not because the applicant manipulated them, but because he was a true expert, and all his explanations made perfect sense.

The fourth building #

Matthew moved to the fourth building, with mixed feelings.

But, once he reached the door of the building… The screwdriver work was completely done! Actually, the 10x rockstar had finished everything in only four days! And the clients were actually very happy!

Matthew and the clients, very enthousiastic, asked the screwdriver driver “But, how did you do this so fast?”.
The builder explained: instead of a normal screwdriver, he had brought a heavy, custom-made electric drill that seemed to do all the thinking and spinning for him.
He just had to point it, pull the trigger, and let the tool do the magic.
He said that screwdrivers were tools of the past, and that electric drills are the future.

Matthew was relieved, and the clients left, a big smile on their face.

But as Matthew took a quiet walk through the building, his expert eyes started to notice terrifying details. The applicant had driven heavy screws directly into fragile drywall, completely missing the solid wooden foundations behind it. He had mixed incompatible metals together and forced thick screws into thin glass edges. The cabinets and shelves were holding up for today, but the mistakes were deep and entirely invisible to a normal client. They required an expert to even spot them. Eventually, under the weight of time, the entire wall would rip open, and some levels of the building would need to be rebuilt from scratch.

It was an hidden disaster.

Matthew asked the applicant “What did you do? Did you understand how weight distribution and structural foundations actually work?”
The applicant just shrugged. He admitted he didn’t really know how the walls were built inside, but he had no time to learn as he wants to build things. His shiny drill just made things stick together, it looked fine on the surface, and that was all that mattered.

Matthew then noticed a shelf was a bit crooked. He decided to adjust it, but he didn’t have a screwdriver on him, neither the screwdriver driver. So, he went to the nearest hardware store and bought one. When he came back, he tried to unscrew the shelf a little bit, but he couldn’t. He looked closely at the screw, and then at all the other screws. Every single screw head on the shelf was completely destroyed. They were totally flat and stripped.

Matthew called the applicant back, and asked “What will happen when the wall inevitably starts cracking, or if the clients need to move a kitchen cabinet later?”
The applicant answered that he delivered faster than anyone else, which is what clients always want. He pointed out that the original plan never explicitly said the building needed to survive for the next ten years.

“Also”, he raised, “is there a real purpose to maintain this big building for more than 10 years…?”

The hiring #

At the end of the day, Matthew sat down at his desk, staring at the four files.

He reviewed the results of the contest:

• the youngest applicant had punctured pipes and caused water leaks in several rooms. He had finished the work, sure, and Matthew knew that with mentoring and real-world experience, this young kid could become one of the greatest screwdriver drivers in the world. But Matthew simply didn’t have the budget or the time to provide that guidance…
• the dandy applicant hadn’t even started the real work, trapped in endless planning and rewriting the original plans,
• the pragmatic applicant did not finish the work, and had paused at 80% to question the requirements, but his questions and worries made sense,
• and the 10x rockstar had finished all his tasks in just four days, despite critical and foundational flaws.

Matthew smiled warmly as he looked at the pragmatic screwdriver driver profile.
Matthew knew by intuition this was the absolute perfect fit for his company values. Yes, he was a bit slower, but that was because he actually cared. He didn’t just blindly force screws into a flawed plan, he actually paused to understand the true needs of the client in order to provide the most qualitative, enduring solution possible.
The clients would be genuinely safe and happy for years to come.

Matthew picked up the phone, and called back the 10x rockstar. He was hired.