10 ms·

Myers-Briggs types for developers compared to US population

37 points by benburwell 11y ago

brandonmenc 11y ago
Pseudo-science. And isn't it funny how just about everyone advertising their MBTI happens to be an INTJ? If you encounter someone making hiring or dating decisions based on this, walk away.
- mkaziz 11y ago
  I happen to be an INFJ :D
  - hughes 11y ago
    Aren't you special!
- Matachines 11y ago
  Ha, you are right. Every time there's a discussion on MBTI in an online forum, there's a small horde of people who proudly and loudly say INTJ, letting us know how logical and rational they are.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  It's a model. Like all models, it's wrong as soon as you delve into the details. Under certain circumstances it can be useful, though. The reason INTJs seem to be disproportionately drawn to it (actually, like most statements, that's inaccurate - in my experience INTJs and INFJs are most drawn to the MBTI, followed by other N types...which is what the theory would predict) is because INTJs like to make systems and models of how reality works, and MBTI is one model of how psychology works. Any halfway-mature INTJ (or person, really) will recognize that the model is not reality, and that once you dive into the details, you'll find numerous ways where the facts don't line up with theory. But as a tool for orienting yourself, it's a handy first approximation.
  - brandonmenc 11y ago
    > MBTI is one model of how psychology works So is astrology.
    - nostrademons 11y ago
      Astrology's a fun model to think about too. I wouldn't necessarily want to make predictions about an individual's behavior from it, but then, if I could actually predict an individual's behavior I'd rule the world.
      - brandonmenc 11y ago
        I also think astrology is fun. In my experience it yields better results than MBTI - which is one reason why I think very poorly of MBTI.
        richardbrevig 11y ago
        I'm sure you're already familiar with Gary Goldschneider's work: http://thesecretlanguage.com http://thesecretlanguage.com
  - lambda 11y ago
    So, where is the evidence that it is a handy first approximation? That is, that it makes any kind of testable predictions? Even if they don't always hold, there should be some correlations with some kind of quantifiable metric. So what quantifiable metrics to these personality categories correlate with?
    - jessriedel 11y ago
      As it happens, he answered exactly this question elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9412144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9412144 The MBTI is reasonably well correlated with 4 of the "Big Five" personality traits, which are on good empirical footing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator#Big_Five https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
- ryan-allen 11y ago
  In the same breath developers will espouse the benefits of TDD, Agile, and the abject failure of Waterfall, that language X is on the up and up and that technology Y improved their team's productivity with absolutely no evidence to back it up, and we all go along with it. Yet when this topic comes up, we get all the 'pah, not science' comments, some with significant amounts of vitriol. When everyone is a special snowflake and anyone can make it big if they work hard enough (both of which are false), and programming is a pop culture, I'm not surprised.
  - brandonmenc 11y ago
    > and we all go along with it The whole industry is doing TDD and using the same programming language? Programmers disagree all the time about that stuff. > When everyone is a special snowflake and anyone can make it big if they work hard enough You've got some serious baggage.
    - ryan-allen 11y ago
      > When everyone is a special snowflake and anyone can make it big if they work hard enough This is my observation of why personality theory upsets people, I should have spelled it out more. If life success correlates with certain personality traits and IQ, (which are mostly a roll of the dice and genetically influenced, i.e. not egalitarian, cannot be changed), then the reality is that some people are going to achieve more and some are going to have to work a lot less to achieve certain levels of success. This flies in the face of what society tells itself, that if you have no success it's because you did not work hard enough, that if you work really hard you can do as well as the other guy. This is not true, despite how nice it sounds and how good it makes people feel. It doesn't matter how hard you try, you are not going to be the next Bill Gates, you are not going to be the next Elon Musk. Applying to Y Combinator and flipping to Google is not within the reach of everyone no matter how many hours you put in. Modern personality theory brings this to light, and it's bloody uncomfortable for most people. The US Army, for example, during wartime, considered that people with an IQ of less than 85 were not trainable, at all, and were more of a liability than an asset. If I remember right that is roughly 10% of the population. 10% of the population cannot be trained to do anything useful in capitalist society, not even by the Army during wartime. Now, can everyone just "get a job" or "work hard and make a living"? Science seems to be saying no. The biggest US government institution looking for bodies said no. There is no saftey net built in to society for these people in some of the biggest first world countries. Now imagine being below average... aren't you just lucky the dice rolled in your favour. This is what I meant. If you don't find this unsettling then you may just be a psychopath! EDIT: It's not ironic at all that you make a sweeping assumption about me based on something I wrote, not at all :)
- learc83 11y ago
  I haven't really read enough to have an informed opinion, but what if INTJs are just the type most likely to spend their free time taking the test. I'm an ENTJ by the way, but these tests are really hard for me to take because I always end up being influenced by what I want the result to be.
mjfl 11y ago
Don't know why this is seen as legitimate. MBTI makes the bad assumption that people that fall on either side of a bell curve (say in terms of extraversion) are categorically different people. More self-fulfilling than anything.
- vcarl 11y ago
  The way it was explained to me is that the letters are vastly less useful alone than with the scores. The score you get says where on that bell curve (approximately, depending on how well-posed the questions were) you lie in each of those scales. Not predictive by any means, but possibly insightful.
- Tiquor 11y ago
  Actually, MBTI makes no such assumption. Popular culture makes that assumtpion about MBTI.
nickbauman 11y ago
Psychologists don't like this test because it's unscientific, and I agree. But something is up in that developers seem to be overwhelmingly INTJ and the rest of the population is not.
- artmageddon 11y ago
  I wonder how my being considered(I use that term loosely due to said unscientificness of the exam) ENFJ makes me fit into this :)
- analog31 11y ago
  Could be that we answer ambiguous questions differently, not that we have different personality traits. Still, I've noticed that there is a bias in the general workplace against people who are perceived to be introverts, and so I answer ENTJ if asked, which has only happened a couple of times.
tokenadult 11y ago
Ugh. This comes up so often on Hacker News that I've prepared a FAQ paragraph about how unvalidated the Myers-Briggs test is. Read the articles you'll find at the links for much more information than I have time to type here with arthritic fingers. The Skeptic's Dictionary discussion[1] is a good place to start, but there are other critiques of the test too. Don't miss the discussion of the National Academy of Sciences review of the test.[2] "Overall, the review committee concluded that the MBTI has not demonstrated adequate validity although its popularity and use has been steadily increasing. The National Academy of Sciences review committee concluded that: 'at this time, there is not sufficient, well-designed research to justify the use of the MBTI in career counseling programs,' the very thing that it is most often used for." Psychologists who really know about personality testing don't regard the Myers-Briggs test as a worthwhile test.[3] An article from the Washington Post newspaper sums up the matter pretty well: "Now, 50 years after the first time anyone paid money for the test, the Myers-Briggs legacy is reaching the end of the family line. The youngest heirs don’t want it. And it’s not clear whether organizations should, either. . . . . "Yet despite its widespread use and vast financial success, and although it was derived from the work of Carl Jung, one of the most famous psychologists of the 20th century, the test is highly questioned by the scientific community."[4] [1] http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html [2] http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/personality-tests-popular-tests.htm http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/person... [3] http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/develop/mbti.pdf http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/deve... [4] "Myers-Briggs: Does it pay to know your type?" 14 December 2012 http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/myers-briggs-does-it-pay-to-know-your-type/2012/12/14/eaed51ae-3fcc-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/myers-b...
- smt88 11y ago
  > although it was derived from the work of Carl Jung A lot of Carl Jung's work is some of the most ridiculous pseudo-science that I've ever seen. MBTI is less credible due to its relationship with Jung.
- awolf 11y ago
  I agree with you 100%. MBTI is garbage. but I hope you can still appreciate the irony of your post Mr. Skeptical
protomyth 11y ago
So, we have a marketing company that helps others advertise to developers based on Myers-Briggs results showing 3 main results? Guess I'm not supposed to be a developer since I keep scoring ENTP (why I've had to take the damn thing multiple times starting at 13 is a bar discussion on various jobs / government grants).
ryan-allen 11y ago
The only model of personality taken seriously by academics at present is the five factor model [1]. It's well researched, the traits were not 'designed', rather the traits popped out of linguistic analysis and statistics, and it's stable across different populations and over most of a person's lifetime. There is an open test called the IPIP Neo which has either 120 or 300 questions, which you can take online [2]. If you're really interested in what is being taught these days about the theory, this is a good set of lectures take takes you from the early theory of personality through to what is considered science today [3]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits [2] http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/ http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQAhrMCQUa6sde_Y9DVbLYRv https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQAhrMCQUa6s...
- jfoutz 11y ago
  That's such a Virgo thing to say.
  - ryan-allen 11y ago
    It's based on solid science you sniping twerp. Feel free to not 'believe' in statistics if you like. There's a club down the road for anti-vaxxers while you're at it.
    - Anastasiasdfh 11y ago
      Whoosh! By the way, the MBTI has been shown to correlate strongly with the NEO/big5 so your very negative comment is exposed as one of those typical HN negative comments. MBTI is still the most used personality system even though it isn't empirically keyed. The main issue with this research, however, is that the MBTI tests are often subpar. I won't trust these results unless they tell which test they administered.
      - ryan-allen 11y ago
        So negativity is fine on HN as long as it's 'passive agressive' and 'sarcastic', got it! EDIT: By the way I wasn't talking about the MBTI, if you care to read the thread. Try reading instead of skimming next time.
dredmorbius 11y ago
"Why the Myers-Briggs test is totally meaningless" http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personality-test-meaningless http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personalit... "There's just no evidence behind it," says Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who's written about the shortcomings of the Myers-Briggs previously. "The characteristics measured by the test have almost no predictive power on how happy you'll be in a situation, how you'll perform at your job, or how happy you'll be in your marriage."
muktabh 11y ago
Moral: Should answer INTJ whenever a recruiter searching for a "ninja/rockstar" developer asks my MBTI type.
slimetree 11y ago
On the validity of MBTI, the main use I've found is to use the eight functions as part of my vocabulary. It's a pretty handy approximation to be able to say to someone in conversation "wow, Stephen Fry has a really developed Fe" and have them know what you mean. There an approximation is all you need, and in exchange you get neat symbols to hang entire categories of ideas onto. On the flip side, it's all too easy to move symbols around in your head without investigating whether the model you've built corresponds to reality...
tlb 11y ago
That chart -- Ow, my eyes! The multi-direction, multi-frequency cross hatching (and it's wrong in the legend). The bars showing the difference (but only absolute value, ignoring sign) between the two other bars. The cheesy 3D effect. A Tufte Hall of Shame candidate.
explosion 11y ago
This survey was taken on CodeProject.com, a site which seems biased toward C#, C++, .NET, Java, and mobile devs. Perhaps it's just that sample of developers who skew toward INTJ, ENTJ and INTP. I suspect that the results would be different in a survey of developers from a more open source-focused community, e.g. if GitHub conducted that survey and a lot of idealistic open source developer types responded.
- natmaster 11y ago
  Selection bias is only a factor if the selection criteria is a dependent variable. What makes you think open source will change MBTI traits?
- nostrademons 11y ago
  Google had (has?) an informal "just for fun" Meyers-Briggs type badge on the Intranet. Among people who participate, roughly 65% are either INTJ, INTP, or ENTJ, with a further 10% ENTP. INTJs alone made up about 30% of the company, vs. about 3% of the general population. Only about 10-15% were an S of any type (vs. about 75% of the population). Yes, there's selection bias on multiple levels here. S-types tend to think that the MBTI is hogwash and so would be underrepresented in any voluntary poll. (The other majorly-overrepresented group was INFJs at ~7-8% vs. about 2% in the general population. In my experience, INFJs are not a significant portion of Google, but they are a significant portion of people interested in the MBTI.) Google also has an INTJ founder and a culture very friendly to INTJs, which skews the numbers inside the company. But I suspect that if anything, the open-source community would be more biased toward the INTJ/ENTJ/INTP axis. The C#/C++/.NET/Java market has a large number of developers who are in programming because it makes for a good living, which is a more S-based trait.
protomyth 11y ago
Looking at this thread and not arguing for / against the Myers-Briggs, I do have a question. Has anyone reading this who took the test scored an S (sensing) instead of the N (intuition)? I see variance in the other three slots but not that one.
- muktabh 11y ago
  Yes, I scored an S (and I am a developer). IMHO, The reason why most people get an "N" and often INTJ is because all the cool answers lead one to be typed as INTJ (I score INTJ sometimes, but I was pretty sure I am not that sharp and did not score straight A's in school) . If one attempts the test thinking he is logical and unemotional as Dr.House or Dexter, he would end up being typed as an INTJ. A lot of the times questions are ambiguous and I choose an option as I just wanted to get done with the boring part. The interesting part is then later talking about what fiction character has what type and what celeb is of what type and then reading up /r/<MBTI>. I think the rest of the stuff like correlation with being a developer (and good developer if you look at INTJ forums/descriptions) is generally wrong because 1) people take the test thinking about what they want to be and not what they really are 2) Most of it is plain stereotyping and since S types are generally typed in as less logical, most developers' will end up not getting that as their results. 3) I believe (and have observed in my 20-something life) that hard work trumps everything in the end

37 points by benburwell 11y ago

Pseudo-science. And isn't it funny how just about everyone advertising their MBTI happens to be an INTJ? If you encounter someone making hiring or dating decisions based on this, walk away.

mkaziz 11y ago
I happen to be an INFJ :D
- hughes 11y ago
  Aren't you special!
Matachines 11y ago
Ha, you are right. Every time there's a discussion on MBTI in an online forum, there's a small horde of people who proudly and loudly say INTJ, letting us know how logical and rational they are.
nostrademons 11y ago
It's a model. Like all models, it's wrong as soon as you delve into the details. Under certain circumstances it can be useful, though. The reason INTJs seem to be disproportionately drawn to it (actually, like most statements, that's inaccurate - in my experience INTJs and INFJs are most drawn to the MBTI, followed by other N types...which is what the theory would predict) is because INTJs like to make systems and models of how reality works, and MBTI is one model of how psychology works. Any halfway-mature INTJ (or person, really) will recognize that the model is not reality, and that once you dive into the details, you'll find numerous ways where the facts don't line up with theory. But as a tool for orienting yourself, it's a handy first approximation.
- brandonmenc 11y ago
  > MBTI is one model of how psychology works So is astrology.
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    Astrology's a fun model to think about too. I wouldn't necessarily want to make predictions about an individual's behavior from it, but then, if I could actually predict an individual's behavior I'd rule the world.
    - brandonmenc 11y ago
      I also think astrology is fun. In my experience it yields better results than MBTI - which is one reason why I think very poorly of MBTI.
      - richardbrevig 11y ago
        I'm sure you're already familiar with Gary Goldschneider's work: http://thesecretlanguage.com http://thesecretlanguage.com
- lambda 11y ago
  So, where is the evidence that it is a handy first approximation? That is, that it makes any kind of testable predictions? Even if they don't always hold, there should be some correlations with some kind of quantifiable metric. So what quantifiable metrics to these personality categories correlate with?
  - jessriedel 11y ago
    As it happens, he answered exactly this question elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9412144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9412144 The MBTI is reasonably well correlated with 4 of the "Big Five" personality traits, which are on good empirical footing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator#Big_Five https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indi...
ryan-allen 11y ago
In the same breath developers will espouse the benefits of TDD, Agile, and the abject failure of Waterfall, that language X is on the up and up and that technology Y improved their team's productivity with absolutely no evidence to back it up, and we all go along with it. Yet when this topic comes up, we get all the 'pah, not science' comments, some with significant amounts of vitriol. When everyone is a special snowflake and anyone can make it big if they work hard enough (both of which are false), and programming is a pop culture, I'm not surprised.
- brandonmenc 11y ago
  > and we all go along with it The whole industry is doing TDD and using the same programming language? Programmers disagree all the time about that stuff. > When everyone is a special snowflake and anyone can make it big if they work hard enough You've got some serious baggage.
  - ryan-allen 11y ago
    > When everyone is a special snowflake and anyone can make it big if they work hard enough This is my observation of why personality theory upsets people, I should have spelled it out more. If life success correlates with certain personality traits and IQ, (which are mostly a roll of the dice and genetically influenced, i.e. not egalitarian, cannot be changed), then the reality is that some people are going to achieve more and some are going to have to work a lot less to achieve certain levels of success. This flies in the face of what society tells itself, that if you have no success it's because you did not work hard enough, that if you work really hard you can do as well as the other guy. This is not true, despite how nice it sounds and how good it makes people feel. It doesn't matter how hard you try, you are not going to be the next Bill Gates, you are not going to be the next Elon Musk. Applying to Y Combinator and flipping to Google is not within the reach of everyone no matter how many hours you put in. Modern personality theory brings this to light, and it's bloody uncomfortable for most people. The US Army, for example, during wartime, considered that people with an IQ of less than 85 were not trainable, at all, and were more of a liability than an asset. If I remember right that is roughly 10% of the population. 10% of the population cannot be trained to do anything useful in capitalist society, not even by the Army during wartime. Now, can everyone just "get a job" or "work hard and make a living"? Science seems to be saying no. The biggest US government institution looking for bodies said no. There is no saftey net built in to society for these people in some of the biggest first world countries. Now imagine being below average... aren't you just lucky the dice rolled in your favour. This is what I meant. If you don't find this unsettling then you may just be a psychopath! EDIT: It's not ironic at all that you make a sweeping assumption about me based on something I wrote, not at all :)
learc83 11y ago
I haven't really read enough to have an informed opinion, but what if INTJs are just the type most likely to spend their free time taking the test. I'm an ENTJ by the way, but these tests are really hard for me to take because I always end up being influenced by what I want the result to be.

mjfl 11y ago

Don't know why this is seen as legitimate. MBTI makes the bad assumption that people that fall on either side of a bell curve (say in terms of extraversion) are categorically different people. More self-fulfilling than anything.

vcarl 11y ago
The way it was explained to me is that the letters are vastly less useful alone than with the scores. The score you get says where on that bell curve (approximately, depending on how well-posed the questions were) you lie in each of those scales. Not predictive by any means, but possibly insightful.
Tiquor 11y ago
Actually, MBTI makes no such assumption. Popular culture makes that assumtpion about MBTI.

nickbauman 11y ago

Psychologists don't like this test because it's unscientific, and I agree. But something is up in that developers seem to be overwhelmingly INTJ and the rest of the population is not.

artmageddon 11y ago
I wonder how my being considered(I use that term loosely due to said unscientificness of the exam) ENFJ makes me fit into this :)
analog31 11y ago
Could be that we answer ambiguous questions differently, not that we have different personality traits. Still, I've noticed that there is a bias in the general workplace against people who are perceived to be introverts, and so I answer ENTJ if asked, which has only happened a couple of times.

tokenadult 11y ago

Ugh. This comes up so often on Hacker News that I've prepared a FAQ paragraph about how unvalidated the Myers-Briggs test is. Read the articles you'll find at the links for much more information than I have time to type here with arthritic fingers. The Skeptic's Dictionary discussion[1] is a good place to start, but there are other critiques of the test too. Don't miss the discussion of the National Academy of Sciences review of the test.[2] "Overall, the review committee concluded that the MBTI has not demonstrated adequate validity although its popularity and use has been steadily increasing. The National Academy of Sciences review committee concluded that: 'at this time, there is not sufficient, well-designed research to justify the use of the MBTI in career counseling programs,' the very thing that it is most often used for." Psychologists who really know about personality testing don't regard the Myers-Briggs test as a worthwhile test.[3] An article from the Washington Post newspaper sums up the matter pretty well: "Now, 50 years after the first time anyone paid money for the test, the Myers-Briggs legacy is reaching the end of the family line. The youngest heirs don’t want it. And it’s not clear whether organizations should, either. . . . . "Yet despite its widespread use and vast financial success, and although it was derived from the work of Carl Jung, one of the most famous psychologists of the 20th century, the test is highly questioned by the scientific community."[4] [1] http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html [2] http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/personality-tests-popular-tests.htm http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/person... [3] http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/develop/mbti.pdf http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/deve... [4] "Myers-Briggs: Does it pay to know your type?" 14 December 2012 http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/myers-briggs-does-it-pay-to-know-your-type/2012/12/14/eaed51ae-3fcc-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/myers-b...

smt88 11y ago
> although it was derived from the work of Carl Jung A lot of Carl Jung's work is some of the most ridiculous pseudo-science that I've ever seen. MBTI is less credible due to its relationship with Jung.
awolf 11y ago
I agree with you 100%. MBTI is garbage. but I hope you can still appreciate the irony of your post Mr. Skeptical

protomyth 11y ago

So, we have a marketing company that helps others advertise to developers based on Myers-Briggs results showing 3 main results? Guess I'm not supposed to be a developer since I keep scoring ENTP (why I've had to take the damn thing multiple times starting at 13 is a bar discussion on various jobs / government grants).

ryan-allen 11y ago

The only model of personality taken seriously by academics at present is the five factor model [1]. It's well researched, the traits were not 'designed', rather the traits popped out of linguistic analysis and statistics, and it's stable across different populations and over most of a person's lifetime. There is an open test called the IPIP Neo which has either 120 or 300 questions, which you can take online [2]. If you're really interested in what is being taught these days about the theory, this is a good set of lectures take takes you from the early theory of personality through to what is considered science today [3]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits [2] http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/ http://www.personal.psu.edu/~j5j/IPIP/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQAhrMCQUa6sde_Y9DVbLYRv https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQAhrMCQUa6s...

jfoutz 11y ago
That's such a Virgo thing to say.
- ryan-allen 11y ago
  It's based on solid science you sniping twerp. Feel free to not 'believe' in statistics if you like. There's a club down the road for anti-vaxxers while you're at it.
  - Anastasiasdfh 11y ago
    Whoosh! By the way, the MBTI has been shown to correlate strongly with the NEO/big5 so your very negative comment is exposed as one of those typical HN negative comments. MBTI is still the most used personality system even though it isn't empirically keyed. The main issue with this research, however, is that the MBTI tests are often subpar. I won't trust these results unless they tell which test they administered.
    - ryan-allen 11y ago
      So negativity is fine on HN as long as it's 'passive agressive' and 'sarcastic', got it! EDIT: By the way I wasn't talking about the MBTI, if you care to read the thread. Try reading instead of skimming next time.

dredmorbius 11y ago

"Why the Myers-Briggs test is totally meaningless" http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personality-test-meaningless http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personalit... "There's just no evidence behind it," says Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who's written about the shortcomings of the Myers-Briggs previously. "The characteristics measured by the test have almost no predictive power on how happy you'll be in a situation, how you'll perform at your job, or how happy you'll be in your marriage."

muktabh 11y ago

Moral: Should answer INTJ whenever a recruiter searching for a "ninja/rockstar" developer asks my MBTI type.

slimetree 11y ago

On the validity of MBTI, the main use I've found is to use the eight functions as part of my vocabulary. It's a pretty handy approximation to be able to say to someone in conversation "wow, Stephen Fry has a really developed Fe" and have them know what you mean. There an approximation is all you need, and in exchange you get neat symbols to hang entire categories of ideas onto. On the flip side, it's all too easy to move symbols around in your head without investigating whether the model you've built corresponds to reality...

tlb 11y ago

That chart -- Ow, my eyes! The multi-direction, multi-frequency cross hatching (and it's wrong in the legend). The bars showing the difference (but only absolute value, ignoring sign) between the two other bars. The cheesy 3D effect. A Tufte Hall of Shame candidate.

explosion 11y ago

This survey was taken on CodeProject.com, a site which seems biased toward C#, C++, .NET, Java, and mobile devs. Perhaps it's just that sample of developers who skew toward INTJ, ENTJ and INTP. I suspect that the results would be different in a survey of developers from a more open source-focused community, e.g. if GitHub conducted that survey and a lot of idealistic open source developer types responded.

natmaster 11y ago
Selection bias is only a factor if the selection criteria is a dependent variable. What makes you think open source will change MBTI traits?
nostrademons 11y ago
Google had (has?) an informal "just for fun" Meyers-Briggs type badge on the Intranet. Among people who participate, roughly 65% are either INTJ, INTP, or ENTJ, with a further 10% ENTP. INTJs alone made up about 30% of the company, vs. about 3% of the general population. Only about 10-15% were an S of any type (vs. about 75% of the population). Yes, there's selection bias on multiple levels here. S-types tend to think that the MBTI is hogwash and so would be underrepresented in any voluntary poll. (The other majorly-overrepresented group was INFJs at ~7-8% vs. about 2% in the general population. In my experience, INFJs are not a significant portion of Google, but they are a significant portion of people interested in the MBTI.) Google also has an INTJ founder and a culture very friendly to INTJs, which skews the numbers inside the company. But I suspect that if anything, the open-source community would be more biased toward the INTJ/ENTJ/INTP axis. The C#/C++/.NET/Java market has a large number of developers who are in programming because it makes for a good living, which is a more S-based trait.

protomyth 11y ago

Looking at this thread and not arguing for / against the Myers-Briggs, I do have a question. Has anyone reading this who took the test scored an S (sensing) instead of the N (intuition)? I see variance in the other three slots but not that one.

muktabh 11y ago
Yes, I scored an S (and I am a developer). IMHO, The reason why most people get an "N" and often INTJ is because all the cool answers lead one to be typed as INTJ (I score INTJ sometimes, but I was pretty sure I am not that sharp and did not score straight A's in school) . If one attempts the test thinking he is logical and unemotional as Dr.House or Dexter, he would end up being typed as an INTJ. A lot of the times questions are ambiguous and I choose an option as I just wanted to get done with the boring part. The interesting part is then later talking about what fiction character has what type and what celeb is of what type and then reading up /r/<MBTI>. I think the rest of the stuff like correlation with being a developer (and good developer if you look at INTJ forums/descriptions) is generally wrong because 1) people take the test thinking about what they want to be and not what they really are 2) Most of it is plain stereotyping and since S types are generally typed in as less logical, most developers' will end up not getting that as their results. 3) I believe (and have observed in my 20-something life) that hard work trumps everything in the end