At university I spent the vast majority of my time getting drunk, doing drugs and chasing girls. I then took the show on the road and did more or less the same thing in Japan for s few years. There was absolutely nothing introverted about those five years. I made a ton of friends, got into lots of excellent adventures and generally had a good time.<p>Fast forward a few years and I'm a mid to senior level developer. I'm surrounded by socially, how can I put this this, 'challenging' people. I realized however that after enough time doing this, it's rubbed off on me. I have difficulty making small-talk, making new friends and being sociable.<p>In my case at least, my 'introversion/extroversion' factor is variable. When I'm jobhunting or marketing or looking for my next project, I'm in 'extrovert' mode. If I'm heads-down programming then I find it much more difficult to deal with human beings.<p>As an aside, I have serious misgivings about MBTI, not least because I took the test once every month for three months and got different results! It appears to be 'horrorscopes for smart people', or a convoluted wizard for selecting your character class in the big RPG of life.
Another theory: the survey was done among <i>Cuban</i> software engineers. Now, I know terribly little about Cuba, but I do know that in some Eastern European countries, computer science is a very popular subject because programmers are in demand. Thus, becoming a programmer is a relatively sure-fire road to a decent career and a decent income.<p>ExTJ types, maybe more than any other, may be very prone to carefully plan their careers as a matter of course, and listen less to what they <i>want</i> to do most, deep inside. So if Cuba is anything like Eastern Europe, this could explain a large amount of ExTJ types in programming
People: Stop using Myers-Briggs to measure anything. It is an unscientific test, developed by someone with no formal training in psychology. Its results are not replicable (the same person is likely to get different results if you take the same test on different days). It is the same kind of pseudo-science as astrology.<p>Worse, employers have been sued for giving this to their employees and sharing the results among their co-workers. This is bad juju, seriously.
I was thinking about this the other day because I realized that I had shifted from an extrovert to an introvert in less than six months, and that I have gone through periods of my life in one state or the other.<p>Right now I'm working intensely on a project, and I'm basically living inside my head, totally consumed with what I'm working on. But last year I took the year off and socialized, basically gearing up for what I'm working on now.<p>But I couldn't just pop back to that extroverted state from my present state of mind. It would be a process, and I would have to transition into it. This got me thinking -- what if people who see themselves as complete introverts are that way just because that's all they know?
INFP here. I do my best programming when I'm learning something new, or tackling a problem when I'm certain I'm heading towards the best solution.<p>As soon as I feel like what I'm being asked to do isn't the right way to do things, I get extremely demotivated and distracted. This means that in my case I have more chance of hitting a deadline if I'm following the "idealistic" path even if it is considerably more complicated than the straightforward path.<p>Unfortunately, this is hard in the real world, so I'm having to train myself to be more disciplined at work.
MBTI is a measure of you <i>preference</i>. E/I, S/N, F/T, J/P are all preferences. Of course you can switch to the other side. What happens when introverts need to speak publicly? Or when extroverts need that moment of silence to think things through? This test is essentially a filter for your natural inclinations.<p>Not being relaxed or in a stable state of mind may affect the test's outcome. If you are stressed about a project or super pumped from your trip to Europe, your test will give different results.<p>Then there is the pop culture influence. Some people may not answer a question correctly because the answer isn't socially sound or in sync with their impression of themselves.<p>Though online tests are OK to start with; the results should be verified by talking to an MBTI practitioner.<p>I personally find this MBTI system very helpful in studying myself and people around me. But its true, you need to read up on it before you can start making comments about the test and the theory behind it. It has a lot more intricacies than meet the eye.<p>It would be very interesting to see the makeup of HNers. Go take the test at <a href="http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp</a> then read up the description on <a href="http://www.personalitypage.com/html/portraits.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.personalitypage.com/html/portraits.html</a>. See if it matches with your impressions of self. If not, try to switch one of the letters and read up that description.
"In my experience engineering jobs are all about working with people."<p>I completely agree. In my relatively short (four years) but intense (four jobs, in four different countries) engineering/programming career I still haven't been in a situation where social interaction wasn't a daily requirement in order to do a good job.<p>At the very least you must be able to interact successfully with your fellow programmers, and your boss. Without being confident in your relationship with them, everything becomes more difficult, asking for help, helping someone, providing feedback, admitting mistakes and getting acknowledgment for a job well done.<p>In a large or very well organized company it might be the end of your social commitment, but in a good part of them you are likely to deal sporadically with customers, engineers from other companies, production, sales, technical support.<p>If you get to be known as "that guy", if you get to be known at all, promotions and raises become almost impossible to achieve, and in hard times you'll be the first in line waiting for the axe to fall.<p>Of course I'm talking in my experience, I have no doubt that there are companies where introverts can thrive. But is it to their (ours) benefit ?<p>I have been an introvert all my life, and getting a job helped me in being more open (in a "sink or swim" way) even more than making me a better engineer.
GIFA here. German/Irish/French-American. I find that knowledge just as useful and relevant to daily life as knowing into which personality box the MBTI sorting hat places me.
Myers-Briggs is derided by psychologists because 1) it is typographical, 2) the theory behind the test is based on unproven cognitive processes called functions; these are completely speculative, and 3) borderline personalities are inconsistently typed because the types are dichotomous.<p>On the other hand, Myers-Briggs does have some merit. Most psych professionals actively endorse the Big Five personality assessment. Based on trait theory, the Big Five is empirically valid, though somewhat theoretically sparse. Here's the rub, 4/5 Big Five traits correlate very strongly with the Myers-Briggs letters. E/I to Extroversion, T/F to Agreeably, J/P to Conscientiousness, and S/N, albeit weaker, to Openness. Myers-Briggs doesn't have a measure of Neuroticism(the fifth Big Five trait). So while the actual type combinations are unscientific, the test is still based on personality distinctions that have been researched and supported by the psych community.<p>Also, personality tests measure tendencies, please don't use exceptions to explain away your personality. Yes, personality is somewhat situation, great. Yes, Myers-Briggs isn't "science," but it is still a useful tool.
> <i>Varona et al. hypothesize that the shift towards more extroverted personality types is caused by a need for ever more collaboration among engineers.</i><p>I don't believe this. Since when did a person's interest get determined by the need for a particular kind of skill or personality?<p>26% in a single MBTI type mostly suggests to me that the sample was too small or the research was set up badly.
...and the rise of the brogrammer?<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/getwiththebrogram" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/getwiththebrogram</a>
ENTP here, arch type for inventor. 2% seems like a low value, although about the normal for entire population sets from memory.<p>Theres been a few articles here recently on the subject, but being naturally prone to creative and innovative ideas generally doesn't go down well in risk adverse IT departments/teams (let alone business in general if the articles are to believed). So I've grown to not enjoy working in IT teams.<p>I no longer class myself as a programmer after 15 years of it, and am now self employed.
This study does a better job of correlating software developers and personality types<p><a href="http://www.wtst.org/2011/WTST2011CapretzPaperv2.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.wtst.org/2011/WTST2011CapretzPaperv2.pdf</a>
Making friends can be turned into an algorithm for processing inside the programmer mind.<p>Read this 2 or 3 times and do everything it tells you to do, and you'll have people going out of their way to be your friend.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Likeability-Factor-L-Factor-Achieve-Dreams/dp/1400080495" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Likeability-Factor-L-Factor-Achieve-Dr...</a><p>I got the audiobook on this and listened to it twice 6 months ago, I've been following the rules religiously, and my emotional intelligence and personal likability has skyrocketed. I have people who I know who's faces light up (male and female) when they see me and are eager to see me again. They don't know I'm running an elaborate algorithm to do exactly that, and can turn it off as quickly as I turn it on. Learning the basic syntax and procedures are for maintaining loyal close friends is easier than learning Programming.