
Myers-Briggs types for developers compared to US population - benburwell
http://developermedia.com/developer-personalities-audience-brief-report/
======
mjfl
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
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.

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brandonmenc
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.

~~~
nostrademons
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.

~~~
lambda
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
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_Indi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator#Big_Five)

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dredmorbius
"Why the Myers-Briggs test is totally meaningless"

[http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-
personalit...](http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personality-
test-meaningless)

 _" 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."_

------
ryan-allen
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=PL22J3VaeABQAhrMCQUa6s...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQAhrMCQUa6sde_Y9DVbLYRv)

~~~
jfoutz
That's such a Virgo thing to say.

------
tokenadult
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/person...](http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-
tests/personality-tests-popular-tests.htm)

[3]
[http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/deve...](http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/develop/mbti.pdf)

[4] "Myers-Briggs: Does it pay to know your type?" 14 December 2012

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-
leadership/myers-b...](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)

~~~
smt88
> _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.

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explosion
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.

~~~
nostrademons
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.

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tlb
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.

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protomyth
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).

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

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protomyth
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
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

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nickbauman
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.

~~~
analog31
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.

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slimetree
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...

