On Extroverted Programmers
gregerwikstrand.com
gregerwikstrand.com
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.
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.
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.
Protean is how I like to describe it.
That's interesting, I had the opposite experience. I must have taken the test 5 times over the years, and I got ENTP every time. I didn't expect it to be the case, but I was surprised by its precision.
Each factor won't be a clear binary but a continuum between the two. Your answers will depend on mood, sure, but will also give a result on that continuum and with a margin for error.
You might've got ENTP consistently. I've had both INTP and ESTJ in fairly quick succession without any intention to mislead. The idea that the test is anywhere near perfect, foolproof and likely to produce absolutely consistent results for all appears unsupported by anecdotal evidence here.
Absolutely. I just wanted to provide an anecdotal counterexample, given that my experience was opposite to the one of the original commenter.
Actual psychologists have studied Myers Briggs and found that the likelihood of getting a different result on the exam after taking it more than once is about fifty-fifty, which is pretty much the definition of pseudo-science.
I didn't claim otherwise. I simply provided one data point that was different from the one expressed by the person I was replying to. I didn't claim the test was scientific or accurate. (Note: Precise != Accurate. And it was only precise in my case, not in general.)
Don't do a test. Just read up on it and figure it out.
(note that MBTI itself is frowned upon by most psychologists - nevertheless, I find it a useful tool in explaining the basic attitudes and actions of myself and others)
The primary flaw with MBTI types is that they cannot be tested for. The common descriptions are too vague and inclusive to devise real tests. The tests that are given sort you into categories of other people who have answered the tests in a similar way, not necessarily with people who demonstrate scientifically observable traits exclusive to one type or another.
Contrast MBTI types with zoological taxonomy. Classification of animals into categories starts out with basic, concrete observations like "has a spine vs. doesn't have a spine" and over time has grown to include hundreds and hundreds of categories and subcategories-- all based on the increasing volume and quality of empirical observation. MBTI types, in contrast, aren't based on empirical observation. They're based on ideas and subjective interpretation of human behavior.
MTBI is about natural inclinations. For example, testing as an introvert doesn't mean one cannot be an extrovert in certain situations. Many successful introverts learn to be extroverted when they need to. Same for the other attributes.
MBTI is about how you answer the questions posed by the sorting test. Sure, many people are always going to test the same way. And some people will have personalities that would seem to fit the descriptions, but that's largely coincidence. Consider these questions [1]
"You are almost never late for your appointments. YES/NO"
People don't actually measure their promptness or tardiness before answering that question. They just think "yeah I tend to be on time" or "no I'm late a lot."
"It is in your nature to assume responsibility. YES/NO"
Even if you did have a good way to objectively measure assumption of responsibility, no one will actually do it on themselves before answering the question on the test.
Even questions like this:
"After prolonged socializing you feel you need to get away and be alone. YES/NO"
Not everyone is going to use the same definition of "socializing." I tend to read "socializing" and imagine a party with lots of people I don't know, where there's pressure to perform and impress and get drunk and let loose. On the other hand, some might consider socializing to sit around the house with close friends and family on Sunday afternoon with football on in the background.
Ambiguities and subjectivity are pervasive.
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 want to do most, deep inside. So if Cuba is anything like Eastern Europe, this could explain a large amount of ExTJ types in programming
Worse, employers have been sued for giving this to their employees and sharing the results among their co-workers. This is bad juju, seriously.
Heck, I get different results from one minute to the next, almost every time I take it. I'm borderline on at least two of the criteria.
Just because something isn't a law of nature is no reason to suppress it. Lots of things we care about are unscientific. Besides, what's considered "scientific" changes over time. (Remember when brain cells "couldn't" regenerate? "Junk" DNA, anyone?)
Let a thousand flowers bloom!
There are great reasons to suppress pseudo-science, but the first and foremost reason is that it isn't true.
My point is that these boundaries are not nearly crisp and stable enough to bear your level of judgmentalism.
I'm guessing that in Myers-Briggs lingo, you're a J. I'm an extreme P. These two don't get along sometimes. Also, I'm an Aquarius.
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.
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?
I've known very-obvious extroverts who would talk about "being an introvert" at some time in their life - when it was really them either suffering from shyness or being extremely preoccupied with something. Extroverts seem to have a tough time understanding introverts.
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.
Unfortunately, this is hard in the real world, so I'm having to train myself to be more disciplined at work.
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.
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.
Though online tests are OK to start with; the results should be verified by talking to an MBTI practitioner.
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.
It would be very interesting to see the makeup of HNers. Go take the test at http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp then read up the description on http://www.personalitypage.com/html/portraits.html. See if it matches with your impressions of self. If not, try to switch one of the letters and read up that description.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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 don't believe this. Since when did a person's interest get determined by the need for a particular kind of skill or personality?
26% in a single MBTI type mostly suggests to me that the sample was too small or the research was set up badly.
Not that I believe the results either. I suspect they are fatally flawed in some respect, since most of the programmers I've met have been introverts. (Someone else noted that the study was only among Cubans, for instance.)
As the slogan puts it: "Rage at the codebase, rage at the gym, rage at the club". Programming is very much a logical and intellectual endeavour. One has to be creative, yet logically inclined. So on thise side, your mental capabilities are constantly being challenged.
Staying healthy is also an important, hence 'rage at the gym'.
And then finally 'rage at the club' to me implies you have to loosen up, enjoy life and do things the body wants, not the brain. In other words, not be stuck in programming mode all day.
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.
I no longer class myself as a programmer after 15 years of it, and am now self employed.
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.
http://www.amazon.com/Likeability-Factor-L-Factor-Achieve-Dr...
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.