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Comment by anonym29 | Hacker News Reader

A lot of pop-psychology doesn't hold up when subject to empirical review, but OCEAN / "Big 5" does, and it's probably a decent starting point.

E.g. if you are low in extraversion and agreeableness, you probably wouldn't make a good nurse or waiter, but you might not make a bad lawyer or engineer.

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> low in extraversion and agreeableness

I don’t know that these are awesome features for an engineer. There’s a big unsaid cost to this in my experience

Might mean civil engineer.

More like an uncivil engineer

If we’re being honest, highly agreeable, extroverted, conscientious, and non-neurotic people are simply going to be better suited to all forms of employment than the inverse. But, since personality is pretty durable, it’s easier to try and find a career where your weak spots are detriments, but not crippling.

There is research that suggests highly agreeable people do not do as well e.g. negotiation tactics. What is probably true is that is good to 'appear' agreeable. The same research suggests you are correct about the other 3 traits.

A highly agreeable housing inspector isn't going to be better at their job than a disagreeable housing inspector. I want my housing inspector to be harsh, unforgiving, and not grant the benefit of the doubt.

A highly extroverted person isn't going to make for a better overnight custodial worker than someone who prefers a more solitary lifestyle.

An actor who can tap into the emotional currents of high neuroticism in their work can offer a more sincere and authentic performance than an emotionally flat one.

Low conscientiousness correlates with risk taking and can be an asset in roles where over-planning to the detriment of acting can be costly - think firefighters.

I agree with this if what you mean is that employment generally requires conformity, passivity, accepting low autonomy, low creativity, etc. Otherwise, this isn't my experience.

I'm highly agreeable, and I've had to learn not to be. Knowing when to challenge people - "strategic non-agreeableness" - is extremely valuable. I've also made most of my career off being somewhat neurotic - I've described the core of my job as "finding things to panic about before they happen" (I went on Prozac a while back and caused an incident in the first couple weeks during uptake because my anxiety didn't trigger about something during a deploy). As far as extroversion - friends of mine who are genuine extroverts about went crazy during the pandemic, while I and a few other introvert friends got some of our best work ever done during that period. There's a spectrum - you can't be a misanthrope, but being able to take (and stand) quiet time to focus on a problem is absolutely an asset. With regards to conscientiousness, this often manifests in the workplace as an unwillingness to deviate from the plan when circumstances demand it and a preference for adding process as a kind of panacea for any kind of failure or delay, and at risk of offending the more conscientious among us, I have not found that a recipe for success.

I disagree a bit with the neuroticism and agreeableness being so obvious. There are many professions I would be TERRIBLE at precisely because I am so agreeable. And, I have real world experience with a business partner that is MUCH higher in neuroticism than I, and much less agreeable. Both sides of that spectrum have their strengths. We often have opposite approaches sometimes, but both can work, and one isn’t obviously better in all circumstances.

And introversion can be a wonderful asset in some professions as well.

However, I do agree that conscientiousness is probably pretty universally better.

Low agreeableness can be a positive up to a point. As a technical person, you shouldn't agree to do things that you know will not work. The technical facts have no agreeableness at all and need to be handled as such.

Thanks! I'll give it a try.

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