Myers-Briggs types for developers compared to US population

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.

Actually, MBTI makes no such assumption. Popular culture makes that assumtpion about MBTI.

I happen to be an INFJ :D

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.

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.

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.

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.

That's such a Virgo thing to say.

The interesting thing to me is that people say that the MBTI is junk pseudoscience, that the Big-5 (OCEAN) model is the only scientifically valid personality test...but then take a look at the correlation coefficients between the MBTI and 4 out of the 5 dimensions of the OCEAN model:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indic...

A correlation of 0.7+ is huge in the social sciences - it's significantly more than the correlation between say intelligence and genetics. If I look at the numbers, my interpretation is that the MBTI is largely measuring 4 out of the 5 dimensions of the OCEAN model, but leaves Neuroticism out of the model.

I bet you're an INTJ ;)

I agree with you 100%. MBTI is garbage.

but I hope you can still appreciate the irony of your post Mr. Skeptical

> 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.

Selection bias is only a factor if the selection criteria is a dependent variable. What makes you think open source will change MBTI traits?

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.

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

I wonder how my being considered(I use that term loosely due to said unscientificness of the exam) ENFJ makes me fit into this :)

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.