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.
When everyone is a special snowflake and anyone can make it big if they work hard enough
This is my observation of why personality theory upsets people, I should have spelled it out more.
If life success correlates with certain personality traits and IQ, (which are mostly a roll of the dice and genetically influenced, i.e. not egalitarian, cannot be changed), then the reality is that some people are going to achieve more and some are going to have to work a lot less to achieve certain levels of success.
This flies in the face of what society tells itself, that if you have no success it's because you did not work hard enough, that if you work really hard you can do as well as the other guy. This is not true, despite how nice it sounds and how good it makes people feel.
It doesn't matter how hard you try, you are not going to be the next Bill Gates, you are not going to be the next Elon Musk. Applying to Y Combinator and flipping to Google is not within the reach of everyone no matter how many hours you put in.
Modern personality theory brings this to light, and it's bloody uncomfortable for most people. The US Army, for example, during wartime, considered that people with an IQ of less than 85 were not trainable, at all, and were more of a liability than an asset. If I remember right that is roughly 10% of the population. 10% of the population cannot be trained to do anything useful in capitalist society, not even by the Army during wartime.
Now, can everyone just "get a job" or "work hard and make a living"? Science seems to be saying no. The biggest US government institution looking for bodies said no. There is no saftey net built in to society for these people in some of the biggest first world countries. Now imagine being below average... aren't you just lucky the dice rolled in your favour. This is what I meant.
If you don't find this unsettling then you may just be a psychopath!
EDIT: It's not ironic at all that you make a sweeping assumption about me based on something I wrote, not at all :)
You're getting IQ and personality type all wrapped up in each other.
Does personality type have any predictive power at all as to what jobs a person is good at? 29% of programmers are INTJ - OK, great, but that doesn't tell you if they're actually any good at it.
IQ is certainly a better predictor of performance, in as much as every job has a lower bound on IQ.
And you're straw-manning the "hard work leads to success" argument. Probably no one - even the staunchest believer in bootstraps - thinks a sub-85 IQ can be the next Bill Gates no matter how hard they work.
It's not ironic at all that you make a sweeping assumption about me [...] If you don't find this unsettling then you may just be a psychopath!
tit for tat, I guess.
Look, don't take this the wrong way, but my observation is that most INxxs (especially INTJs) put a lot of stock in the MBTI because they believe their type indicates that they're really smart.
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.
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?
Astrology's a fun model to think about too. I wouldn't necessarily want to make predictions about an individual's behavior from it, but then, if I could actually predict an individual's behavior I'd rule the world.
Comments
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.
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.
The whole industry is doing TDD and using the same programming language? Programmers disagree all the time about that stuff.
You've got some serious baggage.
This is my observation of why personality theory upsets people, I should have spelled it out more.
If life success correlates with certain personality traits and IQ, (which are mostly a roll of the dice and genetically influenced, i.e. not egalitarian, cannot be changed), then the reality is that some people are going to achieve more and some are going to have to work a lot less to achieve certain levels of success.
This flies in the face of what society tells itself, that if you have no success it's because you did not work hard enough, that if you work really hard you can do as well as the other guy. This is not true, despite how nice it sounds and how good it makes people feel.
It doesn't matter how hard you try, you are not going to be the next Bill Gates, you are not going to be the next Elon Musk. Applying to Y Combinator and flipping to Google is not within the reach of everyone no matter how many hours you put in.
Modern personality theory brings this to light, and it's bloody uncomfortable for most people. The US Army, for example, during wartime, considered that people with an IQ of less than 85 were not trainable, at all, and were more of a liability than an asset. If I remember right that is roughly 10% of the population. 10% of the population cannot be trained to do anything useful in capitalist society, not even by the Army during wartime.
Now, can everyone just "get a job" or "work hard and make a living"? Science seems to be saying no. The biggest US government institution looking for bodies said no. There is no saftey net built in to society for these people in some of the biggest first world countries. Now imagine being below average... aren't you just lucky the dice rolled in your favour. This is what I meant.
If you don't find this unsettling then you may just be a psychopath!
EDIT: It's not ironic at all that you make a sweeping assumption about me based on something I wrote, not at all :)
You're getting IQ and personality type all wrapped up in each other.
Does personality type have any predictive power at all as to what jobs a person is good at? 29% of programmers are INTJ - OK, great, but that doesn't tell you if they're actually any good at it.
IQ is certainly a better predictor of performance, in as much as every job has a lower bound on IQ.
And you're straw-manning the "hard work leads to success" argument. Probably no one - even the staunchest believer in bootstraps - thinks a sub-85 IQ can be the next Bill Gates no matter how hard they work.
tit for tat, I guess.
Look, don't take this the wrong way, but my observation is that most INxxs (especially INTJs) put a lot of stock in the MBTI because they believe their type indicates that they're really smart.
Please don't post things like this here.
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.
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?
As it happens, he answered exactly this question elsewhere:
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...
So is astrology.
Astrology's a fun model to think about too. I wouldn't necessarily want to make predictions about an individual's behavior from it, but then, if I could actually predict an individual's behavior I'd rule the world.
I also think astrology is fun. In my experience it yields better results than MBTI - which is one reason why I think very poorly of MBTI.
I'm sure you're already familiar with Gary Goldschneider's work: http://thesecretlanguage.com
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.
I happen to be an INFJ :D
Aren't you special!