Take note that the Big five, the other major personality typology, though more empirical, is not without problems either. http://differentialclub.wdfiles.com/local--files/personality...

Also, no wonder we're all "judgmental".

Among all those I know who've taken it, myself included, it's been strongly indicative of their personality. And as I noted in another comment, three different tests have yielded the same results for me.

Somewhere at the bottom of the description for their type, and only for their type out of the 16, it mentioned specifically that this type 'hates these kinds of things' (or something like that).

    [1]: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122

As I understand it, ENTJ and INTJ are no more than 9% of the general population[1] (12% max, if male only), and yet they are dominating the poll here; and that very much aligns with types expected to be common among the Hacker News population. That has got to mean something.

But then, I guess that's why I'm not a Guardian type[2] (Enforcing/Certifying specifically[3]).

[1]: http://www.capt.org/mbti-assessment/estimated-frequencies.ht... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_temperament [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keirsey_Temperament_Sorter

I've variously gotten ENTJ or INTJ over the years.

I guess if I'm an INTJ, taking the test the next day, I wouldn't expect to be an ESFP, but... over 10 years, I wouldn't be surprised to see an INTJ get a different 'score'.

It's rather interesting though if I might add, to see how those insensitivities carry over to a logical environment like a weighted survey. The test is really simple, it's four weighted boolean elements, and a result.

That seems to engage people.

I 71.77% - E 28.23% (General population: I 50.90% - E 49.40%)

N 90.73% - S 9.27% (General population: N 26.90% - S 73.40%)

T 77.16% - F 22.84% (General population: T 40.40% - F 59.90%)

P 49.57% - J 50.43% (General population: P 46.00% - J 54.30%)

And the personality types reported here in comparison to the general population (from the MBTI Manual, 3rd edition, published in 1998):

ISTJ General 11.60% - HN: 2.37%

ISFJ General 13.80% - HN: 0.97%

ISTP General 5.40% - HN: 2.05%

ISFP General 8.80% - HN: 0.86%

ESTP General 4.30% - HN: 0.97%

ESFP General 8.50% - HN: 0.65%

ESTJ General 8.70% - HN: 0.65%

ESFJ General 12.30% - HN: 0.75%

ENTJ General 1.80% - HN: 7.44%

ENTP General 3.20% - HN: 9.91%

ENFJ General 2.50% - HN: 1.94%

ENFP General 8.10% - HN: 5.93%

INTJ General 2.10% - HN: 31.36%

INTP General 3.30% - HN: 22.41%

INFJ General 1.50% - HN: 4.96%

INFP General 4.40% - HN: 6.79%

Edit: Updated statistics at 16:00 PST

The sixteen types aren't buckets that people fall neatly into. What they represent are sixteen hypothetical extreme individuals. The model ENTJ would be exactly as described on personality type pages--demanding, unfeeling, unafraid to tell others what dumbshits they are. But no one is a complete ENTJ. The helpfulness of MBTI is that when someone does things that a complete ENTJ might do, it helps to know what their motivation might be, and why they're driven to be that way. When the same person acts like an ENFP, same thing.

"The Lipson-Shiu test attempts to remedy this and other oversights by classifying along four alternative axes: Intelligent-Stupid; Lawful-Chaotic; Important-Unimportant; Good-Evil."

I mean, as a generalization, as a very introverted person I sure as hell won't get along too well with a very extroverted person unless I really have to. Of course exceptions exist.

INFP ftw, feeling up and perceiving people over thinking and judging people!

We're going to need a ?N?P coalition — INFP, INTP, ENFP, ENTP — to retain a little space for some poetic truth and beauty on HN.

There are barely enough ?S?? here to be worth courting. They're probably out dancing and drinking themselves to death during prime HN submission/comment hours, anyway. But just in case any S are reading this, all I have to say to you is: herd immunity and antibiotic resistance are real things! Use some protection! (Ah, damn, that was a little J of me. Sometimes I put on a J or E mask, but it's just for laughs, honest.)

All joking aside, definitionally feelers are going to place higher weight on their personal feelings, which makes discussing technical subjects difficult, because they're less willing to evaluate different things on their merits alone.

They are perfectly described by Miguel de Icaza in this article: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html

I used to read comments and articles of people that liked quiet space and time to think, or of people who hated open office spaces, and think, "They probably just don't like being around people," or even "They probably just don't like people." I thought that the idea of being "wired in" was just as ridiculous as someone calling themselves a "rockstar," or "killing it," and was something that most people pretend to do because it seems cool in the movies but nobody really does.

Then I started to program. Nothing earth-shattering and no big data, just simple applications with a little bit of logic behind them, and everything changed.

The little chat and text notifications would kill my concentration and make me lose large chunks of time and thought. A good pair of headphones wasn't just for music, but for blocking out the rest of the world (even soft, classical music was too distracting to my thought process). There was some really cool stuff happening, and I had created it.

And sometimes, to be frank, the code is more interesting than the social situation I tend to be in. It's not that I don't like people, but even though I consider myself an extrovert (or I used to be an extravert?) I would rather be in a quiet room coding.

My parents say they saw at an early age how intense I was when I played video games (and how agressive I became), and forever banned them at my house and in my life. I feel like that was a major determining force in my personality and who I am today.

Now it feels like there are two people fighting inside of me. I can still go to a party and really enjoy myself, I'm still late all the time, and I still am on the more extraverted side of a lot of the answers and laugh it up and have a very wide circle of friends and barely-acquaintences I love to keep in touch with, but sometimes (and a growing amount of the time) I just want to be left alone so I can figure things out. And I don't crave to be around people like I used to.

It's not hard, when taking a test like this, to see which personality type the answers are lending themselves to, and most of the time when taking them I am thinking to myself, "It depends." I really don't know anymore. And interestingly enough, I feel like my personality is more a result of the things I do than who I am.

For the record: I scored Extravert(44%) iNtuitive(62%) Feeling(62%) Perceiving(67)%

I have always been right in the middle. Used to be a class clown and popular but also had extended bouts of depression where I didn't want to interact.

Nowadays, when working, I want to shut everything out and just code. But I used to be the opposite. Was in service and loved talking to people. Even if I'm not very good at it.

When I was in service, I would usually only hang out with a core group and only occasionally. Now that I'm coding, I want to experience everything in my free time. Meet people and be uncomfortable.

Although I did answer "it depends" to probably 75% of the questions, I think my results reflect somewhat accurately. The only thing that is solid is intuitive. The rest are right on the fence.

Extravert(22%) iNtuitive(62%) Feeling(12%) Perceiving(22)%

Are you also upset that there are only 2 genders for people? I mean, who is Biology to pigeon-hole us like that?

Joking aside, it's just a loose classification.

P.S. If you spend some time among people, it becomes clear there really aren't a million different "types" of people.

On-topic: No surprise INTJ is fairly well represented. Logical introverts are a stereotype of our industry.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-leadership/myers-b...

"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."

http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html

http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/person...

"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."

http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/deve...

http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Personality-Testing-Annie-Murphy/...

Please, ladies and gentlemen who participate on Hacker News, do yourselves the favor to read some psychological research literature that was written after you were born, so that you find out that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® was never widely accepted by psychologists and that it now languishes on the ash heap of history. For a long time now, factor-analytic models of human personality have been the fruitful research paradigm, and currently the Big Five model

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~cdeyoung/Pubs/DeYoung_Intelligence-Pe...

enjoys a fair amount of research support across multiple countries with some good confirmation by multiple researchers. The Big Five theory still needs work, but it is much more productive of understanding human personality than the Myers-Briggs model ever was.

Don't forget to up vote the poll to get more data.

Note that the HN poll here suffers BIG-TIME from all the usual problems of voluntary response polls, just like the Literary Digest poll that failed in predicting the result of the 1936 United States presidential election despite a high response rate.

What is happening is that you can think of a personality profile as a vector in very high-dimensional space. MBTI presents a basis in a 4-dimensional subspace of that. How well it works for a particular person depends on how her personality aligns with that basis.

A lot people will test near the middle on the MBTI characteristics, and say that the test does not work for them. If most of the population is near the middle, statistical studies won't show much validation for MBTI either.

Now, none of that means that the test has little value -- it actually has a lot of value, but only for people who test at relatively high scores. For example, I generally test as either ENTP or INTP -- and since I'm near the middle of E/I scale, it does not tell much either way. my N, T, and P, however, are quite extreme (I've done quite a few of these, and not once have I had a case when my N or T score was not at the end of the range, P nearly there too) -- so the descriptions and advice for these types that I've seen have been quite relevant and helpful.

That said, I like MBTI's (or Keirsey's) simplicity. It gives you a lot of data for such a simple system, and is easy to apply. You have to be aware of its limitations, of course. But I've been playing with it for almost 10 years (in my personal life, not so much for work) and it rarely fails me.

I think it's the same principle as the Fibonacci scale for planning poker... you will always have some error in your system, don't fool yourself. So the ROI of a simple system might pay off...

PS: I agree, MBTI seems VERY accurate for people that are not in the middle of the scales, and not-so-accurate otherwise.

In my case, I and T are both generally very strong, while N has been weaker.

The most interesting part is the J/P has gradually shifted. I used to test as a very strong J, but that has been changing and today I finally flipped and tested P.

e.g.

http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/

(Not sure if this is a good example but... Google)

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221

Do click on the link: http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=7033047

Unfortunately, this chart is arranged badly. But you can glean the information by comparing columns.

First huge difference: N > S (biggest of all!) Next difference: T > F (more pronounced amongst Ns) Next difference: I > E (more pronounced amongst NTs)

Note that there is almost no difference along the J/P axis.

N=abstract thinker, likes ideas and concepts and big picture S=concrete thinker, likes real things and details

J=likes rules and systems and binary partitions P=thinks in terms of guidelines and heuristics and rules of thumb and grey areas.

Most programmers are Ns, but I have met quite a few DBAs who are Ss. I'm a P (could you tell) although close to the middle. I like to make the joke that Ps are always 5 minutes late, but don't think of that as being late ;)

Hope this helps.

As someone who got "INTP," I would say that is probably accurate.

J's are to-do list sorts of people, they enjoy finishing tasks, tend to "get a lot of stuff done", but can be stressed if there isn't a plan. P's prefer starting projects to finishing them, they tend to work off-the-cuff, probably appear to get less done, but are more capable of dealing with changing circumstances and priorities.

J/P: Judgement is about planning, making concrete decisions. Perception is leaving options open, doing things on the fly.

Wow, you really have zero tolerance for things you don't like, don't you.

Curious about the type distribution of IT entrepreneurs (founders, co-founders, CEO's, and CTO's).

I don't really care for it though, especially since the site is obviously just trying to make people buy the full-depth profile.

Fun, I guess.

So, Steve and Jim both were similar in personality?

"I'd wager a guess that when you're a startup founder, it greatly helps to be an E."

Not sure if it necessarily helps - it's going to depend on what your other skills are and who, if anyone, else is on your team. I'm an I but get mistaken for an E.

I like to understand the risky situations I find myself in.

Comedy answer: single and unloved.

EDIT:

Last time I took this, ENTJ. Now, ENFP. I'm apparently going soft.