Personal(ity) Minority
Since I’m working on planning my future and I happened to find out that the local college is having a virtual open house, I decided to take their ‘Career Assessment’, which turns out to be a fairly standard personality test (which wasn’t really all that surprising). It came back with, as usual for the tool this particular test is based on, as INTP.
I think the notion of sixteen personality types is a bit hokey, and have serious concerns about how much stock some folks put in these tests, but I find it at least interesting to see, in a general way, how it might help or help me understand myself. I do like a post I came across for The Warning Label Each Myers-Briggs Personality Type Should Come With and I think there is a member of council that can attest to my implementation of the INTP warning label in his case. It reads:
INTP: May fact check literally everything you say and catch you in any attempt at a lie or exaggeration.
Heidi Priebe, The Warning Label Each Myers-Briggs Personality Type Should Come With
More interesting to me is that only 3-5 percent of those tested match the INTP personality, which helps explain why I often feel like ’the odd one out’ in local gatherings and groups. There are a number of other ways in which I am unique, and in which I am in unique situations, which at times complicates life and leads to a sense of isolation as well the feeling other’s don’t understand me (and sometimes that they are disinclined to even try).
Despite all that I still find it kind of interesting to look through things like 19 INTP Careers to Avoid (and 7 to Pursue) | Psychologia which I think is pretty good generalization of where I’d fit and where I wouldn’t in terms of a career. I find it kind of ironic, however, that a personality type for which software development is a major area of interest also doesn’t fit well in a big corporate environment, given how much of the tech industry is controlled by ‘Big Tech’.
Despite my misgivings about ‘personality tests’ I think this is proving to be useful starting point.