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Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

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Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#111

Post by naniwaduni »

themodelplumber wrote: post #98
naniwaduni wrote: post #83

MBTI pretty much takes what are supposed to be basically unimodal binomial distributions and ... slices them and labels the halves different things. Even without getting into whether it's testing something sensible, it's pretty clear that the typology is fundamentally fucked.

This critique of typology applies to the way humans think about so many things though. Imagine a world in which we broke free of the unreasonable typology of the traffic light! Really, typologies are super helpful for solving lots of problems. And a nice thing about MBTI in the comparing-humans world is that it's way more objective _and_ uses more than one dichotomy unlike lots of other default typologies (cf men-wom…

> Really, typologies are super helpful for solving lots of problems.

Sure, most of which involve multimodal distributions?

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#112

Post by alfiedotwtf »

compiler-guy wrote: post #3

I appreciate it when a company asks about or tests my Myers-Briggs type early in the hiring process, because then I know that I don't want to work for them, and they wouldn't be happy with me either. Win/win.

This.

... it's the same when someone asks what my horoscope is. Thanks for the red flag.

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#113

Post by cool_dude85 »

phkahler wrote: post #90
Waterluvian wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better yet, you should scan the shape of each candidate’s skull and use that as a metric to aid in decisionmaking.

>> Better yet, you should scan the shape of each candidate’s skull Ima guess you score low on openness. And probably T as opposed to F on MBTI.

I think he has high cheekbones, a small nose, and "the devil's brow".

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#114

Post by odysseus »

biomcgary wrote: post #36

When I was managing, I informally typed people during the interview process, which was very helpful in predicting both how they would interact with other team members and how they would do at particular tasks. However, I learned not to rely on self-reported personality types or tests, which are often answered aspirationally, not realistically. To me, MBTI or Big 5 (not the actual tests, but their framing of aspects o…

I’ve been an ISTJ (but have moved closer to an ISFJ over the years) and am not resistant to quantifying personality aspects - as long as results are disclosed and I’m informed it’s being done. Still, I’m not going to do a 128 question personality test to get hired - interviews are already long enough.

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#115

Post by greedo »

When I was a wee sysadmin, still wet behind the ears, I interviewed with a Midwest company for a networking gig. The first step in the interview process was a group phone session (roughly 6 people from this company). They ask you a series of questions, over a 30 minute span. It was pretty fast paced, and there was no time for much reflection on an individual question. I thought it was odd, but I expected a job offer. The next day I received a call from either the recruiter or the interviewer (it's been decades and my memory isn't exact).

They thanked me for my time but said they didn't feel I was a good candidate.

I thought long and hard about it for a few days, feeling down and depressed. Then I realized that not one question was technical. It was a typical psychometric exam. Did some research and found that the company specialized in predictive evaluations. Imagine Gattaca...

I was pissed. The idea that you can distill someone's performance down to 30 questions asked by faceless people giving limited feedback is HR homeopathy. I was glad that I had dodged a bullet, but treating people like "resources" is something I despise.

This company claims to have lots of Fortune 500 companies as clients, now offers unlimited PTO (another red flag) and a pretty website espousing the virtues of their filtering system. Looks like a cult, smells like a cult.

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#116

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

naniwaduni wrote: post #88
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A stethoscope in the hands of a doctor is a useful, if limited, tool. The MBTI is tea leaves reading. It has been experimentally shown to have no relationship to reality and no predictive power time and time again. Even the axis don’t make sense as some are heavily correlated. The Big 5 is useful but far more complicated. It uses scale and has no pretty little boxes but at least it seems to consistently measure som…

MBTI is the rough equivalent of taking a Big 5 test, but then instead of presenting the scores, it arbitrarily classifies you as Yes/No for each trait based on whether you're above or below average. Even if the scores themselves would be informative, you're still getting basically randomly sorted on noise for the traits where you're just about average.

> MBTI is the rough equivalent of taking a Big 5 test, but then instead of presenting the scores, it arbitrarily classifies you as Yes/No for each trait

No, just no.

The Big 5 was statistically designed using factor analysis so that its axis are independent. The axis actually came before their description. It’s actual serious research. Psychologists found that some characteristics clustered together and then spent time understanding what these clusters actually measured.

The MBTI however is all over the place. It was designed "using" Jung theory - itself a heap load of garbage - and its axis are total chaos. They even correlate between each others. That’s part of why the distribution of MBTI types is actually so skewed.

Seriously the MBTI is a perfect exemple of what’s wrong with psychology nowadays. On the one hand you have academics trying to do serious research and the other hand you have people motivated by greed pushing random rubbish and gathering a following in the corporate world like a pseudo-cult. It’s both sad and maddening.

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#117

Post by addaon »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #93
anonymousiam wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never worked for Apple, but I went through a similar exercise in the late 1980's. I found the role-playing useful, and I found the techniques we were trained on to be enlightening. Not everybody thinks the same way, and even though it's not valid to categorize people into 16 personality groups, it's useful to understand that people prioritize things and think differently from each other. Here's a great example of t…

Do you need to spend $2000 plus $49.99 a head plus travel, catering and room hire to be told "It's useful to understand that people priorities things and think differently from each other?" If the specifics don't matter, what are you actually paying these consultants to do?

Is it worth $2k (or $20k) to communicate to a bunch of new managers that "we, as a company, feel that thinking about how your team of individuals thinks is worth spending money and time on"? The specifics aren't the point -- the demonstration that this is a priority, and part of your job that you're expected to spend time on, is the key. An e-mail saying "hey you're a manager now think about people!" doesn't have the same impact, inherently, and you end up with "managers" that think their job is still to be a tech lead.

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#118

Post by themodelplumber »

naniwaduni wrote: post #111
themodelplumber wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This critique of typology applies to the way humans think about so many things though. Imagine a world in which we broke free of the unreasonable typology of the traffic light! Really, typologies are super helpful for solving lots of problems. And a nice thing about MBTI in the comparing-humans world is that it's way more objective _and_ uses more than one dichotomy unlike lots of other default typologies (cf men-wom…

> Really, typologies are super helpful for solving lots of problems. Sure, most of which involve multimodal distributions?

"Most" is an assumption. And typology like MBTI is going to be intractable to distribution-thinking. After all, the instrument itself comes from soft theory. The same soft theory now explains why e.g. distributions are not a good lens by themselves.

This is why Big 5 often gets dragged on by people who like MBTI better: It's not really qualitatively interesting to try to work in depth with such a broad and shallow tool. People can also try both and judge for themselves or just defray judgement and use both.

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#119

Post by seadan83 »

I'm very skeptical of any information in this article. AFAIK Google never asked the "how many golfballs.." question or similar. To my knowledge, Microsoft notoriously were the ones that asked that kind of question and then stopped asking that perhaps 10 years ago or more. AFAIK if Google ever did ask such a question, it was even before then.

Further, I've done the interview process with Google and they do not ask anything about personality types. All the information in this article about at least Google does not seem accurate. Overall, kinda seems like click-bait without even establishing how many companies actually do ask about personality.

Re: Why companies are interested in Myers-Briggs types

#120

Post by trhway »

biomcgary wrote: post #36

When I was managing, I informally typed people during the interview process, which was very helpful in predicting both how they would interact with other team members and how they would do at particular tasks. However, I learned not to rely on self-reported personality types or tests, which are often answered aspirationally, not realistically. To me, MBTI or Big 5 (not the actual tests, but their framing of aspects o…

>As a manager, I've found them incredibly helpful for avoiding problems (i.e., assigning the wrong task to a person).

it sounds like you're assigning tasks based on prejudicial categorization of genetic traits (as MTBI claims to be) instead of actual demonstrated job performance.

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