Developers like to think they’re extroverted. Chances are they’re not. A recent IDG study, Introverts vs. Extroverts: Is There an IT Personality?, found that just over half of IT workers are introverts. Only those engineers who mistakenly think they’re extroverted would find that surprising.
Now, before you take offense, to say that most IT workers are introverts (as defined by HR’s favorite personality inventory, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI) isn’t to say that they are the stereotypical computer nerd.
You know the stereotype I mean: An extremely bright, badly dressed, pudgy man with all the social graces of a bad-tempered alligator, who plays Dungeons and Dragons twice a week, can recite Monty Python skits and Star Wars scenes from memory, and can passionately argue that vi is better than EMACS and that only lusers run Linux since FreeBSD is the one true geek operating system.