Are They All Neurotic? The Psychology of the Software Engineer

In recent years, psychologists have come to a nearly unanimous consensus on the number and nature of human personality dimensions. A recent large scale study involving several hundred software engineers and "regular" people (non-engineers) revealed that the personalities of developers, testers, and managers tend to be different from each other and from the general population as a whole. So, how can you use this information in your job? Rather than administering a personality assessment as part of the hiring process, it is much more effective to use it to understand your existing team members and to help then maximize their productivity and value to the business. James McCaffrey demonstrates how to quickly and easily create, administer, and interpret personality profiles of your team members. At the end of this presentation you will be able to take the personality assessment used in the study and see how your personality compares with other software professionals.

• How software people are generally different from "regular" people
• The "big five" personality model
• The chance to take a personality assessment test