Engineering is a Zoo
Most people are familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality types. People are categorized into sixteen groups that are described by a combination of four letters. The letters describe the two extremes of various aspects of personality. Despite the fact that there are sixteen groups, you can make life simpler by generalizing a bit and grouping into four groups. In engineering, the NT and SJ personalities are the most prevalent. NTs, or ‘rationals’, comprise only about 5% of the total population but a significant chunk of engineers. SJs, or ‘guardians’, are nearly half the population. The more analytic of the guardians tend to enter engineering, a field which tends to utilize a lot of rules and is thus appealing to the SJ personality type. The funny thing is, SJs and NTs tend to not get along very well at all. SJs like rules and like to follow them and like when other…