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DA2. Personality and Work Behaviors

Statement

The text defines personality as “a person’s relatively stable feelings, thoughts, and behavioral patterns” (Carpenter et. al., 2010), while values are “stable life goals, reflecting what is most important to them” (Carpenter et. al., 2010). ”

  • Pick one of the Big Five Personality Traits that details the most important trait for your current job or a position you want to be in.
  • Describe why this is the most important.
  • Give an example of how this personality trait aligns with one of your professional goals.

Answer

Experts were always interested in understanding the human personality and how it affects our decisions at work. They defined many personality traits and values; and also defined some methods to measure them. One of the most popular models is the Big Five Personality Traits model, which includes Openness (to new experiences), Conscientiousness (being organized and dependable), Extroversion (being outgoing and social), Agreeableness (being friendly and compassionate), and Neuroticism (being anxious and moody). The first 4 are usually seen as positive traits, while the last one is seen as negative (Carpenter et. al., 2010).

The author chose software engineering as the job to analyze. In his opinion, the most important trait for a software engineer is Conscientiousness.

Why Conscientiousness is the most important trait for a software engineer.

To be conscientious is to be organized, systemic, punctual, achievement-oriented, and dependable (Carpenter et. al., 2010). Software engineering is a hard field with too many details and too many connection points (human and machine ones) and it is the responsibility of the engineer to bring all different parties into consensus using a common software. Attention to detail is crucial in the process of collecting requirements as nontechnical people tend to present some information in their communications with little attention but it is so important to the software.

The job of creating software is heavily layered with logical steps that need to go in order; hence, the importance of being organized. The job also involves telling the machine what to do with absolute accuracy, and any slight deviation can lead to a great shift in the final result; hence, the importance of being punctual.

The job also requires multiple people and teams with different backgrounds and skills to work on the same system or for their systems to connect; and respond to outages in real time; such situations require a dependable person who holds the backs of their team members and their technical systems. The final trait is to be achievement-oriented, which is crucial in the software engineering field as it is a field that is built on the expectation of small continuous improvements that accumulate into a great system.

An example that demonstrates how Conscientiousness aligns with the author’s professional goals.

The software development cycle is a great example that requires conscientiousness; the cycle starts with requirements gathering where stakeholders are interviewed to understand their needs and what they expect from the software (being organized and detail-oriented). The team then brainstormed and came up with a system design, chose technologies, and divided the work into tasks (being organized and systemic).

The next step is the actual implementation through multiple sprint cycles and iterations where multiple rounds of quality assurance and testing are done (being punctual and detail-oriented). The deadlines must be met, and the final software is shipped to the client (being dependable and achievement-oriented). After launch, the software goes through a period of heavy monitoring until it is stable and the client is happy (being dependable and achievement-oriented). Finally, the software goes through a lengthy period of maintenance over its lifetime.

Conclusion.

Conscientiousness is the most important trait for a software engineer as opposed to Openness, Extroversion, and Agreeableness; as it is important to mediate between humans and machines, and to have enough cognitive ability to understand the requirements and make them into a working system. The successful software development cycle requires many traits that are categorized under Conscientiousness. That’s not to say that other traits are not important, in fact, if two candidates with the same level of Conscientiousness are compared, the one with higher levels of Openness, Extroversion, and Agreeableness will be chosen.

References