Trait-Based Personality Profile of Software Programmers: A Study on Pakistan's Software Industry

Software engineering is a human-centric activity and humans are what their personalities dictate. Personality of the programmers determines the proficiency in programming, the quality of the code as well as the satisfaction of the programmer. However, the personality research in software engineering is still scarce, inconclusive and feeble. Moreover, most of the research is conducted in Western countries. Furthermore, most of the existing personality profiles are based on personality type and not the traits. Hence, the present research attempts to develop a personality profile of the programmers working in a south Asian country, namely Pakistan based on personality traits. With the help of the data collected from 294 programmers working in GSD based companies in Pakistan, the results showed that programmers largely possess the traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness whereas neuroticism is the least dominant trait among programmers.