Comments on: Top 5 personality traits of successful web workers

By: Anne

Anne — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:57:29 +0000

I was listening to an NPR story this morning about how shyness is really a hypersensitive fear of the unknown. Researchers tested babies’ reactions to a jack-in-the-box and found that babies who grew up to be more “shy” were more distressed by the toy. As they put it “What is more unpredictable than a human?”

It seems to go with the idea that “extroverted” people seek the excitement of the unknown, if shy people are those who fear unpredictability.

By: Kelly Blokdijk, SPHR

Kelly Blokdijk, SPHR — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 01:23:47 +0000

I agree w/ Brie. Each of those five traits fits me and I’m “technically” an introvert. I’ve been very adaptable to working in diverse environments(including being incredibly effective as self-directed remote worker) throughout my career. Perhaps it’s semantics, but these descriptions don’t seem to have much to do with introversion/extroversion, rather they are tied to emotional intelligence and overall work-ethic.

By: Brie

Brie — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:58:22 +0000

I would disagree with the extrovert as the ideal web worker. I’m super introverted (not in the shy way, but in where I get my energy from… within, not without) and I totally enjoy working from home. Most of the extroverts I know actually go bonkers if they work from home for more than a day or two, because they crave face-to-face interaction with coworkers. Depending on the type of work you do, I think introversion is also a highly-sought after personality trait for web workers. Unless, by introversion, you mean shyness (which is actually very different from introversion). Shy people are probably not the best web workers because you do have to be able to start conversations and proactively reach out to your coworkers as a web worker.