Skip to main content
Take Test

INTP Career Interview #1

Interview by Ryan Smith

Hi Owen. Thanks for doing the interview. Before we begin, what is your background for identifying as INTP?

I have taken the official MBTI test three or four times, and I always get INTJ with INT as dead ringers and the J weakly expressed. So actually, my prior experience with this system suggests that I am INTJ.

Well, did they tell you about the functions, for example about the difference between Introverted Thinking and Introverted Intuition?

No, I think they may have mentioned it on a slide or something, but the overarching focus was on the J/P dichotomy itself. "Js plan ahead and Ps are more flexible." And I plan ahead.

Haha, this is the second time in the course of this interview series that we disagree with an official MBTI assessment of someone's type. Fortunately, our readers are fairly knowledgeable, so let's interview you and see what comes up. At the end of the day, I'm sure they will be able to make up their own minds on the INTP/INTJ issue. So what is your education and what do you currently do?

I have an MSc in economics and I currently work as a policy analyst in a think tank. Prior to that, I worked as a high-ranking civil servant in my capacity as an expert on economics.

What's a think tank? And what does a policy analyst do?

A think tank is an organization that performs policy analyses and recommendations, conducts research, and advocates specific solutions to societal problems, such as social policy, climate change, military and security, taxation, property rights, and so on. The think tank I work for is mainly concerned with property rights, taxation, and political philosophy.

A typical paper of mine would be concerned with either general macroeconomics, taxation, energy policy, or the financial sector. For example, taxation isn't just a question of "pay such-and-such a percentage of your income to the state"; rather, it is a sprawling labyrinth of tendrils slinking out in all directions. Almost everything is taxed in some way, and a person's taxes fluctuate according to his or her income level, capital gains, ownership of shares, donations to charities, and so on, so it's quite the intellectual balancing act to suggest improvements on how best to manage the beast.

For example, if I wanted to find out what the best way to overhaul the marginal tax system is, I would sit down and ask myself: "What is the key to this problem?" I can think about that for a long time. When doing so, I reduce everything about the problem to principles and parts: I read the literature on the topic, and then I build an economic model that covers the problem. The best thing about economics is the modelling part - the building and juggling of equations. I am actually not that strong a mathematician, but I am careful about building my models and that goes a long way.

So you're not the kind of economist who swears by these huge models, encompassing thousands of variables in an attempt to encompass all of the known data - what Jungians might call Extroverted Thinking style models?

No, in my case, I am very much the opposite: I try to build minimalistic, elegant models that tell you a lot while making only a minimal number of assumptions. Of course, to understand a problem in economic terms, you have to put numbers on it at some point. But personally, I am more interested in the qualitative side of things - I think you can understand a problem better if you sit down to analyze it instead of just making calculations and running the numbers in the preordained "textbook" way. Mathematics is a wonderful tool, but actually I see problems more clearly when I think them through analytically instead of swamping myself with numbers. I also find that if I don't have that theoretical basis where I've been thinking for a long time about a problem, I tend to forget all about the specifics involved: Names, dates, places, and figures go right out the window, and my analysis will be all the worse for it. For me, you could say that it's those long hours of pondering the problem in the abstract that enables me to memorize the facts involved.

My counterpart in the think tank is this ISTJ economist who's immensely strong when it comes to remembering specifics: When he presents an analysis, he knows practically every figure that's relevant to that analysis off the cuff. I don't know how he does it; he just remembers it all in his head. There's like a library of facts and figures in there. He's also exceptionally strong when it comes to running the numbers and doing advanced calculations right then and there, whereas I arrive at my figures more slowly. I build my models and then gradually draw some figures from them. I then make a note of each figure and its estimated effects and pros and cons. In the end, I put it all together and write up my analysis.

When reading your papers, one thing that strikes me about your style is that it's very fair-minded. Even when the purpose of your analysis is to criticize people with whom you disagree, you seem very even-handed and open to considering their point of view and giving it the benefit of the doubt.

I might not seem like I want to shove a particular conclusion down the reader's throat, but rest assured, I do. I do think there's such a thing as right and wrong, but on the other hand, you must be open to the fact that the reader may be someone who thinks differently than you do. If you just put a lot of rhetorics and polemics in a report, then how are you going to convince the people who don't agree with you to begin with?

You mentioned that you have worked as a civil servant. Would you say that perhaps you also learned a bit of your even-handed style from operating in that environment?

Oh, I definitely think that whatever traits I had along those lines prior to my recruitment have only been intensified by working for the government. In such a highly politicized environment, you have to think pragmatically all the time. For example, it would frequently happen that my fellow economists and I would arrive at a clear-cut conclusion to a given problem: "Abolish that tax altogether and then get the revenue from taxing this thing over here instead." That was actually not even so hard. But then we rammed our heads against the brick wall that is the internal workings of government. You see, in civil service it will often come to pass that the straightforward solution - the one that can be mathematically demonstrated to benefit everyone involved - will be deemed "politically impossible," which means that it won't get signed into law, even if the ministers can sometimes see where you are coming from.

In such an environment, you constantly have to remind yourself: "I know what first-best is. But what if that's not on the table? What is second-best?" People always say that there should be more CEOs in politics, but I say that actually there should be more civil servants in politics because, unlike CEOs, civil servants know how hard it is to fix the problems of government: It is a lot more complicated than writing a "perfectly rational" piece of legislation the way one would determine the business strategy of a corporation. When it comes to politics at the national level, "perfectly rational" often means that your bill won't make it past parliament. You have to have a very fine-tuned intellectual sense of what the various politicians will agree to (sometimes even reluctantly agree to) and what will be automatic turnoffs for them. And you have to draft the bill in such a way that a majority of parliament will think that you are speaking to exactly their interests, when in reality their interests are not one thing, but may diverge considerably amongst themselves.

Sometimes the practical workings of government are even worse than what I've just suggested. I once sat in a meeting with the highest-level political leadership in the country and they showed me two policy proposals that they had come up with internally in their party: One would severely hurt start-up entrepreneurs and the other would destroy investment banking and stock trades. And they said: "Well, Owen, we know that you're an expert and you won't like it, but we have to pander to the sentiments of the people who voted for us." So I had to advise them on which of these two disastrously bad bills was worse. In practice, they allowed me to veto one of them, so I literally had to pick the lesser of two evils. Now if I had just sat there and clung to my professional superiority, and categorically maintained that both of these bills were policy disasters, then they might both have been passed. So you can say that in a very real way, my years of working for the government taught me the art of not just being right in a vacuum, but also of taking stock of what is possible and what the consequences of your actions might be.

A lot of people would probably find it frustrating to sit there, knowing they were right and not being able to enforce it. How do you look back on your years of government service?

Actually, I don't think it was that bad. A lot of civil servants are smart people - way smarter than your average politician - and they agree amongst themselves in many respects as well. So even if you don't get your favored solution passed through to law, you are still surrounded by lots of interesting people who see the world the same way you do and who know how hard it is to get any intelligent legislation through parliament at all. We were all used to working very hard on a bill, only to have it rejected in favor of something less prudent. If nothing else, that fostered a sense of comradeship among us.

A lot of people don't realize this, but interesting people are really a luxury item along the lines of all the other luxuries money can buy. Being surrounded by interesting people is a priority that most people miss out on when they take stock of what they want in their lives. Even very rich people can sometimes be stuck with uninteresting coworkers and friends because it never dawned on them that you only need money and accomplishment up to a certain point and that after that, interesting people tend to provide your life with more value.

So why did you change jobs and leave the government for the think tank?

Well, a thing that happens a lot in the government is that people who do well keep getting promoted. They get more and more management responsibility until eventually they are no longer doing the things they are good at - the very things that got them the promotion in the first place. In my case, I had gotten a lot of responsibility too. In the end I was sketching and framing the analyses of 12 other people, but I no longer had time to do analyses of my own. In ordinary career terms, I had progressed "beyond" that point - I had gotten too high up in the organization. The responsibility that came with being a leader stood between me and my passion, which is building economic models and thinking deeply about complex problems.

Being a manager wasn't for you.

Oh, don't get me wrong, it was fun to experience some variety and to get a peek at the analyses of 12 different people a week. But I just came to a point where I decided that I didn't want to give up doing the thing that really kept me motivated, and so I switched jobs and started working at the think tank where, coincidentally, there are a lot of interesting people too. I guess I like working with specialists.

It is interesting to hear you say that you put a premium on interesting people, because one thing I've noticed is that a lot of bright economists who have worked in civil service tend to take shots at what they see as "stupid people." They tend to say things where they constantly make themselves out to be smarter than everyone else. But I've never seen you do anything of the sort. Why do you think that is?

Actually, I don't think that I've ever been surrounded by what you might call stupid people. I've had a measure of personal respect for every major politician with whom I have worked closely. I don't respect all politicians, mind you - but I did respect the ones that I ended up advising one-on-one. I think when you look at politicians from the outside, it's easy to write them off as scumbags, but you have to develop an understanding of what it is like to actually be a politician: To know what they are going through and what it takes to get elected. You need to put yourself in their position and think, "What do I need to do to get this politician to accept my point of view?" In a way, you have to empathize with their point of view. Not in an emotional or psychological way, but in an intellectual and policy-driven way. Incidentally, that is an exercise that more people could fruitfully undertake: It is always easier to condemn someone than to take the trouble of finding out why a given person believes what they do and what nugget of truth there might be nested in their viewpoint, however much you disagree with it.

***

INTP Career Interview #1 © Ryan Smith and IDR Labs International 2015.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and MBTI are trademarks of the MBTI Trust, Inc.

IDRLabs.com is an independent research venture, which has no affiliation with the MBTI Trust, Inc.

Cover image in the article commissioned for this publication from artist Georgios Magkakis.

***

IDRlabs offers the following Career Interviews:

FREE