The Quistic personality test is excellent around 90%. However, it does have issues with borderline types such as me (ENTJ) and one of my friends. But it hits the spot with most. How do you deal with that situation?

I find it rather interesting that the founder of a personality test website personally roots outs oddities.

I am a 27-year-old cis-gendered female INTP with mild Asperger’s and a good job at a nonprofit. My organization is doing good work and actually effecting some positive change in this insane community of people. This isn’t really what I want to be doing long term (I am interested in Data Science and Machine Learning) but it is a good job and a good salary while I do personal and contract work in my chosen field with the hope of being able to enter that field as a career.

I have had a lot of different experiences, some have been successful and some haven’t, but what I have learned thus far follows:

  • I am highly empathetic in spite of my social dysfunction and people tend to like me even though they find me odd.
  • When I am not liked it is because people perceive me as cold, overly-rational, and arrogant. This is common among people with Asperger’s, especially women.
  • I am really, really smart.
  • I have a penchant for organizational thinking, resource management, and strategy.
  • Many organizations are completely dysfunctional because the people in charge are not good at the aforementioned things.
  • I am good at managing people as resources, but not very good at managing people as people.

I believe in my organization. I also believe that it is totally dysfunctional. In my experience, most nonprofits are.

Specifically, I am mismanaged as a resource. My direct supervisor (who is at the director level) has never had a direct report before me – and she does not know how to manage people either as people or as resources. The reason she was given an assistant is because she is doing two (completely different) full-time jobs at once – one of which is in line with her experience and career and the other which is not her area of expertise at all.

The problem is that she is unable to effectively delegate – so we have a situation where she is totally overwhelmed and I am completely bored. I have asked her repeatedly to allow me to take some things off her plate, but she is unwilling to trust my ability to do anything on my own, which basically amounts to her having a ton more work by virtue of having an assistant rather than having less. It’s maddening.

So there are two major problems: 1.) I am totally unsatisfied in my job and 2.) this mismanagement of resources is a waste of my salary – which this organization sorely needs.

One of my boss’s jobs is development, which is the second position that sort of fell into her lap and isn’t what she is good at or wants to do. I believe that it would not take much improvement on the part of a new, more experienced development director to pay for the difference between my current salary and his/her hypothetical new salary – the going rate for a fairly experienced development director at this kind of organization is only about $30,000 higher than what I’m making now. I want to suggest to the executive director that I leave my position and they use my salary to hire someone new at the same level as my current supervisor to ensure that both jobs get done well and fully.

I would like to stay at this organization if they can find a place for me where my talents are beneficial and I am permitted to take on interesting projects and learn new things, but regardless of where I end up, the organization doesn’t need me to be in my current position, and because of my boss’s difficulty with being a manager, I’m actually hurting the organization by being here more than I am helping it.

So my question is this: How the hell do I propose this plan (fire me, reduce the scope of my current boss’s job to something she can manage without an assistant, and hire a person to do development who actually knows what the hell they are doing) in a way that the board and executive director will take seriously?  I am aware that this suggestion is brazen and likely to really piss off my current boss, but I also think it is a good solution to a very real problem that needs to be addressed.

When I joined my current company a few years back, I started working on a special project that I have experience in, but the tool I was using was relatively new to me. As expected I spent my weekends and free time at home learning and excelling in it.

After two years, a newly employed fresh grad joined and I trained her as the management wanted me to do so. I work in senior capability and my lead is also a senior who has no clue about the work I do. But I trained her as well. They hired a new senior person who does not have any experience in the line of work I do.

As I believed the go over and above crap, I did a project as my manager VP asked me. I did a good job but my manager found some silly reason to criticize and scream at me.

I was asked to provide pictures as proof when I needed to work from home due to major repairs at home, but they gave the new colleague permission to work from home half days for the whole week as her teenage kid has holidays.

Fast forward the manager changed, and my colleagues got licensed to use the tool I was using so that they can also do the same work. As they started bombarding me with basic questions I guided them to the online documentation and videos available (I learned from them) as I already provided 2 sessions on that and also scheduled a session again but they canceled it and keep asking me questions.

No one else is learning anything new and sharing. They have no time to read and watch the video I provided. Within four months time, the new colleague complained about me behind my back but now she comes to me sounding innocent asking how to questions.

She won’t share any info. She already managed to take a high profile project which was promised to me by the VP. Once I was told I’m the highest paid in my team. Now part of my work is getting assigned slowly to my colleagues. My boss says everyone should know everything on the team so he wants me to train others but the work my other colleague is doing is not shared or no knowledge transfer sessions or training on it.

Do you think I better start looking for another job?

I’m reaching out to you and hoping you would share any insight you might have.

I’m an INFP with one toddler. I want to have more kids but my ENTJ husband doesn’t want anymore. He says we can’t afford them. So I want to go back to work (community/career college teaching) to try to set aside enough money to have more kids, but wonder if this is pointless because I think my husband just doesn’t want more kids, period. And a lack of money is just the excuse he is giving me.

I feel a little useless because I’m not working, but I still leave them for 5 hours a day to have time for myself. I’m also not very good with emotional stuff. You and my husband allude to not being good in this area, but you’re both far more real, articulate, and honest than I am. So I don’t even bring the supposed INFP strengths to our relationship. My husband is really good at the things ENTJs typically excel at — leadership, decision making, real-time crisis management, and he’s better than I am at the stuff INFPs are supposed to be good at, like reading and responding to emotions and listening. I feel the only thing I’ve ever done really well was being pregnant and giving birth. I wish I could do it again.

When I read your posts and listen to you, I feel like you could be my husband’s soul sister or something. You’re so similar, and since I’m too hurt and scared to talk to him about this (again) and I don’t want him to feel pressured, I’m wondering if you have an intuition of what I should do or how I should handle this. Go back to work? Keep doing what I’m doing and get over wanting more kids? Perhaps if I hear it from you, it will be less triggering than hearing it from him.

Thank you so much for being who you are.