The Type to Take Out a Loan? A Study of Developer Personality and Technical Debt

Abstract: Background: Technical debt (TD) has been widely discussed in software engineering research, and there is an emerging literature linking it to developer characteristics. However, developer personality has not yet been studied in this context. Aims and Method: We explore the relationship between various personality traits (Five Factor Model, regulatory focus, and narcissism) of developers and the introduction and removal of TD. To this end, we complement an existing TD dataset with novel self-report personality data gathered by surveying developers, and analyze 2,145 commits from 19 developers. Results: We find that conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness to experience, and prevention focus are negatively associated with TD. There were no significant results for extraversion, agreeableness, promotion focus, or narcissism. Conclusions: We take our results as first evidence that developer personality has a systematic influence on the introduction and removal of TD. This has implications not only for future research, which could, for example, study the effects of personality on downstream consequences of TD like defects, but also for software engineering practitioners who may, for example, consider developer personality in staffing decisions.