[pdubs1]

>"The 'things vs people' dichotomy is extremely vague and obviously bullshit."

Is it? Or have you simply not taken a moment to do a little bit of research?

Here is a study with 500,000 participants, for example:

"Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things-People dimension.

"Men showed stronger Realistic (d = 0.84) and Investigative (d = 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d = -0.35), Social (d = -0.68), and Conventional (d = -0.33) interests.

"Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d = 1.11), science (d = 0.36), and mathematics (d = 0.34) interests. "

[1] Men and Things, Women and People: A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Interests. Psychological Bulletin 135(6):859-84 · November 2009

Here's another:

"Career choices have been shown to be driven in part by interests, and gender differences in those interests have generally been considered to result from socialization. We explored the contribution of sex hormones to career-related interests, in particular studying whether prenatal androgens affect interests through psychological orientation to Things versus People.

"We examined this question in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who have atypical exposure to androgens early in development, and their unaffected siblings (total N = 125 aged 9 to 26 years). Females with CAH had more interest in Things versus People than did unaffected females, and variations among females with CAH reflected variations in their degree of androgen exposure.

"Results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with Things versus People."

[2] Gendered Occupational Interests: Prenatal Androgen Effects on Psychological Orientation to Things Versus People. Horm Behav. 2011 Sep; 60(4): 313–317. Published online 2011 Jun 12. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2011.06.002

[Traster]

You've missed what his comment was about, it's not that the things vs people dichotomy doesn't exist. It's that it has no relation to engineering. Architecture is just as much things over people as engineering, Architecture is balaanced, engineering isn't. The problem is that in reality, you can do engineering from a people first approach or from a things first approach, and in reality, only one of those approaches will get you through university and into Google.

[camelite]

I take the engineering-from-a-things-first-approach bridge. You feel free to enjoy the other one. I'm sure you'll feel very validated as you spiral into the abyss

[foldr]

Most software engineering jobs aren't predominantly about things rather than people, so I doubt any of that research is relevant, regardless of its quality. You can't just uncritically lump software engineering in with "science", "engineering" and "mathematics" (themselves enormously diverse fields).

It's dangerous to do a "little bit" of research. What you'd actually need to do to get any information (if any really exists in this domain, which I doubt) is to become an expert and read through thousands of papers and books, including all the critiques of the ones you cite.