Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

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Unfortunately your assurances don't mean much because neither one of us has experienced the other's struggles and so neither of us is equipped to make an objective comparison.

I can tell you that up through high school I watched my fellow introverts get shamed and bullied for being quiet and awkward, but I never saw someone get bullied for being too outgoing.

I can tell you that all my life (including in this very comment section) I've had people explicitly tell me that if I just tried harder I'd learn to like social activities because humans are just wired that way, but I never heard anyone say that if a highly social person just tried harder they'd learn to like a quiet weekend at home.

I can tell you that I've only started receiving promotions and recognition at work to the extent that I've been able to feign extroversion, and my more introverted colleagues who aren't as good at faking it don't do as well.

None of that—being bullied and belittled and passed over for not being social enough—has ever felt like a middle ground to me, and there's not a lot that you could say that would persuade me to view it that way. It's easy to think of the status quo as the middle ground when it's comfortably on your side of the line, so I'll need more than your assurances to doubt my own experience.

> I never heard anyone say that if a highly social person just tried harder they'd learn to like a quiet weekend at home

The full school institution actually do it. Teachers tell students to stop speaking to each others for most courses during the week. Moreover some teachers explicitly talk about the joy of quietly reading books, and directly ask students to do so.

I'm fine with the way school works, especially considering the limited resources they have. Nevertheless, teachers do not often encourage extroverted skills that are useful in group work, oral presentations, etc. Exams seem to favor people that are able to stay hours long alone thinking about abstract concepts.

Everyone like a quiet weekend at home from time to time. My experience from a non American background is that people get introverts fairly well (also as a very awkward and to himself teenager I missed the memo where it said introversion was supposed to be shameful) but social interaction is essential.

Obviously you only get promoted when you can promote your work. No one is going to magically guess it exists.

Anyway HN is funny sometimes in its refusal to face that they are the odd ones. I fear that any person who would have a contrarian opinion as pretty much moved on from ever discussing WFH here I the same way it was a complete waste of time to argue with the anti-systemd crowd.

I remain convinced that all the people who say WFH should be an evidence are actually petitioning for their job to offshored in the midterm but that’s me.

> Obviously you only get promoted when you can promote your work. No one is going to magically guess it exists.

There are managers, like me, who will judge your work by your work, not by how loud you are, nor by how much you drank with me at the company party. If you are a developer, I don't need to magically guess about your work, I can see it in your commits, I can review them, I can see how much, how often and how well you contribute.

As a matter of fact, no matter the amount of talk and "promoting" your work, I will still judge you ONLY based on the actual work. Maybe I am slightly biased against "talkers", but I've found out that doers' work often needs no "promotion" and it speaks for itself. As for talkers, well, they are probably still talking. Maybe it's better if they go to a big company, so they can mix up with doers who actually do work.

The less we talk about the work, and more actually doing it, the faster we can do the work, and get on with our lives, wouldn't you agree?

> I remain convinced that all the people who say WFH should be an evidence are actually petitioning for their job to offshored in the midterm but that’s me.

People who think the only differentiating factor between them and a lower paid worker in a different country, is not their work, but their physical presence and self-marketing tend to work for bosses who enjoy seeing their workers as a form of control. I think it's a match made in heaven.

Luckily, there are also people who are confident in the quality of their work without having to "market it", and bosses who judge a person's skill by the results. Which, I hope you agree, is also a match made in heaven.

European and pretty hardcore introvert here: you're not mentioning the important fact that introverts are basically invisible to 99% of the fairer sex.

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