

Ask HN: Refactor Social Skills? - oregonic

Any suggestions on how I might go about refactoring my social skills?  I&#x27;m 35, maybe a bit Aspergers (have a clinical diagnosis, but still find people kind be kind of dismissive about it, like its no big deal and I should quit being so dramatic), but certainly I have issues with depression and&#x2F;or social anxiety.<p>Honestly, I don&#x27;t feel super lonely or anything like that...   I was fortunate enough to meet my wife at a young age and I have two sons, and I feel most comfortable with a small number of intimate relationships like I have.<p>But this creates a hardship when it comes to trying to support my family (among other things), and we are living in poverty.<p>How do I go about &quot;fixing&quot; my social skills so that I can get over my anxiety about social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (even Github is social) and use them to get my career back on track.  Right now, I use oDesk to try and minimize social interaction, but I&#x27;m back to doing the same stuff (LAMP stack PHP dev work) I was doing 13 years ago for less money...  still the notion of networking and &quot;selling myself&quot; is completely overwhelming to me.<p>I&#x27;m working with my local Vocational Rehabilitation office to update my Java skills (through O&#x27;Reilly) with the hopes of getting a good job, but I have to figure this out because the idea of having to leave my house for 8+ hours a day and deal with the social demands of people is a huge mental block for me, and causing me to freeze up from making any progress in school...  Even this fear presupposes the fact that I will get a job offer, but at 4+ years since the last dot-com I worked for tanked, I feel like this isn&#x27;t going to happen unless I radically change something.<p>Any suggestions?<p>Thanks in advance.
======
gexla
You probably should be looking for a job rather than attempting to go through
Odesk. The problem with making a living on anything but a W2 is that the level
of difficulty goes way up. I imagine living in poverty while attempting to run
a business is quite common, there is even a term for being modestly profitable
- ramen profitable.

Most people in your same position probably don't want to do that. You need
someone who can take care of the "running a business" parts. Maybe that isn't
so easy these days though, I don't know.

You could do a search for posts by Patio11. He might even pop in as mentioning
Odesk is the magical word to summon him. His posts are gold but they assume
that you are actually into running a business.

It's hard for me to weigh in on your social issues as I don't have the same
problem. You generally get better with practice though. Are there meetups that
you can go to? Are there support groups for people who have the same sorts of
issues? Maybe you could start out with social events for people who share your
traits and then branch out from there.

ETA: I think most important is to be talking to people who share your
condition. People who have been able to deal with it. Running a freelance /
consulting business is hard enough. It's even more difficult when you add a
condition like yours. The market right now (and possibly more so when you
first got started) is such that its pretty easy to get development gigs,
especially for those willing to work for cheap. That may not last forever
though.

~~~
oregonic
Thank you for your thoughtfulness.

Reading blogs like Patio11's have always made me optimistic about being able
to work for myself (when I looked him up and saw "Bingo Card Creator" I
immediately remembered a post from years back that he wrote about bringing
that product to market).

If I am marketing myself for a full time job or a freelance gig, it seems like
I need some kind of public personal built on social media to back up a resume.
I don't have that kind of footprint, and I feel like I need to change that.

If I tweet a bunch, ask/answer a bunch of questions on Stack Exchange, and
create some useful library for a fashionable language on Github, does that
solve this problem? Or is that a total simplification?

~~~
patio11
_it seems like I need some kind of public personal built on social media to
back up a resume._

Absolutely not required. Many of the best engineers I know don't maintain any
social media accounts at all. Many more lurk rather than e.g. writing 500k
words a year in a publicly visible fashion.

Tweeting, answering questions on Stack Exchange, and creating a useful library
does not cause engagements to magically offer themselves to you. Convincing
people that you can create something which makes their business better is,
generally, what gets one engagements. If one hypothetically wants to, one can
create online artifacts which tend to widen the funnel for inbound interest,
but then you still have to sell the inbound leads on working with you. Even if
you have 500k+ words of fairly high quality online, you still might find
yourself getting most actual consulting leads in meatspace. (This was true for
me.)

Many folks have no substantial inbound interest from folks wanting them to
work, and have to meet people in e.g. meetups, conferences, and the local
community to get engagements. That's not the worse thing in the world. I
personally rapidly lose capability to continue high-level interactions after
the first hour or two, but luckily an hour or two is all you need to put up
with for e.g. a client meeting or a meetup. If you can't do an hour, do thirty
minutes and leave early. If you can't do thirty minutes, do ten minutes, and
work your way up.

~~~
oregonic
Thank you for your reply and thank you for correcting me on this
misconception. It seems I am putting too much energy into trying to fix a
perceived problem instead of focusing on the more pressing concern of actual
socialization.

Your time limit advice is solid. I can do an hour, maybe even 2 with fellow
nerds before I get too overstimulated. I almost forgot I am capable of this,
so thanks for the reminder. It makes me feel better about getting a job since
I should have some time to recoup in my cube in between meetings if there
aren't constant interrupts.

Maybe a job with constant interrupts and/or meetings I should just avoid.

------
dnt404-1
I don't know if this is a feasible step for you considering you have a family
to support, but you can do what I did. I was starting age 24 when I dropped
programming for over a year, and studied master's in counseling psychology
plus sociology (2 degrees). 14 months later, today, I turned into an extrovert
:) not permanently though. I can now turn into introvert/extrovert according
to the situation and need. I am more adaptable and more sure of myself.

Programming jobs and the people it brings can be isolating at times, and if
you are trying to improve your social skills, it is not a very effective
environment, generally.

I turned not because of the degrees,but the people I met there in those
programs. When you spent 3/5 hours a day discussing/debating/fighting/having-
fun with another groups of human beings, you just change. I was not too
isolated before I worked in programming to begin with though in my case; it
was working in programming that slowly made me too isolated.

Being a total geek has its perks, but the rest of the people don't care about
hackernews ;) Start from there.

~~~
oregonic
Yes I think the ability to be somewhat extroverted (given a short enough time
interval) would be good for me... I remember taking the Briggs-Meyer test in
2005 when I was doing pretty good socially and moving up in my career, I
wasn't extremely introverted at that time, just on the cusp.

Then, yes, I got more isolated. I moved away from the city where I grew up
(Portland, OR) and had friends to a rural setting (to a small farm, which was
I dream of mine)... After 5 years on the farm, I had to move out (and am still
dealing with all the negative feelings of betrayal by my parents and siblings
for how it happened), and I moved even further away.

------
dllthomas
I expect deliberate practice would also be of some help, as it is with many
skills. I don't know whether it would be of _sufficient_ help, or really have
any more specific recommendations, but it might be an area to explore. With
limited resources, of course, there's a trade off between spending time and
effort improving these skills, and spending time and effort structuring your
life so as to be less reliant upon them.

------
bjourne
You can't refactor your social skills. Sure you can learn tricks such as "keep
eye contact", "firm handshakes" and "smile more" but if you prefer solitary
activities instead of people, no amount of refactoring will fix that. If
you're 35 years old, your personality is unlikely to change very much, you
just have to live with who you are. Maybe try for remote positions, work from
home or part time work?

------
paulhauggis
Odesk is terrible for finding good work. It's better to go through craigslist.

~~~
oregonic
Ok, my problem is:

CL -> Resume -> Resume Screening -> Social Media Check (!?)

Which raises an exception in the hiring process because I don't look legit on
social media. Am I wrong on this?

~~~
loumf
Yes. I would estimate that even among good developers, it's less than 1 in 10.
You might be overly influenced by looking at HN type job listings -- they tend
to ask for GitHub and possibly check Twitter, etc.

You can get a payroll job in a lot of companies being able to do enterprise
web apps that will pay well and they wouldn't imagine that you need to have
social media presence.

The resume screen is basically a keyword match -- the most important thing you
need to do for the screen is write a good cover letter that directly addresses
the job ad. For the interview, do a lot of research on the company and show
interest in their specific position. Assuming you can pass the tech screen,
that will put you in top 10%, because most people do 0 research and come to
the interview acting like they never heard of the Internet.

Go on a couple of interviews where you aren't super interested in the job (but
can definitely get through the resume screen) just to get some practice.

~~~
oregonic
Ok, thanks for the insight. I have definitely been influenced by HN and in
particular a blog post on the Huffington Post[1] where the author states 80%
of employers do this. I thought in tech, the rate would therefore be even
higher. But now I think that's probably not the case, because of the
personality of a lot of devs, the 80% statistic could be totally made up
(can't believe I fell for that), and that I probably shouldn't be reading an
AOL property for career advice at this point.

Thanks for the tips... I keep hearing how devs are so hard to find and how so
many people can't even FizzBuzz, and if I can just get through to a technical
interview, I should be OK. So far, that hasn't worked out, but it seems like
the best plan.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-p-joyce/job-search-
tips_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-p-joyce/job-search-
tips_b_4834361.html)

------
lily2014
You are already an adult.A 35 year old adult. Just make more friends, and
communicate with them a lot. You can overcome this issue by yourself

