As an extrovert, I can safely assure you that the world was never structured in a way favouring extroverts. I still had to go out of my way to get the amount of contacts and activity I wanted.
It really was a middle ground which was quite unbalanced by the pandemic and has pretty much come back to a middle ground now (we do 3 days in office - 2 days off but no one here is stupid enough to get a typical American commute thankfully).
The fact that so many in software are extreme introverts will be a surprise to no one however.
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.
I am the furthest thing from an introvert imaginable. I've just spent my weekend surrounded by about 40 of my friends at a festival, and if it were up to me I'd be there for another week minimum.
I'd rather be locked up in a padded room alone than suffer through the office.
Coworkers are not my friends, and the fake socialization I'm forced to put up with there is exhausting, because I just don't care about them. I have actual friends whom I see a lot more often these days thanks to WFH, and nothing on this planet is going to convince me rotting away in an open air office is better than the alternative.
> Coworkers are not my friends, and the fake socialization I'm forced to put up with there is exhausting, because I just don't care about them.
When Google and Facebook were getting headlines for their gourmet cafeterias and fancy game rooms and encouraging their employees to work and socialize at the office, I remember saying “I’d rather drink piss beer at a dive with my real friends than a fancy cocktail at work.
I'm not a Yank, and referencing your other comment in this thread about the commute, I'm a ~10 minute bike ride from my office.
I just don't care about my colleagues in a friendship context. I only interact with them because I have to professionally, but from my last 4 companies I haven't made a single lasting friendship. Because, again, I have a lot of actual friends who I'd much rather see than the random people from my office.
I suppose it depends on your perspectives. The overton window shamed introversion as being weird while glamorizing extroversion. I can't say how hard/easy it has been to be extroverted, but there was no shame factor (which an introverted person would say is a favor).
I question the life choice of anyone that chose to have a 3h commute and apparently they do to because they would like to WFH. I think a lot of people are blaming their companies for situation they put themselves in but that’s on trend with the spirit of the time.
If I can live and work in a comfortable spacious house with a garden and no traffic nearby, why would I subject myself to renting a 1 square meter flat in an overly busy overly pricey city, just so I can slave my hours in an office?
We now have the ability to get big bucks and pay little rent for good housing, and not be stuck like sardines in traffic, and not having to listen to extroverts' incessant yapping.
Why does it make you mad? We nerds don't have the rights to happiness?
> That’s your own choice. No one has a duty to adapt the work environment to suit it.
Nope, wrong. It's not my own choice only. It's the choice of many many people, increasingly more, enough that employers have to reckon with us. Hopefully you don't feel threatened or upset about it, cause it's happening, it's gonna happen more, and no amount of corporate shoe-licking can stop it.
There are plenty of people who are okay to be stuck 3 hours in traffic, or pay an exorbitant rent just for the privilege to be working in a cubicle. Increasingly so, however, many are rethinking this arrangement and refusing to work in an environment that doesn't suit them.
So, I don't know about duty, but employers can go f*ck themselves if they can't provide what I am looking for, and I won't settle for less, both in terms of flexibility, remote options, and salary. And since there's many of us starting to think like that, some employers will start seeing reason, and provide an accommodating work environment. To stay competitive, others will have to follow or settle for sub-par workers and potentially (hopefully soon) go into oblivion.
Employers who can't or won't adapt the work environment to the demands of the workers, will perish, and those who can, will flourish. It's as simple as that.
Oh, really, they do. And no amount of corporate boot-licking can change that. It's, and always will be, worker power.
> You are confusing what you want with what’s happening.
It's possible that you are confusing a potentially bad situation you are in, with what's happening to the rest of the worker force, many of who are empowered and hold a considerable bargaining power in the market. More and more of us have been getting a 4 day work week without the loss of pay, and the right to work remotely.
I, for example, am happily on a 4 day work week, and haven't been to the office in 3 years, and so are many of my colleagues and many other people in the industry. No amount of corp simping or RTO mandate will bring this back.
No jobs near my home and can't afford a decent housing near my office with my salary. But yeah, right, it's my fault. Luckily my employer is more clever than your post and will happily let us work from home for 3 days since he values our work.
Since Germany was mentioned, I will say that there is a policy debate in Germany right now about taking away unemployment benefits [1] from anyone who refuses a job with up to 3h commuting time. So a 3h commute is not necessarily something that people choose, unless the other choice is to not have any household income.
[1] This denomination is slightly oversimplified to avoid giving a lecture on how social welfare works in Germany.
It really was a middle ground which was quite unbalanced by the pandemic and has pretty much come back to a middle ground now (we do 3 days in office - 2 days off but no one here is stupid enough to get a typical American commute thankfully).
The fact that so many in software are extreme introverts will be a surprise to no one however.