Ask HN: How do I fix the problem of not wanting to know new people?

[turnleavesover]

I'm in my mid-late 30's and for my age I don't really know a lot of people very well.

While I've worked on-and-off for 11 years in a career, I'm about as capable as a typical new graduate when it comes to relying on my network for jobs. And I'm just as financially dependent as a typical new grad (aside from the fact I have no college debt, I'm thankful for that).

They say networking is key, but after graduation, I have trouble being genuinely invested or interested in meeting people. This seems like a big problem to me. Other software professionals my age are getting by with steady jobs and a network of people to pass the word along, and I don't have that.

I have a small group of close friends, the ones I'd be fine eating out with, drinking or playing video games together. However, they are clueless about the industry I work in (software development) and do not work in fields related to it. They come up empty-handed for referrals or job leads.

Same goes for my entire family. They're mostly a family of first-gen immigrants who don't really know how the white-collar world works.

And the professionals I work with, or find in tech meetups, they know the industry well, but I have trouble being genuinely interested them as people. So of course they'd be annoyed when I message them out of the blue after years of not talking to ask a favor from them.

So it's a frustrating situation... the friends that I am close with, at the same time, are not people that could put my name out there for jobs and vetting me for interviews.

Why am I disinterested in being friendly with professionals? How can I solve this problem so I don't go struggling through life without a professional support group?

[CuriouslyC]

Do you genuinely want to know more people, or are you just looking to advance your career?

If career advancement is all you're interested in, go to toastmasters, practice presenting, work up a good presentation and get speaking slots at meetups or conventions. Talk to people who come up to you afterwards. If you're so inclined, add them to linkedin/facebook. When you're ready to write another presentation, contact the people you met and ask them what they would find helpful. Wash rinse repeat.

Contributing to a notable open source project on github is also a great way to make contacts, and they'll often know prominent places that use it. If you're going to work with a specific tech, an email from the project lead will look good, as will an active commit log.

[turnleavesover]

I'd like to advance my career, but not at the risk of being ingenuine to people. I'm unable to form long-term bonds with other professionals, though. I view colleagues from a more utilitarian point of view, only there to help us carry out the work, that serves a practical need for me, but not necessary for my personal company.

With the suggestions you made, I think there's a misunderstanding. I am not seeking to be exceptional. I am a below-average programmer that just seeks to become average and is fine being average in my career. The average person does not go to Toastmasters, and the average programmer does have to contribute to a major Github project. There are a lot of developers 40 and over that are pretty average and working steady jobs, and they don't do any "extra-professional" work for themselves.

My career goal: to be an average developer without a care in the world. No Toastmasters, no being a leader, no tech evangelism, just want job security and clock out in a timely manner every day.

[__sdegutis]

> I'm unable to form long-term bonds with other professionals, though. I view colleagues from a more utilitarian point of view, only there to help us carry out the work, that serves a practical need for me, but not necessary for my personal company.

That's probably what all this is stemming from. Look at your colleagues and coworkers as people, just trying to make a living like you are. You don't need to go to bars with them, but showing a genuine interest in how they're doing in the morning when you both get into work can go a long way. At the end of the day, we're all just people trying to get by. If you have that friendly acquaintanceship then it will be rewarding in its own right for both of you, but could also lead to jobs in the future, not that this should be the reason for it, because like you said, then it would be disingenuous.

[ordu]

I have a condition similar to yours and I deal with it by consultations with psychotherapist. I can discuss a lot of situations with her, and to reflect on what I did and (more importantly) what I didn't. There is some subtle code of friendliness, like asking pointless questions ("how do you do"), saying pointless things (like reflecting your current emotional state), and so on. I need to see when it is time for one more pointless action, and to do it. It is not hard to do, but not so easy to discover what and when to do, so psychotherapist is a real help here. For me it looks not like I'm trying to be ingenuine, it's like I'm trying to look a human being for others, so they see me as the person, not as a coworker.

It is mine condition, and my way to deal with it. Seems plausible for me that your case is like mine, because you are saying that your parents are immigrants and very probable that you just don't have some behavioral reflexes. In any case, you can find cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist and discuss this matters with her. If your case is not like mine, that at least you'll know that it isn't. Hopefully you'll find what you can do. But in any case you start with desire to change yourself.

[turnleavesover_]

Could you explain to me how immigrant parents correlate with different behavioral reflexes? I don't know about this but it sounds interesting to me.

[__sdegutis]

Sometimes all it takes is just emailing a former coworker to say hi and ask what's new, and let them know you're in the market. I think a lot of us are worried about being too intrusive, but I personally would have always been glad to get an email like this from anyone I've ever worked with in the past. So it seems like maybe we're worrying over nothing when we hesitate to reach out and just say hi in a friendly email.

[turnleavesover]

Being direct has not really worked in my experience, and someone even told me that opening with a request for a referral is like asking for sex on the first date.

[m1573rp34130dy]

try hanging around engineers, or geologists...they tend to have the almost daimetric qualities of intellect and being cut from a coarse crude cloth [dwile rag] perhaps there is a socioeconomic class division at play here...

[LORD_GARTH]

too rowdy to be science geeks