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From my experience, so-called "knowledge workers" tend to be more introverted than average. Even some stereotypes about different professions (like programmer or biologists) and industries (like finance, biotec or tec-startup) hold to some extend. Being self-employed may on the one hand worsen your problem: Since you'd be billing your expert knowledge, your clients may challenge your ideas more than they would with an employee. So you find yourself arguing about the best solutions more as well as you might have to verbalise your progress. On the other hand, you might communicate with management rather than co-workers, so this communication might be more concise. After all, introvert or extrovert, it boils down to culture. Is your employer allowing you to work from home even without a pandemic? Do your colleagues share your values, so that a discussion about progress and best practises comes more naturally? Are you forced into meeting structures you and maybe your colleagues may not find beneficial bur burdensome? It might sound stereotypical, but maybe you as a quantitative researcher, should consider switching to an industry more focussed on STEM and less on "exploiting" the financial system. This is no moral judgement about the work of hedge funds, but these companies might attract more of extroverts than a typical (bio|physics|...) research company. One last thing: I consider myself as an introvert, too. And still, I managed to give training and coaching sessions to tech teams. My personal experience and what I observed in other people: Your colleagues do matter. This "culture" thing won't turn an introvert to a party animal, but in the right setting, I was amazed how socialising even the the most uncommunicative introverts have become. |