[slenocchio]

Really appreciate your response Archipelagia. I'm in the process of trying to be more social in my day to day, however I work a remote tech job which limits my social interaction for a large part of the day. I've thought about trying a sales job as you suggested...any advice on switching into this field? I have ~6 years experience as a developer/manager, making that sort of career shift would be pretty drastic but I'm open to it.

[Archipelagia]

Hm, first, why exactly would you like to make this shift? Purely to train social skills?

If so, I'd recommend finding some small sales side-gig over the weekends instead of doing a full career change. Sales can very rewarding (both in terms of money and satisfaction), but 1. you need to be pretty good to make decent money and 2. if it doesn't suit you, it can be extremely stressful.

On the other hand doing some smaller sales on the side could be a nice way to test the waters. And if you decide to make a full switch later, having some prior experience will look nicely.

For the side gig, I'd probably look into direct sales vs phone or online. It's more stressful and the experience doesn't directly translate into doing B2B later (I'm assuming you'll want to move into tech sales down the line), but it's very much a crash course in building self confidence.

[more_corn]

You could soft shift into more social things in your personal life. Attend meetups Join an exercise group (there’s a running group near me) There’s even a casual conversation group in San Francisco (although this is good practice it’s not something I find fulfilling)