I need to answer this because I solved this problem as a super introvert. This reply will get buried.
Quite honestly, I realized I was boring and my life was boring. I had a boring job with no travel that didn’t involve meeting anyone interesting.
I quit my boring career and deliberately filtered for:
- has a technical element but not software development
- travel, or interact with a lot of people as a result of the job
- has some interesting exciting, creative element
If your life sucks. It sucks. I used to be hyper depressed and tried all these superficial mental self motivation techniques, dating apps, meetups, social groups. It felt totally forced and fake.
A lot of people on here said it already: if you are going to a meet up or other event to try to make friends as an introvert. It feels desperate, unnatural, forced and wrong. It doesn’t work because you are doing it out of desperation and bring desperate, negative feelings into it and it doesn’t leave you relaxed and able to connect properly with a bunch of strangers who you are trying to force yourself to talk to.
At one point I finally had enough. I said fuck this I am not living like this. It lead me to be way more selective about jobs; I filtered the shit out of every boring ass job. If it was some job sitting inside typing computer codes I didn’t want it. There are unlimited supply.
If you want to meet women, work on things related to climate, sustainability and impact. Seriously.
You guys are a bunch of boring fucks programming database software. Women don’t want to hear it. Women care about impact and social causes. If I had to do it over again as a developer, I’d pick a job with an impact, climate, sustainability or democracy or emerging markets element. Unlimited interesting and educated women in those fields to talk to.
Further more, your job is no longer fucking boring.
Sorry - you can transition programming skills into fields with a real world impact and your social circle will automatically explode and suddenly you will be hyper interesting and meet a ton of women and people who are passionate and care.
It might hurt to hear - but undifferentiated introverted nerd number 40 million is like krypontite to females. You have nothing going on inside your soul that is creative.
Women are emotions. If you are programming rust on embedded systems, that is not sexy. Your friends will be boring. Your life will be boring: you will be boring.
So I solved it by moving into an externally facing role
That mixed programming with customer and other interactions.
Life doesn’t happen behind a desk. I looked in the mirror and I made the call: My life sucks. I need to fix it.
Once you realize your life sucks and you are boring, take six months to find a better job which bakes in the above.
Can’t help you otherwise.
Another great piece of advice is to find immigrants. Americans are not friendly. People in middle America are also more friendly.
I met my wife through a secretary who was a super extroverted person.
You know what I did? I asked her for help.
If you can find female friends, ask them for help. If you can’t make friends with a single woman, an extroverted one, without it being about how she looks that’s another problem.
Learn to make friends with women without trying to have sec with them. Women will get you other women.
Not all women are into activism. In fact, as an older guy (who has been through a number of relationships in my younger days) I'd advise a guy to strongly avoid those who are into activism. For the same types of reasons I'd avoid overly religious women.
This is not to say that there is anything wrong with beliefs on social justice or religious beliefs, but women who get too carried away with these things tend to have other issues in my experience that they are externalizing. They will make your life hell, particularly as they age. And you will be continually measured and judged by whatever thing they glommed onto.
Look for a women that wants to be a mother if that is what you are into.
Otherwise, just a good person with good sense and an even temper who can somewhat keep their life together and who gives you love and who you can love back. Someone who is happy and cares about others is best.
But I do tend to agree on "computer people". They aren't usually who I chose to hang with in off hours for the reasons you mention.
I've been having similar thoughts about my software engineering career. A lot of people who are not in the field might think that it's great being able to work from home, having freedom during the day etc.
In my view though, there's a huge cost to having a job like this. Software engineering jobs tend to be quite alienating, boring to the engineer and uninteresting to other people. My partner (who's in a creative industry) would always have something to say after a day at work. Me? It was pretty much always 'well I was programming most of the day, nothing happened really and I hardly even spoke to anyone'.
I think I'm close to the point of saying fuck it. What I do besides work doesn't change the fact that a day job should be about more than this. It's also quite striking to me that you mentioned careers with impact (climate etc.) as I've been thinking about creating a business around those topics. It's either that or maybe change careers entirely, but I'm sure I won't be a software engineer working like this for much longer.
>Women are emotions. If you are programming rust on embedded systems, that is not sexy. Your friends will be boring. Your life will be boring: you will be boring.
>So I solved it by moving into an externally facing role That mixed programming with customer and other interactions.
What did this do for you? Did you get new friends, hobbies, etc?
Quite honestly, I realized I was boring and my life was boring. I had a boring job with no travel that didn’t involve meeting anyone interesting.
I quit my boring career and deliberately filtered for:
- has a technical element but not software development - travel, or interact with a lot of people as a result of the job - has some interesting exciting, creative element
If your life sucks. It sucks. I used to be hyper depressed and tried all these superficial mental self motivation techniques, dating apps, meetups, social groups. It felt totally forced and fake.
A lot of people on here said it already: if you are going to a meet up or other event to try to make friends as an introvert. It feels desperate, unnatural, forced and wrong. It doesn’t work because you are doing it out of desperation and bring desperate, negative feelings into it and it doesn’t leave you relaxed and able to connect properly with a bunch of strangers who you are trying to force yourself to talk to.
At one point I finally had enough. I said fuck this I am not living like this. It lead me to be way more selective about jobs; I filtered the shit out of every boring ass job. If it was some job sitting inside typing computer codes I didn’t want it. There are unlimited supply.
If you want to meet women, work on things related to climate, sustainability and impact. Seriously.
You guys are a bunch of boring fucks programming database software. Women don’t want to hear it. Women care about impact and social causes. If I had to do it over again as a developer, I’d pick a job with an impact, climate, sustainability or democracy or emerging markets element. Unlimited interesting and educated women in those fields to talk to.
Further more, your job is no longer fucking boring.
Sorry - you can transition programming skills into fields with a real world impact and your social circle will automatically explode and suddenly you will be hyper interesting and meet a ton of women and people who are passionate and care.
It might hurt to hear - but undifferentiated introverted nerd number 40 million is like krypontite to females. You have nothing going on inside your soul that is creative.
Women are emotions. If you are programming rust on embedded systems, that is not sexy. Your friends will be boring. Your life will be boring: you will be boring.
So I solved it by moving into an externally facing role That mixed programming with customer and other interactions.
Life doesn’t happen behind a desk. I looked in the mirror and I made the call: My life sucks. I need to fix it.
Once you realize your life sucks and you are boring, take six months to find a better job which bakes in the above.
Can’t help you otherwise.
Another great piece of advice is to find immigrants. Americans are not friendly. People in middle America are also more friendly.
I met my wife through a secretary who was a super extroverted person.
You know what I did? I asked her for help.
If you can find female friends, ask them for help. If you can’t make friends with a single woman, an extroverted one, without it being about how she looks that’s another problem.
Learn to make friends with women without trying to have sec with them. Women will get you other women.