Work In IT is socially isolating?

Post Reply New Topic

Why do people always suggest working in information technology for people who don't want to deal with other people or have social issues? From what I understand, programmers work in teams with whom they need to communicate, DBAs and sys admins are often taking complaints or questions from the system users, etc. These don't seem like isolated working conditions.

Mainly because coding is by necessity a rather solitary endeavor. But you are right about the teamwork involved in any large project.

it is isolated compared to the rest of the office. the only work related communication you get is from your users and even that is not very often

It really depends on the area of IT you are talking about. Some IT workers spend a lot of time with customers. My husband is a networks engineer and today will be spent solely dealing with faults, which means he needs to get info from customers, contact suppliers, which may mean he needs to be assertive or forceful with them and then he gives feedback on what he's doing to solve the issue. He's very social (on a one to one basis) and enjoys this part of his work, but it would not suit me. His friend, who worked in a similar capacity, left his job, due to the fact that it impacted on his social anxiety.

Last edited by Mummy_of_Peanut on 09 Nov 2012, 9:33 am, edited 2 times in total.

I think some people see the image of the 1980's IT guy and think that IT is isolation.

It's really not. Lots of jobs like IT support require human interaction. A decent amount of it.

There are some jobs like programming that require less interaction, but they still do require some. Software writing is usually broken up into teams.

From my understanding, you're not allowed to interact with customers if you work in IT unless you're from India.

I work in IT and find it is a good mix of interaction and being left alone. Sometimes I have meetings all day, other times I'm at my desk all day. Giving presentations and trainings can be a challenge but not too bad. Pay is pretty good too (80K) in a town where that goes a long way.

You will never be able to work without some interaction with other people, otherwise you wouldn't be able to sell your services. But I believe you can minimise this and use email to do most of the communication, thereby reducing stress.

For better or worse, all technical jobs now have more emphasis on communication and working in teams. This is especially true of large companies where you would invariably work as part of a large team and have to deal with more politics and social interaction. Any on-site work will be like this.

Fortunately, the internet is making working at home a more and more popular option. Reduced hiring and employment costs and employment flexibility are big draws for companies.

Keep reading if you want to know about (what I think is) the best IT job and some of the things I've learnt doing it.

Doing IT work for small companies is a good option because you will have the benefit of being the one IT guy. Realising that most people are very ignorant when it comes to anything technical allows you to have a magical quality that you can leverage to be a vital asset of any small company. Web design, web marketing and managing small databases are some key skills you could easily sell to any small company. Small companies want a website they can market themselves on and sell their products, they will often have someone to do the content, but the graphics and technical stuff is not their skill set. The small company will naturally assume you would prefer to work on your own computer and from home, and it's far cheaper for them too. Have a few of these contracts and you can make good money.

The only key social skill would be maintaining contact via email. The company will often know what it wants and tell you that. Just make sure you respond telling them you can do that, or if not, why not and what are the alternatives. Also give a deadline. Then do the work and email them once it's done, making sure to point out what you have done - surprisingly, people sometimes don't notice the changes they asked for. There's nothing more frustrating than not receiving a reply to an email. Reply within 24 hours with "Yes, I can do that by the end of the week" or "Yes, I will look into that and get back to you by the end of the week." Even if you can do the job, people will find someone else if you don't send these basic replies.

Point out what you've done behind the scenes or they will never know! If you can provide some proof, all the better. eg. I cleaned up the code to make your site run faster and use less resources, so it will be cheaper to run. It will also be easier and cheaper to maintain in the future. Attach screenshot of a decades worth of poorly maintained code, screenshot of beautiful cleaned up code. If you can provide stats then even better. Finally, document everything. This makes it easier for you to come back to and is also good proof of work for the person paying you. It's professional too.

Note that some of this is very wishy-washy. Understand that this is what non-technical NT people want. The 'magic' of technical work and telling them what you do and how that benefits them are the key skills to being seen as valuable.

Microsoft has also recently made a lot of their .NET stuff free (Visual Studio Express, WebMatrix) so you can tap into a lot of companies .NET or older ASP websites and develop Windows 8 apps. Joomla is also a good thing to know.

There's also opportunities to make money with apps for phones and tablets now for very little investment. Another rising request is "can you make me an iPhone app for my company?" Nearly all business people have a smart phone now, so having a mobile website is a good marketing tool.

I think there are good opportunities for work at home employment that offer great flexibility and minimise social interaction. As your experience grows you can increase your fees and scale back your hours.

I have worked in IT for about 15 years now. It really depends on the company and the departments within IT. In today's IT department you are expected to have social skills. Not having social skills in a fast ticket to the door in most cases. Also you will find in IT a mix of different types of personalities. People in IT can also be very competitive indeed. This is something Aspies find hard to deal with. Although I have been in IT for many years, I have decided to make a career change. I enjoy numbers. Maybe thinking of getting into Actuary/statistics type career. lots of math indeed.

I wonder if these people understand information technology at all. The ability of people to offer advice about what they don't know seems absolutely unlimited.

Information technology is a spectrum, too. The term is so broad that it's meaningless. It's difficult to lump hardware technicians, software developers, and web designers under the same umbrella term. Imagine a spectrum that lumped everything from auto parts store employees to Formula One engineers under one umbrella.