Corporate culture isn’t for everyone. One Reddit user made that clear in a recent post highlighting how modern work was designed for extroverts rather than introverts.
“I’m a good worker,” wrote a Redditor with the username justavoicewithno. “[I] have always been told by upper management; however, I’m an introvert and don’t do anything besides work.”
They go on to explain how they avoided any volunteer work, social gatherings, dinner parties or friend requests from co-workers because they didn’t want to spend any of their “leisure time to deal with people I’d rather not.”
“I just want to do what I’m paid for and go home,” the original post reads. The comment section was split, but some users echoed these sentiments.
“Extroverts in the workplace suck,” wrote one commenter.
“I guess some extroverts are unaware of how uncomfortable/draining it is to have kumbaya moments all the time,” wrote another.
Is the modern workplace really skewed towards extroverts, and does this have consequences that could impact an employee’s earning potential?
Extroverts do have it easier
According to an article from the Cleveland Clinic, an introvert is someone who thinks more internally, which means they think better alone and prioritize alone time. An extrovert, by contrast, draws their energy from socializing and interacting with the outside world.
Researchers at the University of Toronto found that extroverts enjoy a greater advantage over their introverted peers in the modern workplace. The 2019 study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, found that extroversion had plenty of advantages at work, but the greatest benefits were in four specific areas: motivational, emotional, interpersonal and performance-related.
Simply put, those who worked better in groups thrived in corporate environments.
There’s more research that identified another layer of potential advantages for this privileged group of social butterflies: more pay over time.
Researchers found in 2018 that men with above-average levels of extroversion were likely to have higher incomes. Over the duration of a person's career, this benefit could be worth $500,000, according to the research.
Clearly, people who love office parties and socializing large groups enjoy a leg up in the modern workplace. But the rise in remote work could shift the balance of power.
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Work from home
Spurred on by the pandemic, working from home for at least a portion of the week has become the norm.
Many offices throughout the largest cities in America are still vacant, even as corporate giants have been pleading with workers to come back to in-person work.
If the trend continues, introverts could finally see the culture gap diminish with a decrease in after-work drinking sessions and small talk with co-workers in the parking lot as more employees prioritize spending their precious free time with their friends and family.
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Vishesh Raisinghani is a financial journalist covering personal finance, investing and the global economy. He's also the founder of Sharpe Ascension Inc., a content marketing agency focused on investment firms. His work has appeared in Moneywise, Yahoo Finance!, Motley Fool, Seeking Alpha, Mergers & Acquisitions Magazine and Piggybank.
