# does it annoy you that the majority of british (and perhaps western) jobs in general have shifted to other more social areas?



## indignant misanthrope (Jun 15, 2021)

from looking at history it seems that the time before I was born a person could make a good living within the manufacturing industry, things like the steel industry and industrial based jobs I think I would have dealt with much better from a social anxiety perspective. you didn't need a boatload of qualifications and could earn a good honest wage and take pride in what you are doing. jobs these days seem to be more focused on networking with other people and being social in some ways which is an absolute nightmare for social anxiety. maybe I am over romanticising this but I can imagine working in an industrial job in the past you were just left to get on with things and because of the nature of the job and noise involved actually talking and stuff would get in the way of doing the job efficiently or effectively?
seems from looking at this article things were very different in this country especially in the north before I was born Why doesn't Britain make things any more?
i'm not sure how much better things are now in terms of readdressing the imbalance? but according to wikipedia the services sector now accounts for 79% of gdp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_Kingdom maybe I have got this wrong but I get the impression that the services sector might be worse for those of us with social anxiety?


----------



## mt moyt (Jul 29, 2015)

I agree, though i think its all over the world. Automation is taking over physical jobs and people are left with interacting with other people. Being social was always an advantage i think but its become increasingly so. People have become the customer, the product and the job.


----------



## aqwsderf (Aug 16, 2013)

Hard to automate social jobs


----------



## CNikki (Aug 9, 2013)

Because the jobs are automated if not outsourced to places that pay far less for the job.


----------



## either/or (Apr 27, 2020)

This is absolutely the case, even with regards to professional occupations. Most large companies now offshore a large portion of their IT and accounting and HR departments. What used to be good quality professional jobs requiring a degree are now outsourced to staffing companies in China, India, Poland, etc. Low wage locations. A lot of companies don't even hire entry level staff any longer. Those lower rung jobs go overseas. The only jobs that remain are managerial positions which require a lot of networking and interpersonal skills. All the analytical type positions that introverts like me excel at are being eliminated. Obviously the problem with this is we can't be all managers. A healthy economy ensures adequate employment for people with varying talents and skill sets. The economies we have in the West seem to be highly distorted.


----------



## Blue Dino (Aug 17, 2013)

As most other replies here have said, automation has greatly decreased the amount of job openings gradually. And this is only beginning. 😞 If Artificial Intelligence ever become a thing in the future (likely), then even specialized skilled labor and jobs that requires specialized expertise or creativity, will also be automated. Even socializing jobs will probably be automated, given how there have been AI recently have been pretty good at innovating them to be "social" and it can self-learn very efficiently. The future is kind of scary thinking about this.


----------



## WillYouStopDave (Jul 14, 2013)

Most things annoy me. As far as this particular situation goes? All jobs originally came out of the necessity to get things done by any means necessary/possible (and especially as cheaply as possible). 99% of businesses never went into the process of hiring people to help the people they were hiring. They needed those people to do something they couldn't get done any other way and they were willing to accept the problems associated with human weaknesses because they basically had no choice. 

It's worth pointing out that when you go to get a job, the employer is already looking for traits that make their hires as close to machines as possible. They don't want people who are unreliable and make a lot of mistakes (even though humans are inherently unreliable long-term). So as soon as it makes sense to replace humans with machines, they will. And won't care.


----------



## JH1983 (Nov 14, 2013)

I guess it depends on where you live. Those kinds of jobs and just blue collar jobs in general are big here in the rural Midwest US and also in high demand. Myself and most people I know work jobs like truck driving, factory work, coal mining, skilled trades, agriculture, etc. Most are desperately hiring too, so those jobs are out there it just seems like most people don't want them. 

They have pros and cons like any job. Most are dangerous to some degree. Hard on the body. Lower earning potential than educated jobs for the most part. Also easier to get into without going into debt. Can make a decent living right away. Little to no social component depending on the job. 

I wasn't able to get a degree due to public speaking anxiety. So I'm grateful to have a job with near zero human interaction that allows me to earn a decent living. My particular area of trucking is unlikely to be automated anytime soon either.


----------



## Pechorin (Mar 3, 2020)

It's more the fact that the changes to the UK economy throughout the 20th century were driven by a certain logic that, shall we say, wasn't necessarily representative of the needs and interests of the population as a whole. That's the main annoyance for me (as it continues to be).


----------



## Canadian Brotha (Jan 23, 2009)

I’ve never worked a job that I’m truly invested, I tend to view work as a means to an end, just a way to pay the bills, not something I pride myself on or tie seriously to my identity. It does annoy me that I have to try to sell myself as highly social or sociable to get a well paying job, & that because I don’t want to take on debt for school, & can’t “fake it till I make it”(as is often the advice given),that I’ll likely be in low paying work till my death…I’ll never be able to manage any kind of office or high networking type of work, even if hired I’m guaranteed to burn out & quit or be fired because of my burning out


----------



## Mlt18 (Jun 29, 2016)

Yeah. The job I’m in I can technically get by not being social without too many issues, but there is still an expectation to be social and I feel like extroverts get favored.


----------

