Stop Draining Your Social Battery at Work. Join Tech.

Social events can breed anxiety in anyone. For family affairs, you might worry about whether your relatives will approve of your career choices or pester you with questions about your latest relationship. At a work happy hour, you might struggle to make friends with your colleagues or impress your chatty boss. All that stress might leave you feeling exhausted and ready for a long stretch of solo time.

The degree to which interacting with others drains you or fills you up with energy is what many call your “social battery.” And you may not realize it, but choosing the right career path is crucial for keeping it in check.

What is a social battery?

Everyone, naturally, has a different social battery. Some lose energy when socializing and gain it back from spending time away from others — these people often refer to themselves as introverts. Others, like extroverts, actually recharge their batteries in social situations and find themselves losing steam when they’re left alone. And even others face some combination of the two, both draining and replenishing their batteries while amongst others.

If you tend to feel overwhelmed by the interactions you face day to day, you likely have a social battery that can’t keep up with what’s required in your job. The solution may be as simple as changing your work environment.

The types of work that can drain your social battery

People with social batteries that deplete around others are not usually the happiest or most fulfilled in sales, customer service, or hospitality. Think about the responsibilities these jobs and others in similar fields require: making phone calls, meeting clients or customers in person, responding to verbal and written requests, managing and delegating. In short, you’ll spend little time not in social interactions. 

This isn’t to say, of course, that introverts are bad at these jobs — in fact, some research suggests they make better executives than those who identify as extroverted. Rather, they might excel in these roles at the cost of their own mental and emotional health, so much so that they eventually become frustrated, unmotivated, and/or unproductive employees.

Signs that your job is draining your social battery

How can you spot the problem before it impacts your personal and professional life? Here are some tell-tale signs your job is draining your social battery:

Why this matters

Using up all your social battery at work isn’t just a surefire way to burn out_{How to Recover From Burnout by Switching to Tech} — it can also negatively affect your life outside of the office. When all your energy and focus have gone toward your bosses, colleagues, and clients, you’re left with little drive upon leaving work to spend time with friends and family or pursue important hobbies. In turn, you might come to resent your career_{Why You Hate Your Job and What to Do About It} for taking away activities that satisfy and fulfill you.

Not every job is like this, though

One of the best ways to protect your social battery is to balance the time you spend around others and on your own. Taking breaks between meetings, scheduling alone time on your calendar, and setting aside evenings to decompress are all smart solutions. But these options often only work temporarily if you’re stuck in a job with never-ending social obligations.

Many people choose to work in tech for this reason. While you might still be asked to join team huddles occasionally as an engineer or data scientist, the bulk of your responsibilities can be completed alone. Rather than apply social energy, you’ll be asked to apply intellectual and creative energy to get things done, such as debug software, build a new landing page, or analyze a set of data points around consumer behavior. Social and creative work can each be incredibly rewarding, but for more introverted folks, the latter might be more appealing.

Consider Sheldon Kinsler_{From Sales to Tech: How Sheldon Kinsler Found a New Career and Community}, who never truly felt at home in sales. So when he came across an ad on Instagram for TripleTen’s coding bootcamps, he jumped at the chance to make a switch to tech. Before he even graduated from the program, he had landed a job at an insurance brokerage company as a business data analyst — where gets to work remotely most of the time and only occasionally goes into the office to meet with his direct manager. “A day in the life since I’ve gotten this job in tech — it’s really nice,” he says.

Others made the pivot. You can too.

Making a career pivot is challenging, whether you’re introverted or not. It takes guts and dedication, and even then you’ll still face fears of imposter syndrome_{Switching to Tech? Here’s How to Keep Imposter Syndrome at Bay}.

Which is why we’ve compiled stories from career changers of all backgrounds — because if they could do it, you can, too! Plus, the journey always feels less lonely and daunting when you know someone else came out the other side unscathed. Read on to learn how our students made the most of their bootcamp experiences, built relevant skills, marketed themselves, and turned their assets into steady jobs.