Ask HN: How do I act at work as to not be disadvantaged?

It feels to me like you're somewhat missing the issue. You have a lack of trust issue due to your self proclaimed reclusiveness.

Begin outside of your work. This will help drop the inherent fear of material security. Take a look at your relationships. List them out if you need to. Choose the ones you feel comfortable improving in some way. And here comes the important part. Promise yourself you're going to make it better and as soon as possible promise to someone you respect you're going to improve it. This will keep you accountable.

Depending on how it goes and where you are right now it might take a couple of years so be patient. At some point your experiences will more or less auto transfer to work. Aim at creating trust by e.g. organizing events, even remembering a birthday might help. Good luck!

"You can't please everyone all the time."

It sounds like have come to the conclusion that you can either be taken seriously or you can be open and friendly, as though those two things are in conflict with each other and you need to choose between them. If you _have_ come to this conclusion then be aware that this is not the case. You most definitely can be taken seriously and seen as a leader _and_ be warm and open. It's helpful to view these two attributes as two different dimensions which you can maximise separately.

The book that really helped me with this is The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane. It presents a really simple model for charisma as consisting of three components: power, warmth and presence, and gives a lot of advice to help you to strengthen each of those components by doing exercises that work on different aspects of your psychology. The key insight for me was realising that you can come across as both powerful/serious and as warm/compassionate/friendly, and that people who do this are described as charismatic. I genuinely didn't realise that until I read the book - I thought you had to choose between being nice and being taken seriously - and that's why you'll often find me recommending it on HN and elsewhere.

Another book that presents a different but similar model is Radical Candor by Kim Scott. The premise of this book is that you might think that you have to choose between giving candid feedback (including negative feedback) to your teammates or caring about their wellbeing, but that this is not the case. You absolutely _can_ do both and, again, it's extremely valuable to do so.

How does the above sound? Does it address your situation or does it miss the point? I'd be interested to hear any feedback or further questions that you have.

It kind of sounds to me like you’re guessing what people are thinking instead of having actual data to work with. Have asked anyone what they think of you? And have you asked your manager/superior what the qualifications are for promotions?

I encourage everyone to be open and friendly. You get more social credit by being friendly. That credit extends into benefits like promotions and distribution of work (you might end up getting the fun project rather than the dull one). Demeanor is something you can change on a whim - even if you don’t really feel like it. I haven’t ever heard of someone not being taken seriously because they were friendly. And I’ve never heard of anyone not getting promoted because they seemed like a happy person.

People get promoted usually because they’re doing good work and it gets noticed. The reward for a good job is more work.