Best paid jobs that don’t involve much social interaction

TELLIT01

Jillanddy said:

These types of jobs depend on your ability to solve problems rather than having to sell yourself

Based on my experience of IT departments, they can usually do neither.

Ouch!  That's a low blow Jillanddy :-)  I've been retired a few years after many years in IT support and I'd like to think I solved many problems for users.  After all we were the people who taught others the first rule of fixing PC problems - "Switch it off and back on again".

Fritterbug

Farside71 said:

Are you good with IT? Onsite support where you go round fixing issues with people's IT equipment, or potentially IT operations where you might work in a 'computer room' or work with linux/windows servers etc. These types of jobs depend on your ability to solve problems rather than having to sell yourself. Obviously some customer/client interaction but its more about understanding their problem rather than making small talk.

I say the former because I have experience of someone at an organisation who had aspergers and did that kind of support and fitted in fine.   

I had thought about something like games/software development or coding but I’ve heard that these types of jobs are notorious for not taking women seriously, and also a lot of sexual harassment. I know it’s unfair to group all companies in with this stigma but it is a worry, especially after the recent Blizzard scandal!

it might be worth doing a bit more research into though, thanks for the suggestion🙂

coffee_cake

Fritterbug said:

Farside71 said:

Are you good with IT? Onsite support where you go round fixing issues with people's IT equipment, or potentially IT operations where you might work in a 'computer room' or work with linux/windows servers etc. These types of jobs depend on your ability to solve problems rather than having to sell yourself. Obviously some customer/client interaction but its more about understanding their problem rather than making small talk.

I say the former because I have experience of someone at an organisation who had aspergers and did that kind of support and fitted in fine.   

I had thought about something like games/software development or coding but I’ve heard that these types of jobs are notorious for not taking women seriously, and also a lot of sexual harassment. I know it’s unfair to group all companies in with this stigma but it is a worry, especially after the recent Blizzard scandal!

it might be worth doing a bit more research into though, thanks for the suggestion🙂

If it helps, I did a software development apprenticeship and worked in that field for several years before moving to the support side of IT.  Not once did I feel belittled and I've never been harrassed.  Everyone was really supportive, and this has continued throughout my career and changes in company/teams.

Fritterbug

Sandtree said:

Most areas like IT, Actuarial, Finance etc will have some roles that are more solo and others that are more social... if I had my time again I'd probably move more towards data science (though cannot see myself ever being a quant) or possibly go into actuarial but in general insurance rather than Life. 

These are the three fields I’ve been looking at. Actuary appealed to me at one point, did you end up working in life insurance or is it just something you’d rather avoid?

Brie

There are lots of roles in the financial industry which have no public contact.  I work in a admin role for what is essentially a call centre team but never talk to customers.   In a previous role in an actuarial firm I did have to talk to customers while the ones there who were actuaries never did - I think now that they must have been autistic thinking how they reacted socially.

I was told years back that the finance industry tends to be split in 3 - front office which deals face to face with the public - actual f2f or via phone etc.  Middle office supports the front office but still may be dealing with the public, though never in person, just phone or email.  Back office is the people filing, doing reports, not contacting the actual customers in any way although they may be in receipt of correspondence that needs to be dealt with for and under direction of the middle and front offices.  

All that said you will still have customers whatever job you are in - these can be your boss, your colleagues, other departments.  You will need to sell yourself to get the job in the first place.  But if your manager (potential or actual) is made aware of what challenges you have they could be able to assist you get the right role.  It may take a couple of tries so you may have to persevere.  

[Deleted User]

I know when I went for hospital estates role on the phone, that turned into being bit of a 'loaner' role.
The job advert gave heavy indication of team work but it got rebuffed in the interview as not so much team working due to anti social hours aspect. Plus it wasn't talking direct to patients more porters and internal.  I was told when I would be working at midnight or 1am into the very early hours not to expect that much contact.

Working in a small business may also help - if it's a one man/woman band setup and they generally don't want to be in the office themselves. Often would spend many hours alone in a week in the company building dealing with admin to payment side of things. 

Thrugelmir

Spent many of my earlier career years as an auditor. Both internal and external.  If you don't mind being treated as a leper the role is ideal. Not everyones cup of tea so to speak. Though you'll experience a lot and gain access to a very different world. 

kinger101

Leader of the Liberal Democrats.

f5morg

If you don't mind nights, the twilight version of most jobs pay more than their daytime counterpart and then less people are around.

Sandtree

Fritterbug said:

Sandtree said:

Most areas like IT, Actuarial, Finance etc will have some roles that are more solo and others that are more social... if I had my time again I'd probably move more towards data science (though cannot see myself ever being a quant) or possibly go into actuarial but in general insurance rather than Life. 

These are the three fields I’ve been looking at. Actuary appealed to me at one point, did you end up working in life insurance or is it just something you’d rather avoid?

I'm a contractor so I move clients every year or two generally so have covered both Life (in the form of pensions/annuities) and non-Life in my 20 years of working in insurance. 

Life is long term business so the investment side is highly important and there is vast work on modelling what's going to happen in 20-30 years time and so lots of trend analysis. Non-Life tends to be much shorter tailed... look at a mass market product like Home and 95% of claims are dealt with in full within 2 years of the policy inception and so economics plays less of a consideration and investments need to be much more liquid.

There are some interesting bits to Life... our Longevity team were investigating why the rate of improvement in life expectancy has slowed significantly, came up with certain possibilities and then attempt to model what the future looks like for each of those scenarios... Pensions are weird though as "a cure for cancer" is a disaster scenario for them (the only insurance where they want people to take risks).

Generally though I find it more interesting on how you price for Kidnap & Ransom, debating who's liable following a motor accident, how do you efficiently write a policy to cover a multinational company's properties in 30 countries, how do you capitalise for ultra high attachment excess/XOL policies (the sort that claims are only made on if a passenger plane crashes or the Shard collapses - so potentially years between claims but massive claims when one occurs)