Ask HN: Why is machine learning easier to learn than basic social skills?
It&#x27;s not. I think you just need to go out more. Social skills are not improved by spending all your time indoor in front of your computer playing with the latest cool new framework, or learning about ML from youtube or grinding leetcode for that next fancy job or playing videogames or watching Netflix.<p>IMHO social skills are easy to pick up, and that&#x27;s coming from an introvert, you just need to put yourself out there as much as possible in as many new situations as possible, even though that means you&#x27;ll miss out on the latest tech developments&#x2F;opportunities or that latest Netflix show.<p>Basically you need to constantly keep venturing out of your usual routines and comfort zones and you need to be OK with failing at a lot of those new endeavors since there&#x27;s no one size fits all formula for success here. You need to find your own way and pe prepared to feel exhausted a lot.<p>I think tech workers are most affected by this because of the  SW dev culture both in workers and in employers that have normalized this FOMO driven, <i>&quot;carrot dangling on a stick&quot;</i>, need to keep up with the latest tech developments or grind leetcode or you&#x27;ll face the risk of becoming outdated and be overtaken by more ambitious new-grads, or be offshored, or just miss out on the more lucrative career opportunities, which is not helped by ageism and old-tech-stack-ism discrimination when hiring, plus crazy long multi stage interview sessions, take-homes assignments and what have you, that massively eat into your free time whenever you switch jobs, so these people are most likely the ones who have spend their prime years mostly indoor in front of a screen working away on code and algos, chasing that top dream job, instead of &quot;out-there&quot; working with people.