Laid off - I don't network and collaborate, plus over 60

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Groupthink - It's pervasive in today's workplace. Even technical work, like computer programming and documentation, now has to be done in a team. AAAARGH! What that means is a bunch of wordy NTs getting together and arguing for hours about how to best code a function, or how to write a simple declarative sentence. I, as a focused Aspie, could have done both in about a tenth of the time!

I assiduously avoided meetings. I did not reach out to people until I had a work product that others could react to and give me constructive feedback. This led to me being branded uncooperative and standoffish. Never mind that 1) I was more productive than the rest of my team, and 2) people that worked one on one with me found me receptive to their ideas and easy to work with.

How do you deal with the pressure to be social at work?

Negotiated a job package that doesn't involve dealing with clients. Or managing minions.

One of the best jobs I have had avoided all of that nonsense. We were also all highly productive. Four people did the work of 20 without overtime or stress. We didn't have meetings or long face to face conversations. Most communication in the office was done with instant message so it stuck to the problem, the solution and any technical specs.

The biggest "social" thing we ever participated in would be someone getting take out for lunch. That business was sold as part of all the tech boom instability. It really made me loathe inefficient workplaces or places that wasted so much time on NT oriented things that did nothing to actually improve productivity or produce anything decent.

The worst was a workplace with an obsession for meetings that would last for hours and could have solved the same problem with one email to a couple of people. Most of the meeting would be wasted on off topic nonsense about people's weekends or something else not work related. Meanwhile actual work was piling up on my desk that needed doing. I had a boss that refused to do anything even the most trivial by email because she liked "face time". So she wanted to talk to you or at least be on the phone for everything. This wasted a huge amount of time. The same workplace had social things every few days. Pot lucks for various departments, someone's birthday with cake and the entire corporation was invited to come socialize. I hated it and my inability to play along well enough or enthusiastically enough didn't help. That workplace was just weird. Nobody seemed to ever do any work, the company was struggling yet they were all busy screwing around most of the time.

I remember interviewing for a job when I was much younger that was a very solo type job. You would be alone in an office dealing with records and computer files all day long. The interviewer grilled me about if I could REALLY truly handle being "alone" all day and wouldn't believe me when I said it really would not bother me. They had apparently had a number of people quit because they found it lonely. I would have loved it but didn't get the job.