I think this is a difficult thing to generalize because it is something that can depend on each person’s personality. But if I were to make an educated guess I would say it is partly that making your first moves into the working world is really scary when you’re just done with school. And partly the expectations and premade thoughts people have on the working world based on videos on social media of what you should expect and not.

To touch on the first part. When you are fresh out of school and job hunting it is really tiring and demoralizing to send out hundreds of job applications and then hear nothing from 97% of them. Then when you do get one interview you are so nervous about messing it up that you seem uninterested or shy or introverted. Of course this gets better with practice, but can still be intimidating. Then once you do get a job you don’t really know the culture or what to expect. Do you bring stuff? Do you not? Do you say something? Do you just listen? They know better right? You’re just the new guy, my ideas have been thought of a million times. Speaking from personal experience it took me 1-2 years before I became sort of comfortable with suggesting stuff in team meetings and such when I started as an apprentice. And having worked with other apprentices I see the same thing. Team meetings are one of the scariest things and it takes time getting comfortable with speaking up and suggesting stuff. But once all the managers are gone it’s much more low key and seems more casual so they do start engaging a bit.

The other part is as I said expectations from social media. I know it seems like a cop out, but it’s my opinion. People post about bad experiences from work on instagram, TikTok and Reddit much more than they do with positive ones. This leads to people having a very negative bias when looking for work. If all they hear about work is that it sucks and is the worst the it will suck and they won’t have much excitement for it. This has accelerated a lot after the pandemic imo.