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If you're good at your job, you don't need to be sociable. You usually do need to be capable of working with others - which means interact with them - as work done in teams is the most common situation and hence team-working skills are seen as valuable and will help you progress in your career.

That said, I've worked in a couple of places were some of my colleagues didn't at all socialize with the rest and spent most of their time "in their little corner doing their thing" and only interacting with the rest for work purposes.

Again, the work culture in The Netherlands helps with this - unlike in other countries were for example there are expectations of going out for drinks with work colleagues after work hours (in Portugal sometimes, in Britain more frequently so, apparently in Japan even more so), in The Netherlands the way of thinking is that "Work is work, personal life is personal life and they're separate things", so work colleagues are just that and friends are different people not from work: there are no expectations there that you befriend work colleagues and/or socialize with them.

Beyond that, it's my impression that it's easier to be the kind of person that doesn't care to socialize in domains were high levels of expertise are required and with niches were the work can be done individuals (such as some areas in IT and in Science).

That said, outside ultra-niche ultra-expert, one's career growth will eventually take a person to a point beyond which socializing skills are required to progress (mainly because, as I hinted at earlier, the biggest and most important stuff tends to require teams and teamwork, hence being able to deal with people opens the door to the bigger leagues in most areas), though that can be quite far into the career progression track and at a level that most people don't reach.