Working with Asperger's in tech: We're in this together

Having worked abroad for years I also value brutal honestly. When you are working in a multinational environment one man's subtle response is another man's half million euro cockup. I've been called an idiot to my face in an important meeting an it wasn't an insult. The British were shocked and the Dutch took it in their stride. I was being an idiot so I just agreed. I find project managing the Dutch and Scandiwegians refreshing - though you learn to develop a thick skin.

Re: Asperger's has been very good to me

Disable --> Enable

Disability --> Enability?!

Perhaps it's time for a new word in the English language?

Re: Asperger's has been very good to me

What's the opposite of 'Disability' ?

You leave the "dis" bit off, so "ability".

I have no complaints. Well, OK, apart from a non-social life, but the kind of work I can do thanks to a fairly acute ability to sense patterns makes for quite interesting projects.

Re: Asperger's has been very good to me

It can be. I know both a highly paid lawyer and a banker who have done very well out of it.

But excuse me for writing this - I think that while the diagnosis of autism is understandable (the medical need to classify and provide resources) it is not really a "spectrum". It's a lot of different personality traits which may or may not occur together (high functioning) along with other personality traits which are harmful; and I understand it may stem from a variety of not-that-related mutations, and gene expression which may be affected both by parental and prenatal conditions.

At the moment it is like classifying everything infectious as being "on an infection spectrum" and not regarding the common cold as being essentially different from sepsis, just a less severe version.

In an ideal world being classified as "Aspergers" should be irrelevant; it's more a case of "X has these behavioural traits and this is how we minimise misunderstanding and friction." Because, to be brutally honest, it is much, much harder to have to work with a "neurotypical" with an average IQ than with someone with borderline OCD and an IQ of +3 sigma, if you want to get anything done properly. In today's world, being an average neurotypical is actually a mild disability.

Re: Asperger's has been very good to me

"Superpower", natch ;oD

Re: Asperger's has been very good to me

As an old wisecrack goes - "What do you mean by "suffering from x"? I'm not suffering, I'm enjoying it!"

Re: Asperger's has been very good to me

So what you're suggesting is being NT is a disability?

Given the rates of detection of Asperger's syndrome has been on the rise for years, I guess some day it'll be the "normal" condition: we aspies will take over the world and start treating people for what we now call "neurotypicalism".

Really

Really? It barely covers anything to do with being on the spectrum.

#2 FTW

Never suffer fools.

Glady or otherwise.

I've never been diagnosed with Asperger's (or Autism Spectrum Disorder as is the PC term now), but have some traits that could be considered as such, just not enough of them to affect my day to day functioning.

"Inability to learn that a stock phrase like: "When you've got 5 minutes.." has a broader meaning is evidence of poor language skills or stupidity, not Asperger's per se."

I get that. What I don't get (and never have) is whenever someone says "I have a 5 minute job for you to do", almost invariably means it's going to take four hours out of my time that's been allocated to something a little less important, like trying to recover from a pabx fault that resulted in in a quarter of the several hundred phones being borked.

For some reason, that bugs me more than society says it should.

Re: Different NOT broken

"You could argue that extroverts are broken and need reigning in to be more like introverts."

Technically extraverts are people who take their social cues from those around them, while introverts are people who are self-directed. Extraverts need people around them to know what to think; introverts only need enough people around them to form the basis for some interesting disagreements. Extraversion often gets confused with hypomania but is quite different. Some hypomaniacs make excellent salesmen but you don't want them running QA. Some introverts, on the other hand, can end up running large projects or enterprises and will stick to their guns against the herd instinct, which means they may either be very successful or huge failures.

(Please do not take too literally).

Re: Different NOT broken

"We all just need to appreciate the others needs."

Perhaps this is the core of the issue. It's not people "on the spectrum" that have an issue, they are just normal people with differing attributes. We should instead try to diagnose those who are intolerant and incapable of dealing with people of a more...ordered...nature. Those people could then be treated for being on the...ass-hat scale?

Re: Different NOT broken

My concern is I think that some people are getting to the stage that they're describing personality types as pathologies.

I had a huge argument with a parent who was actively discouraging their daughter from building Lego models because she was "fixated on one thing". The kid is probably going to be an architect or something. She's super creative and can build complex spaces in 3D at age 6.

Likewise I've seen a parent "concerned" that their kid is spending too much time mastering the guitar!

If you push things too far, you'd be describing every academic, every researcher, every PhD candidate, artist, journalist with a special interest, engineer - basically anyone with a passion for a narrow range of subjects as somehow "broken".

Without people who can pick apart a single issue, humans wouldn't have progressed and technology, art, music, science, investigation, social change etc etc wouldn't happen.

We can't all be super-socially aware all-rounders all the time. Some people are highly specialised and interested in a narrow range of things. That's just life.

Re: Different NOT broken

Half remembered quote from years ago -

Extroverts relax with other people, introverts are drained by them.

Re: I thought Aspergers has been dropped as a diagnosis

That's correct. The latest DSM manual removed a lot of specific criteria diagnosis. I'm against this as Asperger's is pretty definitive and did have an extensive list of traits which the severity of others juxtaposed against the more serious diagnosis. For me, the diagnosis of Asperger's that I had at the age of 5 helped defined me with the way I act differently with my peers, but not enough to make me alien among a group of neurotypicals. In a sense, that term shouldn't exist because "what's normal?" No one acts the same.

I'm also against the use of the word "Aspie". It makes the condition sound like it should be a minority group. Apologies to the writer which I relate to a lot of the situations described, but it's a word I can never relate to and should be discouraged.

However, to offer my perspective of the world; people on the spectrum can offer so much more if we all had more tolerance towards people. I live/work in London that can be extremely stressful (also becoming a Dad also recently!) However, there's a risk that the perception is that we have to treated differently. That should never be the case. I will struggle with instruction sometimes; but I've personally developed coping strategies to ask for those instructions again or clarify it. The person offering those instructions should just ask if the person understood the instruction.

I hope we can see more people on the spectrum in workplace and living world. We can offer a perspective others might not see and totally honest/dedicated to whatever we focus on. I cannot be less than honest with my work colleagues or friend/family. Lying causes a web of confusion and stress personally.

One last thing, I'd recommend anyone to purchase/read

"Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently" by Steve Silberman. A great book on challenging how we percept people on a different level to ourselves.

Re: I thought Aspergers has been dropped as a diagnosis

There's been a lot of anger about the removal of Asperger Syndrome from the DSM. It's mainly a practical thing for the US, since a lot of medical insurers were putting in exceptions for AS. This has angered many health practitioners, since the DSM is supposed to be a general mental health manual, not something that's manipulated to get around the vagaries of the US health insurance industry.

Re: Introversion is orthogonal to Asperger's

I Identify with most of what you've said here, though I also have not been diagnosed as on the scale, some close friends have suggested things like I can be very particular at taking things at face value and not getting subtext a lot of the time along with some other few similarities.

I have counted myself as some class of ambivert. I do really enjoy socialising, especially as part of a group if its with people I know less well, but I feel tired and my mind wanders after a certain period of this and need time to do my own thing for nearly equally as long. Socialising one-on-one with people that I don't know or outside of certain fixed perspectives, e.g. work hierarchy, team roles, etc, borders on prohibitively difficult.

Strangely, the thing that has recently helped me most in this regard is Tinder!! I can connect to random new people, that I may never ever see or hear from again (I live in a large city) and I can practice small talk over and over again. It doesn't matter if I make a mistake, if the other person is OK they take it in their stride, if not I can move on to the next random person. When I need down-time I can ignore the message alerts, claim I'm busy atm or put off a date. On the plus side I might also end up with a decent romantic relationship ;)

Re: Numbers and binary

How many people reading the above then had to say/think '256', to complete the byte. Hmm, how many of those then had to say/think "well, 255" because actual range of values possible in a byte.

Ehhh, relax into what you're good at. That will bother everyone else to differing degrees. The least bothered are going to be better friends!

Re: It's annoying...

If your interested in learning then pick up a copy of "Neuropsychology: The Neural Bases of Mental Function". It's written for medical students, so most people employed in IT deal with far more complex terms on a daily basis.

In essence, there are 9 (currently recognised) areas in the brain (namely motor control, object recognition, spacial processing, attention span, language, memory, executive function, emotion, and artistry) that will function at different levels in any person.

One could postulate that people with better systematising and memory skills are more likely to be drawn to engineering or technical fields as these fields reward people with a better memory and the ability to think logically.

Meanwhile, people with above average motor control and spacial recognition are likely to go into which kind of area? Kind of alarming, when you think about the fact that the mental attributes that you are born with are likely to decide the general course of your entire life.

Re the bit about needing someone to talk to, are there no other people on the spectrum in your area?

I live in Bolton, and the PCT there provided 20 group sessions following my diagnosis. After that the group itself decided to meet up every Monday and Saturday in a coffee shop, just so that we can talk to people who are on the same level as us, and not those of lesser ability who just "don't get" us.

Like yourself I only tend to hang on in there for other people. If I didn't have people to care for, and that includes pets, I'd probably have topped myself years ago, even before I got the diagnosis.

I also find it bizarre now that I am more self aware, just how unaware of themselves and others NTs really are. As you say, they think we're the retarded, self centered (hello, that's what autistic means!), ones, yet it is they who are unaware of the thought processes of others, and are the self centered ones.

If it's not a disability then what next?

The definition of disability (in the Equality Act) is "if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a 'substantial' and 'long-term' negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities" - so although most with it wouldn't consider themselves disabled they are compared to the people that they work with.

As I have said elsewhere until there is a successful test case where someone sacked for their supposed lack of social skills caused because they have Asperger's Syndrome nothing is going to change.

I think its removal from DSM doesn't matter as it's still a condition however it's classified.

Re: For those who are interested...

Hmmmm, scored 16. I don't believe that the spectrum is only one dimensional. I do believe that there are different layers to it that can be smeared and blurred both horizontally and vertically. There are definitely traits that people describe here that I have, others I am completely the opposite of.

Re: For those who are interested...

Little late to this party, only saw the article link today.

I took that test and scored 38.

Did I pass?

:)

Re: Useful

Just be careful not to make the diagnosis the be all and end all of your existence. It would just satisfy your curiosity and behaviours. Essentially, the diagnosis for me in the long-run (apart from the period of my teens where I cried myself silly to try reject/deny/not accept why I had it) made me more comfortable and confident with myself.

Some people who have been diagnosed use it as a tool to stop making progress and accept they cannot do anything social. I always disbelieve that because of the talks and workshops I've done with a particular local charity who help parents of kids on the spectrum.

My mum always believes everyone has a trait of autism. However big or small. The people diagnosed have multiple traits that have an impact on ones life.

Loving to see the positive vibe in this post forum. It's opposite to what the government are not doing with mental health and special needs in general. Charities are taking too much of the brunt currently to support communities.

Re: Useful

> Whilst getting a referral from my GP was quick and relatively painless, I'm still waiting for an actual appointment ...

Hang in there.

I went to my GP a while ago and asked for a referral. Excuse me if this reads like you're looking in a mirror, that's how the stories from some other ASD people read to me. Pretty well as long as I can remember, I've always had this feeling of "something isn't right", always been "socially awkward" and had to suffer (as commented by others) "normals" desperately trying to get me to socialise. I've tried a couple of the tests that are around on the net, and even allowing for an element of "knowing what the desired answer is" still scored a long way into ASD territory.

My GP didn't know what the route was, gave me a short questionnaire to fill in, made another appointment where he looked at the results and decided it looked like I was that way, and I heard nothing for months - IIRC it was 6 months or more. Then completely out of the blue I got a letter inviting me to an appointment.

It turns out that my timing was fortuitous - had I asked just a couple of months earlier I'd have been referred to the other side of the country, but my county had just set up it's own adult assessment service and I was one of their first clients (client ? patient ? customer ? what the heck !)

If you get a similar service, you'll probably meet with more than one member of the team which has specialist nurses and clinical psychologists. My clinical psychologist said he found me interesting as a case - I'm not quite sure what to make of that !

During one of the sessions I commented that they probably saw fewer younger people these days given the different attitudes these days to when I was at school. I was surprised to find they still get a lot of 18 year olds who've gone through school and never been diagnosed.

Later, talking to someone else, it was commented that schools have a vested interested in pupils not getting a diagnosis. Once a pupil has a diagnosis of anything, then the school is required to give them appropriate support - but they don't have the funding for that and so it's in the school's interest not to get things diagnosed !

Assuming you get a positive diagnosis, our service offers a number of post-diagnosis sessions to explore what it means, what it means for you, how to understand yourself and how you work (that's darned hard !), and how to explain to others what they can do to help you (such as being more direct, being more specific, and relying less on inference (such as saying "now" rather than "when you get 5 mins") if you want it doing now).

It also qualifies you for assistance from Access to Work. In my case I've got funding for coaching sessions with an outfit called Genius Within.

Depending on your work situation, it can make big differences there. ASD is a recognised disability so all the discrimination laws kick in and your employer has a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments. So if you have a knobhead of a "manager" who persists in relying on inference that you don't get and making it your fault that you don't understand his "simple questions"* then that's no longer a matter of having a knobhead for a boss, it's now a discrimination case in the making if they don't do something about it.

* Eg, how the fook am I supposed to know that when he asks "how many <somethings> do we have ?" that he isn't actually after a number ?

That wasn't the sole reason he's no longer my manager. The fact that I had a couple of months off diagnosed with Stress and Depression and cited him as a significant factor also influenced it, as did the fact that the workforce has halved in size over the last year or so and the people leaving cite him as a factor ! He's now tucked away back in his own corner of the business, and actively kept out of managing the business - and as far as possible, from dealing with customers who also don't like him !

Re: Useful

Once my GP found the right person to refer me to it took about 7 weeks to go through 3 assessment appointments to getting the positive outcome. But then I understand that Bolton is 3rd best for provision for adults with autisim, so I guess I won the postcode lottery.