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 ;)