Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/10/08/managing_aspergers_techies/

Techies with Asperger's? Yes, we are a little different...

Solving fiendishly intricate tech problems? Love it. Office politics and subtext? No thanks

By Stuart Burns

Posted in On-Prem, 8th October 2013 09:03 GMT

Shortly after being told I have Asperger's syndrome, I stood in front of 30-odd people, my work colleagues, telling them I have Asperger’s and what it means to them and to me. Some were like: "Meh, whatever!", some were busy looking their watches: "Is it lunchtime yet?" I could feel my job slowly ebbing away.

It was like crashing your car, in slow motion. You can see it coming but it takes its own sweet time. It wasn't my idea to make the disclosure, I hated doing it, and I really don't know what HR were thinking. (Does anyone, ever?)

My diagnosis had come about via a very non-standard route. During a course I attended I scored off the chart on a personality test in certain traits. At the end of the class and the teacher and I got talking. There were lots of questions along the lines of "Do I do this? Do I do that?"

Then she dropped the bomb. "I only do this as a stand-in for when the lecturer is not available. My day job is working with people who have ASD and I think you may have it."

On further questioning, as to her validity to make that call, it turned out she is one of the UK’s few specialists in the field of diagnosis. Fast-forward two months and I had more offers of help than I knew what to do with.

The outcome of all this was that within six months I was gone. My boss and I had never seen eye to eye, and this was the perfect way to get me out. Now he knew all my weaknesses, my Kryptonite, if you will, and could get me in an obsessive/defensive mood and then give me a hard time while I was still trying to fight my corner.

He would purposely drop things on me at the last minute and expect me to adjust everything to fit in the changes, and then complain because something else wasn't done. He would be purposely evasive and vague in his requests, for instance, he would organise a meeting and not tell me what was being discussed, among other gems, so I would fret and get obsessed about the meeting beforehand.

This was despite the fact that I had Welfare to Work the unions and the backing of my mentor.

"Jeez!" you may be thinking, “As an Aspie, I am screwed.”

Don't fret. There is light at the end of the tunnel. To be blunt, I walked. It was the best thing I ever did. Going for a travel refund that same day, where it said "reason" I just put: "Walked out of my job and thank God I did." The guy behind the counter remarked: "You must have loved your job.”

After I got past the "sod this, I am outta here" anger, I found a job for a company that has a more enlightened view of Aspies.

My life now is completely different. I have become a relative expert in my field and have been given the opportunity to travel the world on business. In short: it is All Good. I am not saying I no longer have issues – I do. But the company worked with me to help me, and my manager is genuinely there to help me – even when I don't always see it as help.

Advice for Aspies

Here is my hard-earned advice as an Aspie who has been on both the positive side and the negative side of having the condition.

Understand that we are private people. We have very narrow, very focused interests. Usually these interests are solitary things where we don't have to interact with other people; this is why so many of us work with computers. We don't mind having a chat, just it has to have to have some perceived value in it. Small talk doesn't do it for us, unless it about our niche subject.

Some people seem to think most of us are so rude as to just not talk. When you see films with autistic characters, such as Rain Man, you have to understand these people are light years away from most of us with the condition. Sure, we share characteristics but neither the same intensity nor level. We just quietly do our stuff and left to our own devices get on with what's at hand. Aspies as well as NTs (neuro-typicals – or "normal people" to you) all exist somewhere on the spectrum. That is why diagnosis can be so difficult.

But although I may not be able to add much to a non-nerd/tech/work conversation, I do like to be included. Please just don't expect much eye contact. We do it on occasion but to us it feels odd and unnatural. To be blunt, if we hold eye contact for more than a second or two we feel we are staring.

Advice for managers

We like routines. Routines are our lifeblood. Without a routine we are going downhill fast. Work with us to create a routine. Please don't, if possible, ask us to deviate from it. This causes consternation and a feeling that the world is out of kilter. We don't multitask too well, but we do one task at a time and do it well. We achieve the same or more, only in a single-track function.

We like to know specifics: "When you get five minutes, can you look at this?" does us no good whatsoever. Not that we have a problem with it, but we struggle with the concept without specific parameters. That's like saying: "When you have nothing else to do, see if you can maybe look at it, if you're in the mood."

A better way to deal with it would be to say: "Can you please have this task x completed by the end of the week.” We then have a time frame and can understand the relative time in which the task needs to be completed. It's all about being specific. This also applies to emails. If you want an optimum answer, be specific and ask direct questions that can have direct answers.

The coffee machine is probably better at politics than we are

We don't like change: we detest it. Deviation from routine – or just being moved onto a different task – can ruin the entire day. In a previous life when I had to move desks I got completely freaked out for an entire week obsessing over it. By the time we sit down we know exactly what we want to achieve and once we are in a task, being asked to drop that is not good.

Our trust is dealt with in 1s and 0s. Because we tend to be intensely private people, we rarely trust without it being exceptionally hard won. Our trust is either absolute or absent. Grey areas are for NTs. Trust to us is everything. If we trust you we will always go that extra mile and share what we have. Should the trust be broken, we will scurry back into our mental shells and you may well never see the real us again. I jest not.

Subtexts? We have heard of them. We have an exceptionally hard time understanding subtexts and hence, sometimes, humour. It is also why we suck really badly at office politics. The coffee machine is probably better at politics than we are. This is why it can be dangerous for us to attend meetings where people are talking "around" an issue or playing politics. We may not fully understand the mound of the smelly stuff that is being flung around and may end up agreeing to things we shouldn't.

We obsess. I don't mean: "Oh, I am running a bit behind schedule." We completely and utterly obsess about things, so much so that we can make ourselves ill. I obsess and ruminate with the best of them.

Unfortunately, this obsessing is always on the negative side. If we get an email that is "kicking off" and playing the blame game we more than likely will become obsessed with it and start to think it was our fault. In my experience there are two basic ways of dealing with this. Make sure you know what we are up to and if we start fretting and getting agitated just ask us if need help. If we trust you, we will share.

Don't write us off yet...

Sure, there are negatives but we also have plenty going for us. We are some of the most loyal staff you will find. With the technology, we don't just "get" stuff, we live and breathe it. We find the real complicated issues easier than most. We revel in the complications and details. It's part of the condition.

We will stick around for a while because we are comfortable inside our routine- and standards-driven world. It is not uncommon for a settled Aspie to be in the same job for more than a decade with very few of the issues associated with "normal" staff. (We don't really do drama).

Management and survival in the real world

If you a sufferer, diagnosed or not, this is my advice to you. Firstly, there are support groups. I was referred to one. They are usually bi-monthly and quite local. It's not just a bunch of Aspies lumped together, by the way. There are specialists who help you deal with all the crap that comes with Asperger’s.

Your GP can refer you easily enough. Back when I found out about my condition several years ago, there was not much help around, but a good deal more is available now. When I visited my doctor with a list of all my symptoms (we love lists!) the first time around I was told: "You don't seem very Asperger-y to me." All I could think was: “WTF! Who made you the expert in Asperger’s?” Luckily there is a growing awareness of Asperger’s and its diagnosis these days.

If you are lucky and you are in work, you can hopefully get your company to get you a mentor. They can usually be subsidised by the government, as mine was. In my new job I have a very active mentor. What does she do, you may ask? It's all about “bounces, filters and workarounds”. Stop sniggering at the back!

Firstly, as you know, we can sometimes come across as terse to the point of rudeness and if we are backed into a corner use words that really shouldn't appear in business communications. Some of us can be exceptionally good with words, but if we are flustered, we can fumble the niceties. A good mentor will help you with the communication, not telling you how to write, but acting as a sanity check before you hit that awful send button. This is ideal when you have to write emails to the higher-ups.

Mentors will also help you to cope with issues you may have around planning or timing. A good mentor will help you develop ways to accommodate change and planning. An example for me is that I hate anybody seeing what I write (yes, yes, I get it!) but the way around that is to use my laptop to take notes, so that none but I can see what I am writing. The result: I now have extensive notes to refer to rather than trying to remember everything. It means I get more done and things don't drop off the list.

It's the people, stupid

Even if your company can't afford a mentor, a good boss alone is worth an awful lot. I was honest with my boss(es) from the outset. I had the normal embarrassing "explain it to us" bit, but in the end it was worthwhile. They asked how they could help and we came up with a number of ways:

If I wanted something proof-read or checked prior to sending as it was important or needed to have the language validated, they would take five minutes and do it for me. That way there were fewer "whoops" moments and it made sure everyone’s face stayed free of egg.

Making sure you are on the same page with planning is always important. Having weekly meetings on an informal basis with just your Aspie and yourself will allow you to set targets for the week. Prioritise those targets so that we know what we have to do for the week and what is most important. We suck at prioritisation.

And I have one final thing of note. To me and my fellow Aspies it may seem obvious, but to the world at large, it will not. We don't pretend to know our areas of expertise. We do know them. What is not helpful – even to non-Aspies – is seeing management try to start the blame game before we have even finished fixing their precious machine(s). A good manager will step in and take the flack and explain to Mr Important: "He is fixing your stuff. It is not just a trivial X,Y,Z".

Too many times I have been knee-deep in a broken but very expensive machine and been forced to field phone conversations which ran along the lines of: "We have x-thousand users who can't do email. What is taking so long?". It is not right that I should be left to deal with management four layers higher than me.

Given a chance, Aspies can be fantastic employees. Those enlightened enough to have tested the theory can attest to that. We are hard-working, understand our areas of expertise in great depth, and can run with the best. Sometimes, however, we just need a little extra guidance and attention. If we get that, we will repay your trust in spades.

If you would like some more information on help available to those with Asperger’s and others on the autism spectrum, you can find some good information at The National Autistic Society. This is one of the best sites available and is designed for not only Asperger’s sufferers but also the people they interact with. The charity also have an offshoot that deals with placing people into work. ®

Bootnote

The Register is aware that the character of "Moss off the IT Crowd" has not necessarily been identified as being an Aspie by the writers of the programme, but individuals within the community have pointed to his character as having some of the traits, which is why we used the character as an illustration for Mr Burns' comment piece.