Clojurians Log v2

I know what would help me but I'm mostly ND in a very "golden retriever energy" sort of way so I get a lot of privileges. things I've heard autistic friends mentioning that help a lot: • interview questions ahead of time (this is the biggest one) • avoid big panel interviews and give options around how the interview is conducted (video, voice-only, in-person, etc) • if in-person, avoid things like strong smells and bright lights

one thing people tend to look for in interviews is "how you think through and work through problems" and sometimes that actually means "do I like and approve of how you're going about this" -- ND folks frequently don't go about things ultra-linearly and it would be great to allow for a more spiral-y approach

(I'm a spiral-y dev myself, things don't come out linearly, typically)

a key search term if you're trying to find out more about it is: "inclusive hiring practices neurodiversity"

oh and "personality tests" or "culture questionnaires" can pretty trivially end up as tests for being NT

I consider personality tests to be below pseudo science for anyone

All I've seen seem to be based on maybe some book about single person's ideas, which were more likely made to sell the book anyway. Nothing even closed to peer reviewed

But thanks for those. I'll keep them in mind next time it's time to hire developers

> avoid big panel interviews and give options around how the interview is conducted (video, voice-only, in-person, etc) This is an interesting point. For remote-only companies, they really only have the choice of audio/video and they're going to lean video since that's how everyone already works -- and audio-only is hard for hearing-impaired folks (both candidates and employers) but I understand how video can be daunting for ND folks at times.

it's more about the choice, giving folks the option to pick what they can handle. for some ND folks it's eye contact that's difficult and we're in a culture where avoiding eye contact is considered disrespectful or is taken as dishonesty or shame, so giving the option of not putting them in a situation where that's required is helpful. for others it might be certain types of social situations they wouldn't actually have on the job that may be too intense and affect their performance, so making it not the default improves things for them (and probably improves it for everyone else in the process). society disables these folks using expectations of behaving neurotypically, by penalizing them for non-compliance, even though those behaviors are 100% fine and morally neutral. the way to help is to learn what's hard about interviewing for folks with various disabilities and either removing those roadblocks for everyone or giving a judgement-free option to remove those roadblocks

I highly recommend the book Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, it's an eye-opener around a lot of this stuff and definitely helps in figuring out how to afford more people dignity

Thanks. Just bought that on Kindle and will start reading it, probably tonight.

Your book backlog of non-fiction is enviously short. I'm guessing that this evening I won't have energy for anything else than a second run of the Murderbot diaries, again.

But getting back to the topic, I think I have problems seeing a difference between effective communication and typical communication. That is, difference between expected behaviour norms and what is actually needed to work in a team

Then again, I've met plenty of developers and dev teams where nobody seems to be in any way ND and still the communication can only happen via Jira (or choose your tool here) tickets, and actual person to person communication is de jure out of the question

Working with kids hasn't helped any with that, since all kids have problems communicating and working as a team 😕

effectively communicating to and from whom? ND folks frequently find NT communication to be baffling

it's hard to talk about a group as a whole, though

that's really the sticking point, though, whose viewpoint you privilege, whose communication style you privilege

Yeah, and I'm not convinced that I could actually spot a good communicator in an interview setting. I think I can spot several kinds of bad ones, but I know from experience that someone who seems nice, talkative and at least somewhat able to argue reasonably, actually simply refuses to communicate in actual work settings, when there's an way to avoid it.

that's a great point, and some people can perform in short bursts what they can't perform sustainably over time. the interview is not really the job, you know?

it's like if the problem you give them to solve in an interview is some algorithmic puzzle but then the actual job is gluing together web services... is your interview actually testing for the qualities you desire?

Indeed. And I think trial period is underutilized. Not in the sense that it wouldn't be in every contract for as long as the law allows, but people, companies, employers, don't really use that time to get a good feeling of how the new recruit does work on the real job

I've only seen trial period termination happen for unrelated reasons, like the company realizes that actually they don't have money they thought they will, or they are not going to launch that product they thought or something. Never that the recruit wasn't what was asked for. In those cases it seems like there's a sunk cost fallacy of not wanting to go through another recruitment process, or the employer just doesn't have a clue of how well the work is going

I admit that I should have also resigned on the trial period pretty much every time I thought about it, not a year later 😉

I'd be reluctant to accept contract work like that in the US just because of health insurance

I asked in some of my other groups for resource recommendations and I got two (haven't checked the other group yet): • this is more about conferences/workshops/gatherings but it's interesting for context: https://autisticadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Autistic-Access-Needs-Notes-on-Accessibility.pdf • this is more someone's own personal ND presentation for work but also useful for understanding an intersection: http://www.aerynlight.com/external/NeurodiversityAtWork.pdf

That presentation is great! But, oh boy, do I recognize myself in a lot of that 😕 I've never been diagnosed but I've suspected for a long, long time I'm ND -- and my dad definitely was, but also never diagnosed. At this point -- in my early 60s -- I'm not sure there's any point in getting officially diagnosed but...

that book goes over that bit a lot, many people don't have access to or a desire to get an official diagnosis

it's expensive, and doesn't really buy you much other than a doctor saying you definitely have it

where it does buy you something is if it's needed to secure accommodations in different areas of your life

which is all to say that if you see yourself in it, and you explore it and find you really think it's describing you, you don't actually have to get a dx to call yourself autistic

Sorry for the rant 😅 I like to bring some of my personal experience as an AHDH person (and with very autistic aspects, too). ND has a wide range of possibilities; I think the first thing to understand is that. I can have the same diagnostic as Cora but not "show" anything conditions-related. People with Autism are on a spectrum because it has different types and conditions, and each of them requires different levels of support. I could say the people who work with me will never say that I have ADHD, Social anxiety, or any Autistic condition, but that doesn't mean I don't have. Unfortunately, we are biased and think all ND people will "look" the same. After my ADHD diagnosis, every friend I told about it said: "No, that's impossible. I don't think you can be someone with ADHD". They think like that because, throughout my whole life, I have learned (struggled) many ways to fit myself into society. And that doesn't mean I don't struggle in the same situations daily. That is why thinking about it and changing our process is important. As Cora said, society uses expectations of neurotypical behavior. The interviews are one of many examples. I've also started typing about all my terrible experiences in interviews, but I don't want to make a massive wall of text here. I'm open to talking and discussing anything about my personal experiences in tech if you want. I will be glad to help! ❤️

thanks for sharing!

yeah, people can really fly under the radar via masking like that, I've had to struggle my entire life to do that effectively and even with a herculean effort I still slip constantly. typically with a little bit of support all of that disappears and diminishes enough to be manageable so that everyone gets to enjoy the (imo significant) benefits of how my brain works

and sometimes, this one single slip makes people frustrated with you because they expect you to be always perfect (neurotypical) that is why I am trying to bring this conversation to every place because even being an ND, I can rely on many other privileges (male/cis/white) that help me still sit at every table I hope I can help those who want to discuss more about how to hire/lead/manage ND people

another resource that was shared with me https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nditcommunity_neurodiversityintech-interviewprocess-inclusionmatters-activity-7146683377931202560-XC9E

> I'd be reluctant to accept contract work like that in the US just because of health insurance Yeah, I have a superficial grasp of employment conditions in US, but I'm sure it's different here with unemployment benefits and public health care (though both are deteriorating).

I can only see the first four tips on that linkedin post, as I don't have an account. How many more are there, could you perhaps take a screenshot?

I think that the downside of coping/masking is that it sets expectations, and at least personally I react simply from getting unexpected surprises. So if I have learned to think that a person behaves in a certain way and suddenly doesn't, that's alarming. I manage much better when I know that it might happen.

But for the interview situation, for example the tips I could see what was in that last post, all of them were quite sensible to do always

not in order but...

@tomi.hukkalainen_slac yeah, surprises definitely go both ways! being aware of different kinds of ND and how it manifests helps to lessen it, in my experience. in that book I recommended earlier the author talks about some studies around how NT folks felt talking with austic people when they didn't know they were autistic and didn't know what autism could look like -- the NT folks got creeped out. the same situations played out very differently when the NT folks were made aware of their counterpart's autism, it helped them be curious instead of creeped out

and so the ND folks take a risk in disclosing, depending on how much the interviewer knows and works against biases, but as the hiring party you can make it so they don't have to disclose by being aware of a broader range of effectively neutral, but possibly surprising, behaviors.

Thank you! This has been a great thread and very informative for me. gratitude

If someone can perform to the level required in short bursts, but can't sustain it, I think that could be a matter of training and confidence building. Do we have have any managers who can 'manage' in this industry? I confess, I haven't had many.