Which job sectors do people work in ?

I work in a children's nursery. I do struggle with the noise, our room has a terrible echo. It has many challenges but it is fun too.

That sounds great nexus9. I hope to see you at a fair one day, to get a reading  and to see your work in one of the gallaries :-) 

That’s good if it narrows down the options as you’re only looking for one job and fewer options will make the job easier :-) 

That's great -- in that case you should have no trouble finding what you're looking for.

I do freelance TESOL  teaching from home mainly these days, working with both adults and children. I once did interview training skills trainings to doctors who wanted to emigrate. I also do proof readings, even translations of simple texts and documents. 

Whilst still in the UK I did readings at psychic fairs, using tarot and astrology. I used to teach astrology at the local uni too, until the hard-line science brigade noticed and pulled the plug on undergraduates being able to use this as part of a module. The 90's recession hit that badly though, it hit most things badly. I disliked the way a lot of amateur astronomers try to get into your head though and the theosophical underpinnings of it all. 

The most important thing on my life is my creative/artistic path and I hope to be able to attend more fairs in the future and to find better galleries to promote this, as well as to reach the kind of peoe who respond to what I do.

I run my own engineering consultancy and have come out as high functioning. I now use neuro-diversity in our strap lines

That’s an impressive list. I’d be really proud to have had all those jobs. How exciting and what a lot of things to learn. I love learning, and especially from situations, so that’s a whole boat load of situations to learn from as well as them being so varied.

Do you enjoy the regular routine of working in one place for a good while or do you  miss the diversity of lots of different jobs? Do you think you’ll be switching jobs again any time soon? 

I enjoy lots of different jobs, especially the lower paid ones, but I don’t find them financially or otherwise sustainable, for me, even when I have them in short bursts.  So sadly (or not), depending on how you look at it, I’m having to create my own work/business around my needs, which unfortunately or fortunately, don’t fit in with the average workplace. Like many of us, I can do the work, but the whole average or normal work set up is too draining on me so it’s back to the drawing board for me, to figure out what I can do, without being drained! 

I didn’t go looking for my first online/work from home job, it somehow found me, in the form of a former work colleague telling me about it (she also did it). It was marking course work for an online education establishment. I could work what ever hours I wanted and do as much or as little work as I wanted and it would work out at around £10 or so per hour, depending on how slow/quick I worked. 

Write down, if you haven’t already, all the skills and qualities you have to offer and also any limitations. By looking at limitations you can turn them into strengths. It’s called a ‘SWOT’ analysis ~ you can find information about this online. 

You can then build up a good picture of where your talents and gifts will be best suited and what type of work will be best suited to your individual needs and preferences. When you know all this, you can then devise a plan to bring it into reality. You’ll need some help with this. Autism Plus are working out really well for me, so if you don’t currently have the right support, maybe you could get in touch with them. 

Oh, if working from home is something someone wants he will leave the company. Then they will need to spend time and resources to find a new person, to teach the new person.

In the UK already 4 200 000 people regularly work from home.

seekeraftertruth said:

Employers may not necessarily care about this. One of the key tricks in negotiation is to find out why it would benefit the other person

Precisely. 

California's employer probably now has him pegged as someone who is out for himself, rather than someone who is wholly committed to the company. 

The harder he pushes now, the harder they'll push back. So to get what you want you have to play smarter and find another tack.

I am not trying to be nasty here, simply honest, having been on the company end of such discussions before. 

Even if the employer wholly trusts California, they may be concerned about the risk of setting a precedent that would enable the less honest individuals in the department to demand "working" from home on the basis of equal treatment ("you let California do it, so why not us...?"). This is why the situation isn't black and white, and the employer typically needs the ability to pull the plug if world + dog start trying it on. 

Although IT work can often be done anywhere, the most efficient means of communication is F2F. You can check your understanding in real-time and draw pictures on a real whiteboard beside your desks that will stay put for months if necessary. Many jobs now require cross-functional teams to work together, rather than each individual taking their own task to their cave to work on alone. 

Ooooo, that doesn’t sound like fun. That’s maybe why I didn’t get the job ~ it would have shattered my illusions of my idea of the perfect little job. Lol!

I got a job waitressing after that attempt at getting a job and I loved that job, although it wasn’t something I could do long term or probably ever again as I found it utterly exhausting, in so many ways. But I did enjoy it and I learned a lot in the few months I was there and I’d like to go back to the hotel again sometime, but this time as a guest! But that experience holds good memories and was my reintroduction back into society after a previous burnout/self isolation situation so I will always be grateful for that experience, it gave me a lot. Although it didn’t pay much money so I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it long term as I wouldn’t be able to work enough hours to even come close to it meeting my financial needs, but it was fun while it lasted. 

I worked in a supermarket for 6 months once.  It was the hardest work I've ever had to do.  The demands and the pressure were intense.  I only worked part-time - 18 hours a week - but it felt like 40 hours for all that.  I used to come home after shift, utterly spent, and collapse into sleep.  Some shifts, I was alone - doing the work of 2 or even 3 people.  That's how they keep their prices down.  Wring as much as they can out of the smallest number of staff possible.

Hi Possibly Autistic, I started to answer this question and it was going on forever! Lol! Longer than usual ~ and I’m not even sure I was even answering your question!!! And even now, I’ve gone on forever again!!!! Gggrrrrrggghhhhh 

Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to read it. I know I can go on and on because I don’t know how to answer questions any other way. Anyway, here’s my answer to only the second part of the question. I gave up on trying to answer the first part. 

I think the second part of the question is easier for me to answer. 

The AP totally understands me and actually, she understands me better than I understand myself at times, because of her knowledge of autism and because she can see things that I can’t see, which is expanding my awareness of myself, others and how I interact/communicate with the world, so this is proving highly beneficial. 

I see things that many other people don’t see but I also don’t see somethings that I really do need to see, if I’m going to live a harmonious life in this current nt set up, so she is able to point things out to me that I don’t see. That’s not always easy, as I really don’t see them, but because I trust her and feel safe with her, I know she’s acting for my good so I accept what she’s saying, then allow myself time to process what she says and somehow or another, I seem to be able to come to an understanding of it. This doesn’t mean I will automatically remember it the next time but by talking to her, she is able to point out times when I didn’t remember, which brings it more to my attention and next time, I might be more aware of it, even if it’s after the situation but this way, I’m building up a new helpful mind pattern that will help me in the long run - as well as helping me with little strategies, such as, getting a second set of clothes ready, that I like to wear, for when I need to change the current ones, to lessen the stress or discomfort of changing my clothes. I haven’t started this yet as I currently have mostly dirty clothes, but it’s in the plan! Lol! 

I think I may be going on and on again so I apologise if I am. I’ll try to wrap it up but if you can ask the questions again but more specifically, maybe I’ll be able to answer without going on and on, I don’t know, probably not? 

She also helps to keep me grounded which is really important to me and she gives me tips to keep me there. For example, I eat a raw food diet but eating this way gives you so much energy and takes your health to the next level (it’s also the best solution for my so called eating ‘disorder’) but eating chips (and potatoes are one of my favourite foods) helps keep me more grounded as I don’t have a plan yet as to what to do with all this energy. So as I told her this yesterday, she told me to EAT CHIPS EVERY DAY. I never thought of that!!!!!  

It might sound crazy, but just because I know eating chips helps to ground me, I didn’t think that oh, I ought to eat chips every day then, that’l help! It took her pointing it out to me. And last night, when I really did not want to eat but I was feeling light headed and not too good, I remembered her words and despite not really wanting to, I went and cut some potatoes up, made them into chips in the oven and ate them with some salad. 

It was amazing (to me) how great I felt from eating the food. It was a struggle to start with but towards the end of eating it all, I was even enjoying it. If we hadn’t had that conversation, I doubt I would have eaten last night and I wouldn’t have felt better. It’s like her words acted like a life raft and pulled me home to safety and now I’ve had that experience, it has reinforced my commitment to getting this thing sorted. It’s like recovery periods, feeling like s**t and feeling exhausted, had become such a big part of my life, I had considered them normal and hadn’t considered that it might not have to be that way if I understood why it was like that. 

She’s also like my number one champion. She points out how well I’m doing and she helps me to understand how my mind works, not only from my perspective but from other perspectives as well and getting these other perspectives, is really helpful to me. 

There are so many ways that I could list in how she’s helped me so far, in only three weeks, but  I know the actual reason why this partnership is working so well, but it seems that when I tell people the real reason, they can’t comprehend it and I’m starting to realise why - because not everybody thinks like me, lol! I’m a slow learner sometimes! So I’m sorry if none of this makes sense to you, I can only share my experience, and I’ll keep the most ‘my world’ stuff, to myself. 

But what I will say, is that without actually realising what I was doing, I’ve built up around me, a really solid support network which meets all of my needs. I find it pretty astonishing because I’ve never had this before or rather I never really understood what a ‘support network’ was or what it really meant.  I was a Lone Ranger so I’m still processing this new set up. But it’s like I’ve now got several places, where I can go to be with several people, for several reasons, where I am just as comfortable as I am when I’m at home, alone. I’ve had full on meltdowns in some of these places, I’ve cried, been hyper, I’ve rambled on and on because in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a talker, lol. I’ve done some really weird behaviour and I’ve freaked out and not been able to go to any of these places for periods of time. But as I look around, I realise, that they are my support network now, they’re part of my new life. I’ve got everything I could ever need and I just need to work out how it all fits together to give me the exact life I  am creating, where I get all of my needs met, have an enjoyable life and I have the income to enable me to live exactly how I want. (So it’s a joint effort, including the support and value I receive from this group). 

None of these people in my life now, are ever going to leave me (unless they die or something). The only way they won’t be in my life is if I stop all contact, which is what I usually do but because I’ve bulit this circle up around me and my needs (and not my masking needs) I don’t want to end it. 

This is me stepping into a life which includes other people. I am still a lone warrior in many ways, but I know that nothing in this world works independent of everything else and I do want to be a part of this world and enjoy it (otherwise I’d be living in a cave by now!), but it has to be on my terms. I wouldn’t be able to achieve that aim without support. I really could not do it alone and I don’t think anybody else can. Even though I ‘appeared’ to have a ‘good’ life, from the outside looking in, that was the best I got when I tried to do it alone. 

These people are helping me learn to be me in this world and they’re helping me to achieve my hopes and dreams of what is the perfect life for me. I still have some shadows from my old mindset of the survivor and masker, of how I think my life ‘should’ look, but they’re fading. I’m creating my life around my little world without fearing the judgement of others and while doing my best to bring love and light into the lives of everyone I meet, which requires me to have an understanding and consideration of other people’s perspectives, and for me to be happy in my life, and it turns out, I couldn’t do that alone. 

So it’s currently a work in progress but I know where I’m going and I’m slowly getting used to having a support network. It’s still very weird and my first tendency is to run away but I’m sticking with it and I really am creating the life of my dreams, even if that’s not apparent to everybody else. 

Appearances only ever show a small fraction of what’s really going on. We know that, as autistic people. People look at our behaviour etc and come up with what they think is going on but as we know, they are often, only scratching the surface, at best and at worst, they’re getting it completely wrong. 

I used to have what most people would consider a ‘good’ job with more money than I could spend and they would consider my life to be a ‘good’ life. They saw me as a free spirit, someone who travels the world doing just what she wants.  However, it was based on masking and with everything I do in life, I gave this mission my best. I got good at it. Only to find I was having these frequent ‘burnouts’. I would be tired after work and at the weekends and even if I did go and do other things, such as yoga etc, it started to feel like I was somehow trapped in the wrong ‘time’. It’s like things happened too quickly. Things would suddenly come at me and I hadn’t even processed what I was doing last week. It’s like my mind was always a couple of days in front, without me realising it, which made me think I was always late! I realised I had always felt like this, I had simply got good at masking it, even to myself. 

To cut a long story short, I came to a place where I realised, I had to build my life from the ground up, build a solid foundation, but most of all, because of my obsessive nature etc, I had to build my working life around what I will call my ‘main’ life. I love my work and I’m passionate about it, it is related to one of my long term special interests. So there was a danger, that I would put all my efforts into my work and have little left over for other things. 

But what other things did I seriously like doing anyway? I didn’t know, because I have lived for 50 years simply trying to fit myself into a system not designed for me. So before I got my work life in order, I had to get my life in order, to build a solid foundation built around me and the things that I like doing. 

This has taken an extended period of self imposed isolation and the help and support of others. Solitude is my sanctuary and from where I work things out and from this place, of zero, I’m building my new life up around me. It turns out, that what I really love to do, is to stay in my bedroom, all day long, to play on my computer game or research Henry Ford or one of my other latest obsessions. To eat or drink and get dressed etc only when I absolutely have to and never to have to deal with the so called ‘real’ world or at least as little as possible! I want to be forever a teenage boy who doesn’t want to leave his room, unless I find a mission to get obsessed about ;) 

However, I’m not going to earn a living or enjoy some of the other fruits of life if I simply do that all day. I can’t, apparently, be an Edith Blyton character for all my life, living in an Enid Blyton world. So my AP worker is helping me to figure out a plan to put all the pieces together, in a way that works for everybody, without ever compromising myself or anybody else, and I get the life I’ve always dreamed of. 

It’s a whole new world and I’m taking my time (the man made time) because afterall, time doesn’t exist in my world, beyond now! 

Our work together is about working out a plan to harmonise my world with the current set up (outside world) and that will involve give and take on both sides but without compromising anybody. It’s possible. I have reluctantly agreed, although I’m still working on changing it, that I call into the job centre every couple of weeks or so to see my work coach. But I don’t ever have to even have the phrase ‘looking for work’ mentioned to me, ever, because they understand where I’m at and what I’m working towards and that phrase, just freaks me out. People told me I had to ‘play the game’ to get the money, but I couldn’t. I’m not asking that the system bends to do things ‘my’ way, that would be the same as what I’m protesting against. I simply ask them to take my needs into consideration which means they do have to start to think and work a little differently and they have to learn to understand me, and me them. And it is only me that can tell them what it’s like for me. I can’t leave them to guess or figure it out for themselves, because look at the mess the experts made of that, when trying to figure out autism! The best they could come up with, after years of research, is that it’s the ‘hidden’ disorder and that it’s ‘mysterious’!!!

So I discovered that it’s better not to leave these things to chance, because chances are, if we don’t tell them what life is like for us and what our goals and aspirations are, they won’t know and their conclusions about us are often something negative, such as we’re lazy. My support worker (it actually worked in the end) said it was like I was acting like a spoilt child refusing to eat. My second support worker, the AP, said that’s how it looks to somebody who doesn’t understand autism, they have no other frame of reference for the behaviour. But it prompted me to explain to her (first one) what it (eating) was like for me, in my own words and in my own way, and it turns out, I described an eating disorder, highly connected to autism, and in that instant of awareness, (when I found out about the disorder), I solved my issues with food and eating. It isn’t an eating ‘disorder’, it’s simply my sensitivity to food which means I simply need to be mindful of what I eat and it’s reaction in my body. But they call it a disorder, so people start to get treated for the symptoms, like I was, but that doesn’t  work because it’s not treating the problem, the real cause, so we get nowhere. 

Probably the best thing that ever happened to me, after realising I needed help, even if it didn’t fit into any category, was to simply come out and tell my job centre coach, a bit of what my life was actually like. About what goes off in my head. She just looked at me and stared. And said, ‘you need help’. I couldn’t believe it. She said you don’t need a job, you need help. And she was on it and within a week, I had my very first support worker, post diagnosis. She works for the same authority that I worked for, I used to liase with her team and did some thoroughly enjoyable joint working with them. I valued their team highly but never in a million years did I ever think I would be a client, a service user!!! Lol! And even though I look nothing like any of their other clients, I’m just the same as them because I’m getting the help I need. There’s no shame in that. None at all. I’ve lived in countries where they tie people up when they have dementia, to keep them safe, because they have no other choice. I feel privileged and super grateful that I live in a society that will help me, a successful and very good at my job professional, with my needs. It makes me want to give back to this society. Despite the appearance of it being a harsh place to live, there is so much good out there and if you focus on the good, the bad disappears. And not just in the mind, but outside of the mind too, because there is nothing in the physical world, that the senses can behold, that did not first start out as an idea in the mind. It all starts in the mind which doesn’t mean we ignore what our senses perceive. We base our whole life on the mantra of going to give. So if we come upon someone who is in need of help and who wants help, we will do what we can to help them. If we can’t help them because of our own difficulties, then we will be focused on our difficulties and the other person’s won’t exist to us anyway. 

But when we no longer have any difficulties, we are always ready and able to help all that we come into contact with. 

That might sound like a busy job, if you believe the social media hype, but if you look around, most people don’t actually want help, they simply want support to remain in their sufferings or their current life. So it’s not as big a task as you might at first think. To be going around always going to give, because few people, if you genuinely want to help, will want your gifts and it’s not a gift if you give it to somebody who doesn’t want it. 

With practice, it becomes clear to you (most of the time or at least some of the time) who wants your help or who is in the shady bit of not being sure or whatever or who is in the bit where they absolutely do not need or want your help and you begin to use your power of discernment as to where you put your energy. Spend it where you feel best and if you can help someone along the way, do it. But live for you, is what I say and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised to be received with a lot of good, solid and extremely helpful support, since I began to accept myself and come out and say, this is who I am, please help me. I didn’t know I could get help with that, I thought I had to hide it. 

Haha!  Same here.  I can't wait for the service users to arrive in the morning, so that I can exit the world of my colleagues and get into a world that's far more congenial to me!

Hi Possibly Autistic (from Definitely Autistic!),

Like you, I work in adult social care with learning disabilities/special needs.  After a lifetime of doing many, many other jobs, I finally came into it 13 years ago.  Prior to it, I was a civil servant.  I needed to get out from behind that desk and do something meaningful, though - even if it meant a huge drop in salary.

And prior to the civil service - which I was in for 5 years - I did a huge number of jobs.  I've done farm work, shop work, office work, road work, piece work.  I've delivered parcels, washing machines, beer, sanitary bins, leaflets, flat-packs, newspapers.  I even helped deliver a baby, once. I've been a recruiter for the IT sector.  I've sat on checkouts, dug trenches, changed tyres, ploughed fields, kept books, pumped petrol, answered phones, mopped corridors.  For a couple of months, I taught creative writing to a group of recovering alcoholics.  I've picked apples, stacked shelves, mucked out pigs, cooked meals, dollied barrels, groomed horses, stacked bales, ushered courtrooms, typed letters, driven buses, proofed manuscripts, input data.  My average is 2 jobs per year over a 43-year working lifetime.  The longest was 7 years - the shortest, 2 weeks.

For the last year, I've specialised with autism care.  In other care-work jobs, I've found generally that everyone gets lumped together as 'learning disabilities', which has meant that autistic people haven't received the special attention they need.  In my current job, they do.  The whole approach and ethos is different: non-aversive, person-centred, with activities as fixed or as varied as the individual needs them to be.  The pay, as you know, is lousy.  But it's enough.  And, quite frankly, if I was offered twice the amount to go back to an office... I'd stay put!  Work needs to be about more than just money. 

We have a Quiet Room at work, where you can go to get some peace. It's set out with comfy chairs and they're adding in a wall mural of a sunlit forest soon. People read in there, I've also seen a man curled up sleeping on the sofa in his lunch hour!

Yup, definitely Autistic! said:

within the team I work, the main TW skills required are an ability to listen to others, to treat colleagues in a respectful way, to contribute & share ideas, to work cooperatively and share tasks.

You have just described my company's idea of "Teamwork", too, and is also how I define teamwork. It's getting the tasks done in the best way by the people most suited.

California said:

If this is something I want, I will be depressed and unhappy until I will get it.

Employers may not necessarily care about this. One of the key tricks in negotiation is to find out why it would benefit the other person - it's much easier to let them convince themselves it's the right thing to do, rather than you trying to convince them. Simply put, if you can trust your employees to do the work at home, then they probably will, and you end up with more work done for the same cost, and the quality of work will be higher for those that work best on their own.

Of course, I'm coming from the viewpoint of being autistic, so this may not apply to "normal" people who require the social aspect as a fundamental part of getting the job done. If you need that social aspect as the glue to keeping the work running, then working from home can be isolating and counter-productive.

People in I.T. are stereotypically seen as being more antisocial than other professions, so I'm probably also biased towards that. If you work in a job that is more prized with having more affinity with computers than people, then working from home - providing they can still do the same work as when in the office, which we can - is a no-brainer.

I've been at the same company for 17 years, so we didn't have the ability to work from home when I started, that's only happened in the last few years as technology made it much easier. Also, in I.T. it's really easy to work from home because all the work is on a computer. For my employer, it makes a lot of sense because people can work on the train, or at home, or in other offices, or in a hotel room, so all that time can be made productive.

If I were to go for a job at another company, I would definitely talk to them about the ability to work from home in my interview - because I've experienced the benefits and it really does make people more productive, so I can talk excitedly and with confidence about it. I was unsure when I first started doing it - I mean, logically if people are at home, you can't keep an eye on them and make sure they're not on the Xbox all day - but in reality, we all end up doing more work at home because there's no commute, and you sometimes work through lunch if it's a difficult problem you're trying to solve, and I usually stay on for longer when usually I'd be leaving to catch my bus home. Plus, since we use Skype to communicate you can always see who's on or who's idle. But, mainly, we're empowered and trusted to get on with the work that we know needs doing. Everyone sees the results when the problem is solved and the customer is singing your praises to your boss. Can't do that if you've been playing Call of Duty all day.

This makes no sense to me.

If this is something I want, I will be depressed and unhappy until I will get it.

And I will keep looking for that everywhere around until I will get it.