Do you work?

Going back to work on Thursday night, first day back since my major meltdown, will see how things go after manager had staff in a meeting about me

I'm a developer and had the same experiences. I work from home now which is much better, but I struggle finding clients! Once I have contact with a client I rarely lose them (my websites tend to be stable, and I manage the server myself so I'm always on top of it). Swings & roundabouts.

BigD said:

I think it is a good idea to bite the bullet and tell employers about the problems we have.

Yes, I was really anxious they'd start wondering whether I can do my job but they seem to be OK. I think it's an idea to wait until they have time to know you can do the actual job and there are just issues around interacting with the environment.

I haven’t been diagnosed yet, my GP is arranging that for me, but it is so obvious that I am autistic, especially since my symptoms greatly increased with the stress when I changed my job. I spoke to my brother about it on the phone the other night, and he revealed that he thinks he is autistic too. I have noticed different symptoms over the years, but it was nothing like it is now, causing depression and anxiety.

Yes, at the age of 55 I find I am looking forward to getting my state pension because it provides a buffer between me and the need to work. 

Wanting to work is an entirely different matter however.  I would actually like to return to work but believe that having sufficient to live on alters things tremendously for me.  A minimum income alters my whole relationship with the workplace, positively affecting my confidence levels, creativity and enthusiasm.  Basically it moves a bit more control, certainty and power away from the employer and into my own hands.  Before I was desperate but now I can do things on my own terms.  Ironically this makes me more attractive as an employee.     

Ah, I wasn't diagnosed but to me that exacerbated things.  I didn't know what the limiting factor was called, but I did know that I behaved and thought differently from others and that my strengths lay in entirely different areas.  Meanwhile many of the things I found excruciatingly difficult, they took in their stride.  So I felt out of kilter.  I also felt that it was in my own best interests in the job market to hide that fact.  And this generally meant feigning confidence, assertiveness, decisiveness and an all round "credible stance."  

Behind the scenes, though, I had a longstanding interest in psychology, beginning with self help books, which I started reading from around the age of 14, and culminating in doing a counselling degree in my mid forties.  I also had a kind of split existence whilst working as an accountant but doing counselling courses in the evening (much to the mystification of my colleagues).  This, of course, corresponded to the persona and the "real me".

Overall I'd say that the counselling courses helped to provide what had been missing in my education and development and my greatest regret is that I wasn't able to realise all of this in time to help my sons.  And certainly if I'd been able to put a name to our type of neurology I think I'd have been in a much better position to head off some of the disastrous experiences in the next generation.  

The qualifications are one thing and yes, I do come across a certain amount of naivety in the younger generation as to what is really expected in the world of work.  For me and mine, though, it went way beyond that.  Our academic ability led to major assumptions and expectations from others that, once thwarted and unfulfilled, were liable to cause breakdowns and serious mental health problems.  A certain amount of puzzlement too, as in, "If I'm so clever, why is this happening?"   

I really wish i'd known much earlier on.  The signs were there in my dad and my uncles but I thought their troubles were largely to do with random circumstances and setbacks.  I was monumentally wrong and utterly devastated when, several decades later, my son started behaving in ways that strongly reminded me of my dad when (way back inthe 70s) everything in his workplace seemed to turn against him and he seemed to completely dissolve as a person.  :(

I currently work in a small Office environment with a small group of people who are kind, caring, considerate & understanding of me. In a way, I had been through a lot before I had even gotten this job so I had built up a lot of coping mechanisms in dealing with things at work. I was open & honest with them from the start & with some assistance I was able to get some funding for part time work at minimum wage. I'm not going to say that I don't still get stressed or anxious but I find it easier to deal with those feelings having gotten used to things over the years. What also helps is the small environment with very nice people I'm happy to work with in an organisation that understands & values me. The downside being that it's part time & doesn't pay enough to live though they would like to do more for me. At the moment it suits me well enough & in time I'm hoping the organisation will grow, which will lead to me getting more hours & pay.

However, before I arrived at this job I can safely say it has been a journey. I wasn't diagnosed until I was 32 but growing up I always had a mentality of wanting to work hard, to prove myself, to progress in a career & to be able to earn money to be able to live a comfortable life. I came from poverty so seeing what my parents went through on a daily basis struggling to put food on the table & thankfully living in a country with welfare & council housing, we did have a home. It always taught me the harsh reality of life, the importance of education & the importance of needing a good job so that I wouldn't go through what my parents did even though my parents also had good educations but things don't always work out even if you have a good education as I found out myself. At school, everything was about getting a good education as it will guarantee you a great job, a great career & a great salary. That turned out to be a load of lies from people who had obviously gotten lucky.

I got my education, took a little while as I ended up dropping one university course for another. I had difficulties due to my anxiety issues & being bullied due to being different. I got through it though with my focus on the fact that school would not last forever & things would be different in the real world where my education would provide me with opportunities while my ability & hard work would reward me. No matter the issues, I kept pushing myself, which was a strain mentally on me but I was determined to prove to myself that I could make something of my life, escape poverty & achieve something great. However, that mentality, the hard work, the ability, etc. all counted for nothing because the same social rules seemed to apply in the workplace. People either liked you or they didn't I guess & I wasn't liked so I went through being bullied, abused, isolated, excluded, discriminated against etc. I'm sure people get the picture & this was before I was even diagnosed. I got angry & the angrier I got the more determined I got, the more I pushed myself, the more I strived to work towards professional qualifications in the hopes of opening more doors so that I could get a better opportunity in a place that would appreciate me. However, I was trapped, I was getting older even though I was gaining qualifications but I was limited by my ability to perform at interviews, the fact that I was limited by not being able to drive, the fact that I had no contacts or friends who could do anything, etc. Finally the organisation most likely concluded that I was going nowhere & they could do whatever they wanted with me. The final straw being they took my job away from me without consulting me & moved me into a position I told them I didn't want while making sure I couldn't get out of it. I finally reached my limit but in a way I had built up quite a bit of resilience throughout my life from school up until that point. They probably thought they had got me but I just ended up walking out taking all my knowledge, skills & experience with me as my only choice to beat them because I doubt they ever imagined I would do such a thing. I've been told by many people I made the right decision, even though the consequences led to me losing my home, my job & any sort of stability in life. By the time I was diagnosed, it was already clear to me the employer was going to do absolutely nothing even if I were to tell them because they had already made it perfectly clear what they had thought about me. Yet, also in a way, all that pushing, determination & focusing of anger drove me to get used to things in a way & to help ease my anxiety. I hated the social stuff but then again, I just pretended like I was friendly with people & spoke to them as they did with me. Lies & deception seem to be the way of things.

Then a few months later, I found my current employer & was completely open & honest about things, which they were supportive about. I am now extremely valued & appreciated in a place where I enjoy working. Sure, I can get anxious at times as well as getting stressed due to work demands in a small organisation with few people where we need to help each other but the fact that we can work together in such an open & supportive way helps me feel more able to deal with those things because I always have someone at work I can talk to about things who will be extremely understanding.

A break will probably help, I have been off work for a week so far, been taking Prozac, feeling much better, I will return to work after the Christmas break and see what provisions they are making for me after the meeting  we had.  I was worried about telling my company about the condition, as I’m a HGV driver driving artic lorries, I thought they might think that it would be dangerous, but they are fine with it. The manager had a meeting with the transport staff to inform them of my condition and symptoms, they have been on the receiving end of my meltdowns a few times. So, I think it is a good idea to bite the bullet and tell employers about the problems we have.

Plastic said:

Should autistic people be told about the risks of certain environments so they are able to make informed choices about careers?

And:

Jenny Butterfly said:

For me the difficulties lay in the discovery that my qualifications meant very little and my interpersonal skills were woefully underdeveloped.  My emotional regulation was very poor too.  Help with these at a much earlier stage could have headed off some of the quite serious problems I faced

Since I didn't know I was autistic, that wasn't a limiting factor in what I tried to do.  But on the other hand not knowing means, like quite a few people, I'm probably fairly heavily traumatised by my experiences.  Would knowing have limited where I've gotten to?  I don't know.  Potentially with better guidance and coping strategies I might actually have gotten further, by not wasting time going down alleys which turned out to be a bad idea.

Or had I been diagnosed at a young age, could low expectations have been placed on me and I just got nowhere?

The qualifications thing is interesting.  In general, educational/vocational qualifications don't mean you can actually do a job.  The terminology I've heard is a bit confusing here, but having a ed/voc qualification means you are qualifiable for a role that requires that ed/voc qualification.  If you can actually do the job, then you become qualified for it.  You can also become qualified to do a job by evidence of the fact that you can do the job.  That's often a harder route to follow though.

I'm also frequently amused by younglings with the ink barely dry on their undergraduate degree who think they know everything their subject, not knowing that actually you now the bare minimum you need to start applying and making a contribution in that area.  Usually they're fairly easy to put back in their box though :-D.

Yes - I ended up with millions of bits of paper because it was the correct thing to do.

I would have loved to have had more information and to feel better prepared. 

In my own education I felt it was more about meeting academic targets than about understanding ourselves and developing as people.  So I met the targets without ever considering my strengths and challenges or even my own real preferences - I actually got so used to just doing what I was told and constantly doubling my efforts to quell my fear of failure that I never stopped to think about what I wanted.  It's a recipe for ending up in the wrong job or even more generally doing what you think you're supposed to do rather than making more considered choices.  I don't think that self reflection and knowledge was encouraged, although I could be the only one who experienced this and i might also have something to do with the kind of family I came from (which valued education as a way out of poverty).

For my generation we were told that any degree would improve our chances on the jobs market when really we should have been drilling down and asking, "Yes, but what kind of jobs?  Would I be suited to these? What do people with this degree tend to do?"

Those are interesting points and I certainly think we can form part of a counterculture which both promotes and employs our talents. 

I'd also say that there is ample scope for self-employment, which from my perspective can work a lot better for many of us.  It removes the need to please and defer to authority figures, conform to the demands and tensions inherent within hierarchical structures and jump through the various hurdles of the interview process.  It also means that we can decide on our working patterns, environment and style plus, within the constraints of the market, find our own niche.

That's not to say that any of this would be easy, though, or even possible for many.  Plus to my mind some of this starts within our education system and the necessary preparation for making a living.  For me the difficulties lay in the discovery that my qualifications meant very little and my interpersonal skills were woefully underdeveloped.  My emotional regulation was very poor too.  Help with these at a much earlier stage could have headed off some of the quite serious problems I faced. 

As it stood, school, sixth form, university and postgraduate education were all about gathering bits of paper with little to no personal development work.  I've made up for some of this in later years.  I had to to survive.  But I don't think it needs to be that difficult.

I see a lot of problems where autistic people end up with the wrong interests & wrong qualifications which lead them to apply for and get the wrong jobs. Jobs where the stresses of being autistic will be increased leading to meltdown and anxiety or where they are obvious targets for the bullies.

The lucky ones wnd up in high-tech where they can earn good money in a relatively 'safe' environment but, personally, I couldn't imagine anything worse than a 9 to 5 office job in a cube-farm with bitchy colleagues, horrible  managers, lots of random strangers phoning me and nowhere to escape to.

Should autistic people be told about the risks of certain environments so they are able to make informed choices about careers?

Except that the interviews for jobs are the interviews for jobs.  The (vast) majority of people are some sort of "norm" and that's usually what they are looking for, unless you can fulfil a particular niche like plastic or (to a lesser degree) myself.  I've usually been given interviews for most jobs my CV has been put forward for, and I've usually been offered most of the jobs I got interviews for.

So if you want a job, the reality is you need to find a way where you can successfully negotiate interviews.  You also need some sort of in-demand skill that you are sufficiently good at that you are in demand.  If you want to be a bit odd, then you need to be sufficiently good, compared to the competition, that people are willing to put up with your oddness for the utility you bring.  You also need to be sufficiently non-disruptive that any disruption you do cause doesn't outweigh your usefulness.

If people feel that the current system doesn't work for them, or they can't adapt to it, and that they need something different then, in any realistic timescale, the only way that's going to happen is if autistic entrepreneurs start creating opportunities for autistic people.  But you still need some sort of product that you can sell.  That could be a traditional business or some sort, or some other type of organisation that does something else that's perceived to be sufficiently valuable to sufficient people that it can somehow fund itself.

Then you could imagine a situation where successful "autistic" enterprises, which have recruitment processes that favour autistic people, are railed on by norms because they can't get through the recruitment processes.

Since (at least what are called high functioning) autistic people claim they are so good at many things, and have advantages that norms don't have, can think differently from norms etc, then thinking of good ideas, and working out how to implement them, shouldn't be too difficult right?

Over-time things will get better, like it has for LGBT people, but that's likely to take several generations, and it took sustained campaigning to go from the treatment of people like Alan Turing to where we are today, and no-doubt there's still further to go.

Both.

The interviews I did pass were in Specialist situations where I had the specific skills or experience they really needed.

For example I got a programming job at the university of Birmingham where they had a contract with the transport road research laboratory (TRRL).  I had had a work placement at (TRRL) a year before.  So the connection was to my advantage.

Yes, I spent a long time believing I was simply introverted and that the corporate world was rejecting me on that basis.  And I felt they were all rather formal and hard-faced, which made me panic and affected my performance. 

Now of course I realise I was being weeded out due to autism!  In a way that's no great loss to me due to what amounts to a severe allergy to the corporate world.  It has, however, made my career path much less straightforward.  

I wish I could have known all of this sooner.

Yes, the false persona really boosted my success rate at interviews.  At that stage, though, I always accepted the job because I didn't have any alternatives.  Leastways, none that didn't present exactly the same issues requiring me to wear a mask all day every day.

If I could have got a job well away from the "madding crowd" that would have helped, but I didn't see any jobs that might fit.  

I work for a large insurance company. I’m a claims handler, so I’m constantly on the phone. I’ve only just told my supervisor, she’s been quite supportive. 

I’m not sure if I should tell my team.

Remember Robert, it was the NT biased interview process that failed you. 

Are they career jobs or McJobs?

My skills are so unique that if someone needs those skills, then they have to employ me. They aren't likely to get many applicants capable of doing what I do. My AS is a huge advantage over NTs in my field.