Do you work?

Keep reflecting on this subject because it's really dogged me over the years.  Since my diagnosis in October, memories keep coming back.  One in particular.  I was once pushed straight to the top of the redundancy list on the back of an informal reference from someone at board level with whom I'd hardly ever worked.  I was the systems accountant and she was in a more strategic, decision-making role.  Her damning comment was that I "keep myself to myself".  And the employer seemed to favour extroverts, as usual.  No matter that my role actually required me to mostly stay within the finance department and act as technical support.  I wonder whether, if I'd been diagnosed at the time, this might have given me some protection?  Certainly the accountancy qualification only seemed to help very little and I felt judged on my personality.  :(   

Personality counts for a lot.

Many years ago after I left university, I attended a graduate recruitment full day assessment at the Barclays Bank computer centre, I passed all the technical and psychometric tests.  Finally an interview with the HR department, and we were warned this was separate from all the previous tests and we had to show that we were the RIGHT type of people for the bank.  I failed it of course.

Plus overall I always knew that I wasn't going to fit their idea of the "right" type person for the job.  I could see other graduates who I thought fitted the bill and I eventually started getting through interviews by imagining what they would say, how they might hold themselves and how they'd dress.  Then I simply stepped into that persona.

Of course, once "Pretend Jenny" actually got the job, there were consequences.  The employers wondered how on earth they'd managed to get someone who was basically very nervous on the phone, reluctant and often silent in meetings and phobic about driving or doing presentations!

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.

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.  :(

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.  

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.

My record for failed interviews is 28 in one year.  

My record for failed interviews is 28 in one year.  

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.

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.  :(

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.

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.