Those of you who work - what is your job?

Im unemployed as of 2 months ago but I was a schools and nursery sports coach for 4  years and decided after I gave up that I would give my time to the autism community being autistic and having  myself to stand up for whats right for us after seeing and experiencing the way the education system treats the autism community. 

I work in a field probably most suited to people with ADHD and Autism...  IT!  I'll give you a break down of my career....

• Exited College at 18 with 2 A-Levels (should've had 3, but couldn't finish the 3rd one, I was into it, but I also wasn't).  
• Started working in a Call Centre on Helpdesk Level 1 - stupidly moved to a completely different part of the country thinking I could commute - I couldn't.  
• Did a few temporary positions, including a Keying job on the Census Project - that led me into their IT team, on a short term contract.
• Back to Call Centre Helpdesk on Level 1, then grew slowly to Level 2 - eventually leaving of my own accord to take the next step - 
• Desktop Support - masking central!!  Still managed to progress to
• Senior Desktop Support - still masking, but now less interaction with people, albeit more "global" reach.  Eventually confronted the VP of Infrastructure and landed a role as a
• Server Engineer - stayed here for 5 years, not needing to "people" very much, and being able to learn and grow before redundancy, but straight into
• Systems Administrator, Cloud Engineer - this employer recognised the ADHD & Autism before I did and used it to both of our advantages.  I grew at an exponential rate over 5 years before moving on to
• Infrastructure Engineer - with a larger employer who understand the need for reasonable adjustments, and know how to let employees manage their own workload.  I'm thriving.  The general routine serves the Autism very well, and the occasion "splat" moment, feeds the ADHD's chaos, while allowing the Autism's logic to work to a solution.  My managers give me interesting challenges to work on, and hold open discussions knowing that I will often find the solution they didn't even consider viable.  

From Server Engineer to now, I've spent at least 4 days a week working from home.  Where I am now asks us to make an effort to do 1 day in the office (always the same day each week), it feeds the routine but we have issues with Car Parking and Hot Desking which I am yet to 'formally' tackle.  But generally, I'd say it's the perfect job! 

Work from home (mostly) sat on a laptop. It's really good for me - can set up my environment how I like it and can be as weird as I like with only my dog watching : )

I do a fair few video meetings on MS Teams but it's way better than face to face stuff and sitting among an.office of people.

Good luck, hope this helps a little

Most of my experience has been within healthcare and charity sector and mostly office based work.

Hi illustrated.lady 

2 months since your post and the comments keep coming.

I notice you haven't replied yourself yet :-)

So having answered a couple of months ago myself I figured I would answer again - might highlight if I've changed and after that last line I admit to hoping to draw you into the discussion too.  I hope that is alright and you are alright with this too.

You said "I'm fairly intelligent and well educated" and " I have ended up off sick with stress/anxiety/overwhelm in every job I've had".

Well truth is me too, and I reckon a lot of other people reading this also.

A little earlier today I responded to another post within which the topic of masking came up.

This has helped me to come up with another answer to your post and maybe this shows personal growth or increased delusion on my part.  Hehe, time will tell :-)

"Personally I think the trickiest thing, but also the most useful thing, out of all the stuff to "unmask" is the "cognitive masking".

Removing this mask from oneself perhaps reveals the person one genuinely is.  From which there is an opportunity to "start again" with an enormous amount of otherwise repressed or suppressed energy that can be employed to participate in and enjoy a happy and more satisfying life."

I'd take a punt that your academic skills that you currently appear to be hiding the light of under the metaphorical bushel might make you extraordinarily well placed to tackle the job of doing that.

Doing this I reckon you would have a much greater chance of having any job you liked.

Best Wishes :-)

Gosh those all sound like challenging and tiring jobs. It’s no wonder you’re feeling burnt out.

I don’t know if there are such jobs around you but have you considered being a carer/helper but an independent one so not in a care home and only caring for one person? My first job was caring for an elderly lady and aside from having to do social interacting and shopping it was an amazing job. Mostly it involved cleaning and hoovering, preparing her lunch and tea, and driving her to the places she wanted to go.

Sadly she passed away and I couldn’t find another job like that. Plenty of care home jobs but I knew that environment wouldn’t work for me. I’m a personal assistant now but it’s destroying me. Every day I am constantly stressed and exhausted. In the office it’s me and four other women, the phone is going all day, there’s constant small talk and the radio is on all day long.

In short, not an autistic friendly job or environment. I’m looking for new work but I can’t find anything suitable yet. I’m hoping the new year will bring better work for me.

Keeping my fingers crossed for you that you can find something better suited to you.

Hugs x. 

Your work is very important. My daughter often gets one on one attention from a teaching assistant to keep her on task, and she is flourishing because of it right now. Thank you for your work!

I work as a teaching assistant supporting children with additional learning needs, and I love it! Being around these children feels like a space where I can truly be myself, and I feel like I understand them on a deeper level. The job keeps me busy - there’s always something to do, which suits me because I struggle with sitting still. I get to be creative too, which is always fun. I really enjoy learning new things and figuring out the best ways to explain them so the children understand. I also love noticing patterns in how they learn - it’s fascinating and really rewarding. Don’t get me wrong, I usually come home completely exhausted and shut down, but it also makes me really happy.

I admire you -- I need an entire evening when I'm working.

Personal assistant in office environments (mostly didn't work out for me long term)

Same as above but remotely - a lot happier until they made us go back.

Freelance translator, remote, at home, much more focused and quiet.

I'll give you a guess as to which one I excelled at (sadly the work has dried up).

Hi Lonehare12 - I came back to this post as someone new had posted - looking back over our chat I realised that you never mentioned what sort of complimentary therapy you qualified in.  Hehe not sure if just being nosy, wanting to see how you are doing in that (or both!) but I would like to ask what sort of complimentary therapy you trained in?  For info I have a background in movement from both the "complimentary" Traditional Chinese Medicine ( Qigong -Taoist yoga mainly...) as well as western allied health profession training...

That’s interesting and sounds exactly what I need for a role. I am currently finishing a course in web applications development - full stack. I’ve found it hard at times with Java and getting my head around a new language every 5 mins but slowly getting there and achieved a few merits so far. Any suggestions for someone looking for entry level roles? 

I work in Further Education (back office support staff - mainly data entry) as working part-time, term-time works really well for my work/life balance. About 10 years ago I also suggested job-sharing (which was successful) so I now work 2 days a week in the office and 1 day a week working from home. This enables me to feel as though I'm contributing to society, earn a wage and interact with others without getting 'burn out' from the social aspect.

Oh no - that’s horrible. Though sadly not that surprising. I actually suspect my previous PhD supervisor very much changed his view and treatment of me after finding out I was autistic, and tried to push me out (which did succeed as one of labs closed). Can’t know if that was it or something else but it is a possibility- he was not willing to accept me and I tried so so hard to work and be the way he expected me to be- worked incredibly hard and burnt myself even more with trying to fit into the mould

That’s great! I am doing a PhD in Neuroscience right now but I am starting to wonder whether it’s actually the lab work that has been contributing to burnout all these years. I love biology but struggle with health issues and lab work can be very inflexible and relentless at times and I just feel that many things take me longer because I am so precise and I take a long time to make decisions as I need to carefully analyse and consider evidence etc. In addition some supervisors don’t let you have flexibility with hours which was disastrous for me in past as I could never recharge. In my current lab I sadly also do not fit in - I always managed to find people I connected to in the lab and I loved that I could be myself more and just talk about my interests but I don’t have that here- it is sad. I am really good at asking questions, raising possible issues and alternative explanations and making connections when someone is giving a talk or presenting their data but I just feel that I suck at the day to day work as I overthink and I now worry it is affecting my health. I still want to finish the PhD (hope I can without destroying myself) but I am even considering doing a second bachelor (maths). I want to stay in academia but I worry maybe the wet lab is not sustainable in long term. It is really good to hear that you managed to make it work so well! I wish more autistic researchers could feel safe to say they are autistic- I do think there are quite a few of us- I have met several individuals that I strongly suspect are autistic and a lot of my autistic friends are in research labs too. 

I work in sport. The pay isn't great but it's what I enjoy and that's more important to me than money. It's also something I can hyperfocus on so I don't tend to make the kind of silly mistakes and mess-ups that blight my every day life away from work. I've been lucky enough to have only had three jobs in my lifetime but I've been very loyal (some would say much too loyal) to some employers.

Been customer facing for 40 years both as a rep and in retail. The former great because I spent a lot of time by myself in charge of myself and in control of the conversation in that I had something to talk about. No small talk though. In retail mainly feel stressed. There are days I don’t want to talk to anyone and I get home and have to decompress for 1/2 hour or so. 

I do agency work around schools I’m supposed to be in a classroom as a TA but at the moment I’m working in a school kitchen as a dishwasher it’s not great tbh but working with children in a classroom I love especially the little kids in the infants their easy to work with. I have also worked in an autism unit at a school that was more of a challenge as a lot of the kids were non verbal but I found wearing my special cardigan made from a rough fabric worked as one of the kids liked the feel of it. I’m not sure what experience you have with children or if you would consider working with them maybe in a school environment. 

I've been a research officer/research associate for nearly seven years now, I started working in the University sector when I was 20... I've loved it ever since - my work revolves around graphics and data translation via arts. I'm also doing my PhD on this topic (very, most ongoing special interest I've had!).

Jolly good Cinnabar_wing  :-) please let me know what you make of them :-)