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“Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

the.scapegoat.dev

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Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#291

Post by musingsole »

denton-scratch wrote: post #286
shlant wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is the point of dismissing someones Autism purely based on a single blog post and one person you knew? Are you actually trying to convey something helpful here?

I'm not dismissing anyone's anything. I believe autism exists. > one person you knew? I've only known one person who was diagnosed autistic. It's a rare condition; I've known a dozen people with bipolar, and half-a-dozen diagnosed schizophrenics (either I'm attracted to psychotics, or they're attracted to me!) My point was simply that author's account could be anyone's account, apart from the author's self-identifica…

>I'm not dismissing anyone's anything.

>>I didn't see anything in author's prose that suggested autism

You very much are dismissing someone's something.

Worse, I don't think the author explicitly stated they were autistic in the piece...So, you're assuming someone's something just so you can dismiss it?

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#292

Post by jjk166 »

moreira wrote: post #34

> "giving in" does not preserve peace—it simply appeases bullies and makes the workplace toxic. This doesn’t sound right. You are not going to agree with 100% of someone else’s decisions. No matter how much you discuss something, no matter if you understand all the ramifications, everything there could possibly be. Sometimes you’re just not going to agree with the direction someone else is taking, and you’re going to…

If not agreeing means "let's agree to disagree" then that's fine and healthy.

If not agreeing means "I need to pretend I agree even when I have good reason to disagreee because this person needs to be appeased" that is not healthy and contributes to a toxic workplace.

This post is talking about the latter scenario.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#293

Post by AlanYx »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #196
denton-scratch wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it be a sign of healthy introspection to dedicate time to analyze whether that's correct? I wonder if Author is in fact autistic. It seems (not sure if I've got this right) that author wasn't diagnosed until his forties. I'd have expected a diagnosis of autism to occur pre-teen.

Mental health diagnoses pretty much only happen when the patient's life is impacted enough to convince the people involved in their life that there's a problem and figuring it out is necessary. If you get good enough grades, have a non-zero amount of friends, have a family and career that accommodates your random foibles, and generally manage your life well, then you can be as textbook mentally ill as you want withou…

Another good finance example is Michael Burry. He completed medical school and largely completed specialist neurology and pathology training without realizing he was autistic. It wasn't until years later, after his son was diagnosed with autism, when he got his diagnosis.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#294

Post by anchochilis »

larve wrote: post #235
gnfargbl wrote: post #25

> I needed to understand why our checkout had to be improved; I explained that technology choices made no difference to the user. However, the manager interpreted my words as outright rejecting their idea. That's an exceptionally patronising position to take. The manager almost certainly isn't a fool, and likely understands the author's point already. It's much more likely that the manager was actually asking if the…

Thank you for reading. Of course, this is a highly edited hypothetical situation, and not what happened. I try very hard to understand how I can phrase differently so that we can answer these questions and work together. I think in other comments it became clear that the intent of the questions are not the problem. In fact, I am asking them because I trust the manager to have good answers. Now, if I come across as pa…

> it is also not rocket science to take words literally and not look for subtext

Has it occurred to you that just as it is difficult for you to adapt to the communication styles and thought patterns of allistic people, your manager experiences the same difficulty adapting to those of autistic people?

While I believe organizations and managers should try to accommodate neurodiversity and help all types of people be successful in the workplace, it's not unreasonable to expect you to expend some effort adapting as well.

In all your follow-up comments you seem to have some excuse or clarification for why you don't need to adjust your behavior and the problem is obviously that your manager isn't trying hard enough.

When your manager asks a casual question, he is not asking for a formal document describing pros, cons. He's looking for you to make a judgment call, express an opinion, or for you to say "hmmm, I might spend some time this week looking in to that."

Reacting to a two-sentence exchange by spending a week working on a doc is a communication anti-pattern.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#295

Post by bluesign »

peteradio wrote: post #174
bluesign wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is communication there. > A manager came to me asking if we should rewrite the checkout of our E-Commerce platform using React because they had read a blog post about another company doing it All questions can be reflected easily. > Is our checkout page not performing well? > Will a new checkout solve our problem? Will React make our checkout page performing better / improve checkout ? > Why do they think a t…

If the manager has no clue then why are they bringing the ideas? They could spend all day long pitching dog shit that engineering has to bat away, is that the managers job to be the ideas guy?

From what I understood, manager in this context is not technical at all. They read somewhere their competitor using a new technology, and asking if it makes sense if they use that too.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#296

Post by Volundr »

larve wrote: post #18
korijn wrote: post #3

It's interesting to me that all four examples put the blame with the other party. I hope it's just worded poorly or I am reading too much into it. Edit: I'm not saying that invalidates the article's content (in fact I recognize the situations from personal experience), but it doesn't really put a positive spin on it.

thanks for reading, author here! the article is very much a response to a blame already expressed. People can be wrong about factual things, which can be verified. Otherwise it’s a difference of opinions. These are my thoughts on why differences of opinions get phrased as “autistic people just can’t admit when they are wrong”, when myself and most autistic people I know in fact readily admit when we are wrong and mov…

The thing is, at least in the first example, the way I read it isn't "autistic people can't admit when they are wrong". From your own telling of the story it seems like a manager asked you "Should we rewrite the checkout page in React?", and you responded with "Should we rewrite the checkout page in React?". You failed to realize that all of the questions you asked them are the question they were asking YOU. They've been reading articles about technical teams gaining things they don't really understand from switching to React. Maybe increased velocity (they know what velocity is but don't know how React increases it), reduced bundle sizes (what's a bundle? why do I care?), faster rendering times (faster is a good thing, right?), etc. But they don't have the knowledge to judge if React will do this for them.

Answers to this question might be "No, we already use Angular which provides similar benefits to React", "Yes, switching to React from MooTools (I'm old) would simplify the design, increasing our velocity and probably resolve some annoying rendering bugs", or even "I'm not sure. Perhaps we should meet and discuss the weaknesses of that page and figure out if React is the right tool to resolve them".

Instead they got back the questions they were hoping you'd answer for them.

Many long years ago the CIO at a company I worked for asked if we could use machine learning to improve our data analytics. I responded with "I don't know, what kinds of questions are you hoping to answer?". We went back and forth on this several times, with me insisting you couldn't just throw machine learning at data without some idea of what your hoping to get back. This wasn't resolved until they brought in a vendor claiming to provide turnkey machine learning solutions, they ran it against our data and came up with the stunning insight that the biggest predictor of dollars sold was.... units sold. To be fair they did provide other data points, but it was all things we either already knew, or didn't care about and if we ever did could find out quickly.

I failed to recognize that the question I was asking was a big part of what I was being asked. If I had realized this and provided some insight into the kinds of questions machine learning could answer, and why we didn't need sophisticated machine learning algorithms for the ones the business cared about I could have saved everyone some time. Instead I kept rephrasing the question back at him, with neither of us having the insight to realize we were actually asking the same question.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#297

Post by denton-scratch »

dalbasal wrote: post #207
denton-scratch wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a somewhat combative frame This is a technical discussion we're talking about. In technical discussions, I don't want to faff around with euphemisms, circumlocutions, or fancy pronouns. It's hard enough to be clear in technical discourse, even if you aren't carrying those burdens. I expect people to speak directly, even if on the face of it their utterances might seem rude if spoken in a social context. If a collea…

Technical, nerdy people are often combative in passive aggressive ways. Assuming a "I am the objective one" is often just a blindspot. Everyone is subjective to some extent, and admitting that you are a person with a perspective (as opposed to a neutral observer) is useful for avoiding such tensions. Just admit that you have opinions, and present them as such. " I am concerned that we are taking on a risky project, w…

> passive aggressive

I think I know what that means; it's kind of pretending to be non-aggressive, while aggressing. I hope that, in a technical discussion, my adversary won't hold back. If they're angry, it's best for me if they tell me. Same if they're strongly opposed to my view.

I don't want to have to guess where my adversary is coming from. We're not talking about dating, or getting on with the mother-in-law; it's about technical discussions. There's no reason you shouldn't be aggressive when presenting your view, and then get on fine with your adversary after the discussion's over.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#298

Post by denton-scratch »

JackFr wrote: post #283
denton-scratch wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I realize the sticking point is “voice my concerns” But in an interaction between an engineer and a manager, anything less than voicing your concerns is an abdication of responsibility. If the manager switches off at the first expression of concern from an engineer, then I imagine that's a team that's bound to failure. Jump ship.

No one says the manager switches off. They may have a host of reasons, possibly non-technical, why they don't agree with you. It's certainly fair to ask what they, but the point is it's not a debating society. There needs to be some amount of trust that a manager is operating in good faith, on a rational basis, and while perhaps not an expert some degree of competence in the area.

How can they not agree with you, if all you've done is ask one question (with three more questions left unasked)?

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#299

Post by denton-scratch »

jaywalk wrote: post #204
denton-scratch wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just asking "gotcha" questions I didn't read them as "gotcha" questions. They looked like straightforward and sensible questions. I wonder if the manager was expecting some kind of kickback, and was braced to be adversarial. Perhaps there's some history here, between author and his manager.

From a purely technical standpoint, of course they are valid questions. But from a political standpoint, when you know that your manager just read a blog post about React, I think the discussion needs to be framed differently. Starting out with something like "Oh, yeah. I'm familiar with React. What were some of the positive aspects of it that stood out to you?" will help to understand their perspective. Again, I ful…

> But from a political standpoint, when you know that your manager just read a blog post about React, I think the discussion needs to be framed differently.

The author only got to ask one question before he was shut-down: why do you want to do this?

That's not a criticism, it's a completely reasonable question, given that rewriting something using React is going to be expensive, and might introduce major new risks. Maybe author asked the wrong way, or in the wrong tone of voice.

If it were my manager, and he was proposing that I rewrite something that works fine in a new language, and I had real work to do, then I think my question "Why do you want to do that?" might come across as angry - because I'd be angry.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#300

Post by denton-scratch »

musingsole wrote: post #291
denton-scratch wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not dismissing anyone's anything. I believe autism exists. > one person you knew? I've only known one person who was diagnosed autistic. It's a rare condition; I've known a dozen people with bipolar, and half-a-dozen diagnosed schizophrenics (either I'm attracted to psychotics, or they're attracted to me!) My point was simply that author's account could be anyone's account, apart from the author's self-identifica…

>I'm not dismissing anyone's anything. >>I didn't see anything in author's prose that suggested autism You very much are dismissing someone's something. Worse, I don't think the author explicitly stated they were autistic in the piece...So, you're assuming someone's something just so you can dismiss it?

> I don't think the author explicitly stated they were autistic in the piece

"I have read similar experiences by other autistic people" suggests that the author considers themself to be autistic.

> You very much are dismissing someone's something.

...And that's that, I guess. Can you please clarify what I am dismissing, and how? I don't want to dismiss anyone's anything.

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