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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.
I have some ruminations on this. My ruminations may be completely wrong.
Double empathy problems start from a young age. Those with ASD figure out from a young age that there's a layer of social communication that they are not getting. They are often overtly teased for the faux pas' that inevitably occur. I wonder if this, plus a stronger penchant for black and white thinking does enforce a stronger aversion to "being wrong" then your average person.
Possibly even a stress reaction to previous trauma for some (I definitely think I'm on shaky ground there).
I read this as being strongly opinionated and egocentric.. I want to call it "ausplaining", this tendency to go "no no, YOU don't understand ME (because I'm special, not because I'm wrong)" whenever we get ourselves into situations like the exemplified. I do this A LOT as well, and when people do stick with me for long enough, I often find that I'm either getting my point across by re-framing my explanation, or disco…
I also find "allistic" feels like a dismissive or slightly derogatory alternative to neurotypical. (To be clear, I do not thing the author was using it that way at all, it is just the reaction the word engenders in me.)
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People can also be objectively wrong when it comes to social interactions as well though. To give an example, if someone who is less technical asks you a question that does not give enough background information to give a precise technical answer on, the wrong thing to do is respond by first simply asking questions back at them. Particularly if the questions could be difficult for them to immediately see how it relat…
Asking clarifying questions is engaging with them as best as I know. To me, it's the gracious, honest, polite, and professional thing to do. I can't just make up an answer (say, that performance is what they are thinking about) and then riff on that. I know this sounds blind, but it literally goes against my values. To say something I just made up without clarifying is not honest: it is playing a game. Because if I d…
You are wrong about that though. In the way you are asking, anyway.
> I can't just make up an answer (say, that performance is what they are thinking about) and then riff on that.
It wasn't making up an answer or presupposing his intention. He asked whether you should switch, giving an answer that's essentially "no" but colored with a possible reason for switching is not making anything up.
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The author has not even attempted to paraphrase or summarize the manager's response, so this is also guess-work on your part. Conversely, if I ask a colleague, however smart, a question but their response is "first I need a 10min infodump on things many of which I should already be aware of", I'm just going to say "nevermind then, thanks" and go ask the colleague who can communicate in a more focused and proactive wa…
I like where you’re coming from, it’s just this specific example - should we rewrite stuff in react - really strikes me as something an engineering manager shouldn’t be asking. “I heard about this implementation detail and wonder if we should be doing it like that.” Just much prefer a boss who can parse those questions himself
I have fielded plenty of similar questions from technical EMs, and even CTOs, when it's way outside their area of expertise.
I've also seen ICs give similar answers to the author to the mild shock of the manager, who then has to gently respond with something like "well, John mentioned in the standup today that he noticed 10s p99 spikes on the cart page, while investigating what Paula from the BI team reported in the planning meeting yesterday, that abandoned items are up 30% in the past month..."
> In this particular situation, the discussion never got past the first question. 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. Well, it was "outright rejecting their idea". Whatever the phrasing used, the actual question wasn't "Would it be technological better…
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Thanks for the response. I do agree to all of these suggestions, and honestly we can't just make up hypothetical scenario after hypothetical scenario of what the best way to phrase things are. It depends so much on me, the manager, the time of day, the team culture. I think my point in the article is to say: I am autistic, and I might not communicate the way you are expecting. If I am asking questions, it is for what…
Instead of saying you're autistic, say you have autism. What you are is a human being, most likely. Having autism is just one of your traits. TL;DR Autism is what you've got, not who you are.
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Asking clarifying questions is engaging with them as best as I know. To me, it's the gracious, honest, polite, and professional thing to do. I can't just make up an answer (say, that performance is what they are thinking about) and then riff on that. I know this sounds blind, but it literally goes against my values. To say something I just made up without clarifying is not honest: it is playing a game. Because if I d…
> Asking clarifying questions is engaging with them as best as I know. To me, it's the gracious, honest, polite, and professional thing to do. You are wrong about that though. In the way you are asking, anyway. > I can't just make up an answer (say, that performance is what they are thinking about) and then riff on that. It wasn't making up an answer or presupposing his intention. He asked whether you should switch,…
I do think this is a strategy to try, although I'm pretty sure it's really not about the words, but about body language, timing, whatever... But it is really puzzling to me that you shouldn't ask questions because people will think you are asserting something, while making random assertions in order to probe for answers is the accepted way. I know it's probably how it works, but it will never really make sense to me, and I wish these games were just a little bit easier to play if people did see things from the other side more often, instead of throwing words like "asshole" around (as you can see in comments around here).
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> Asking clarifying questions is engaging with them as best as I know. To me, it's the gracious, honest, polite, and professional thing to do. You are wrong about that though. In the way you are asking, anyway. > I can't just make up an answer (say, that performance is what they are thinking about) and then riff on that. It wasn't making up an answer or presupposing his intention. He asked whether you should switch,…
How do I even know we should switch or not though? A good reason could be "we are moving the office to the UK, and we were only able to find react developers there". That's a pretty good reason to switch, if not an easy one. I do think this is a strategy to try, although I'm pretty sure it's really not about the words, but about body language, timing, whatever... But it is really puzzling to me that you shouldn't ask…
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I like where you’re coming from, it’s just this specific example - should we rewrite stuff in react - really strikes me as something an engineering manager shouldn’t be asking. “I heard about this implementation detail and wonder if we should be doing it like that.” Just much prefer a boss who can parse those questions himself
I guess it depends on the kind of manager it was; it might or might not be an EM, or a highly technical EM might or might not have been appropriate. If you have 25 years of experience, even if you're still an IC you should probably have some direct relationships with non-technical managers, especially if you're working in frontend and B2C. You might not even have a technical manager depending on the company size. I h…
My react frontend is made up, but my actual example is the CTO (no background in software) suggesting we move our embedded product from linux to android because "our updater is broken and i read that android has a great updater," while the issue was faulty flash chips where the brownout protection bit could not be set.
(Moving from linux to android for an embedded product means you basically have to rewrite absolutely everything since the userland is different, for a stack that is under the control of a single company, and is rarely used outside of mobile devices and automotive. And it still won't fix broken flash chips).
This is an order of magnitude more egregious than the react example I transformed it into, and also why I left the company. If I can't present my expertise and get listened to for such an important decision, there really is nowhere for me to go.