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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”

#421

Post by TaylorAlexander »

“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. I entertained the question in good faith. However, in order to make an informed decision, I needed to understand a few things:

Is our checkout page not performing well? Will a new checkout solve our problem? Why do they think a technology change is a solution? Do they understand the implications of such a switch? 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.”

I have this problem which is that I don’t really understand what autism is supposed to be. Because the example of autism described above just seems like sound decision making. The person who wants to rewrite some software because they read a blog post about some programming language is just a person who doesn’t have a good understanding of what engineering and software development are.

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

#422

Post by a_puppy »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #359

> However, "giving in" is not the same as acknowledging when you are wrong: it is simply playing mind games—games I am not interested in playing. > There is more to life: I am an engineer; I like solving problems. I embrace fairness and open intellectual exchange. This matters to me a whole lot more than getting promoted. Plus, "giving in" does not preserve peace—it simply appeases bullies and makes the workplace tox…

> I think people can mean either one by "giving in", I am wondering whether the OP, in rejecting "pretending I agree when I don't" is accidentally being the person who "always insists on getting their way every time".

Yes, it's possible that the OP is accidentally being a bully by insisting on getting their way every time. But it's also possible that everything the OP is saying is true, and the other party really is objectively wrong. Do you agree it's possible the OP is right?

I personally have encountered a situation where a tech lead repeatedly doubled down on idea that was objectively deeply flawed, but they had a lot of political capital, so management told me I just needed to "give in". Other engineers agreed with my assessment in private, but weren't willing to say so publicly.

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

#423

Post by mosquitobiten »

mort96 wrote: post #183
scotty79 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or hear me out. Maybe allistic people could learn to interact with autistic people since they'll be meeting a lot of them in IT. Those are not hard skills to learn, like patiently responding to questions before jumping to conclusions about what the person you are talking to thinks about this and that.

This is the typical "improve society vs improve yourself" discourse. We should absolutely be in favor of changing society to make neurodivergent people's lives easier. This requires changing education policy, as well as increasing the diversity of communities so that children get more experience communicating with more kinds of people, and it'll probably take a few generations at the least before we start seeing majo…

>This is the typical "improve society vs improve yourself" discourse.

Nah, it's more "improve society & improve yourself". ND people realize being "vs" and wiring their brains differently is not achievable, so NDs try to "soften the blow" to their own mental health by trying to make allistic people know how they work. Sharing is the first step towards understanding.

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

#424

Post by zasdffaa »

I've known autistic people and there was a strong tendency to reject what they don't want to hear.

I've also met a very autistic/aspergers person who would listen and consider (and there may be more than one, I just can't think of them ATM).

I've also met non-autistic people who simply can't listen or accept any kind of 'challenge' (as they perceive it). Not a few of the buggers either.

I've come to wonder if bloody-minded utter certitude is in fact a distinct and separate trait that has some positive, but not absolute, correlation with autism. Given the way my exposure to the autistic and the non-autistic-but-bull-headed run parallel sometimes but at others it diverges, perhaps that's a better description of what's going on. Maybe.

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

#425

Post by kthejoker2 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #365
jrochkind1 wrote: post #359

> However, "giving in" is not the same as acknowledging when you are wrong: it is simply playing mind games—games I am not interested in playing. > There is more to life: I am an engineer; I like solving problems. I embrace fairness and open intellectual exchange. This matters to me a whole lot more than getting promoted. Plus, "giving in" does not preserve peace—it simply appeases bullies and makes the workplace tox…

> let's try it your way this time I've never understood why people go along with things they disagree about. It seems people often beat a good argument with the threat of retribution if we dont play along. Doesnt sound like a recipe for well thought out actions or incentives.

Consensus based decisionmaking has its place.

It especially works better when there's too much ambiguity to proceed aggressively in any direction no matter how confident you are.

It usually more accurately reflects the group's appetite for risk, creates psychological safety, and reduces the social costs of failure.

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

#426

Post by a_puppy »

I sympathize with the OP. Particularly this part:

> A typical piece of advice I receive is that there comes the point where you need to "give in," especially to people in authority. This preserves peace in the workplace and helps with promotions. However, "giving in" is not the same as acknowledging when you are wrong: it is simply playing mind games—games I am not interested in playing.

> There is more to life: I am an engineer; I like solving problems. I embrace fairness and open intellectual exchange. This matters to me a whole lot more than getting promoted. Plus, "giving in" does not preserve peace—it simply appeases bullies and makes the workplace toxic.

I've repeatedly been in situations where a person in authority proposed a bad idea, and I tried to push for a better alternative, but I was told I should "give in" to preserve the peace. So I believe the OP.

In these comments, a lot of people are advising the OP to learn better soft skills. The implied reason boils down to "Most people are allistic, so allistic people make the world's implicit rules. If an autistic person doesn't learn to play by those rules, they're going to lose." For example, allistic people tend to respect hierarchies, so there's a "rule" that OP should "give in" to the person in authority.

I think this advice is correct for the individual; learning better soft skills is the only thing OP can personally do.

But, it makes the organization as a whole more dysfunctional. If a person in authority is wrong, then if the "rule" is that OP should give in, then the person in authority will continue to be wrong, and that's bad for the organization! I believe the organization can do better. The "rules" are not set in stone; although they arise from human nature, they are shaped by an organization's culture. For example, many small organizations are less hierarchical, so the "rules" would tend to put more pressure on the person in authority to listen to what OP was saying. If OP was actually right, that would lead to a better result for the organization than if OP gave in.

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

#427

Post by beefield »

btilly wrote: post #392
larve wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for reading. I agree, this article is about the times when things escalated, and I didn’t think I was wrong, or more precisely, didn’t even get to the point where I could be wrong. When I’m wrong I just say “oh you’re right, good point” and move on. It’s very easy to do.

The problem is that you come across as the very stereotype of a person who is so focused on arguing about an irrelevant detail that there is no point in having the conversation with it. From my experiences with people on the spectrum, I would bet that you are arguing based on YOUR misunderstanding of the situation. And so your blog post can be summarized as, "Person who is convinced that they are right refuses to adm…

> - Will switching to React make hiring and training future developers easier?

> - Will this technology choice make future projects faster to develop? (For example, do we get wins from a better toolchain, etc.)

> - Will this be an interesting project that helps me keep existing employees motivated?

> - Are the other claimed wins in the blog post actually going to work out that way?

But... These are (or can be framed as) concrete problems.

> - Do my existing programmers have the necessary skills to test this technology out?

If you can't produce a single concrete reason why to try a new framework, why should I discuss about testing it?

(this as someone who may be on the spectrum and for whom the original article hit a bit too close..)

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

#428

Post by yobbo »

UncleMeat wrote: post #60
larve wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here, thanks for reading. That is exactly the first question I would ask. If you ask me to make something better, I need to know what you mean by “better”. That’s where a productive discussion start, when we align the goals (and I don’t really care about them, they all turn into interesting technical challenges) and then discuss strategy (amongst which there is technology). If me asking what the goal is is per…

I think that this approach limits leadership. Often people are asked to solve both technical and nontechnical problems. People can reasonably ask you both to define "better" and to achieve it. If you expect requirements for everything then you'll place a limit on your influence.

In fairness, the author's response is demonstrating a better understanding of goals and tradeoffs than the manager.

Asking questions as "in what way do you hope to improve it?" will help the manager understand. Just giving the explanation will sound rude.

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

#429

Post by yobbo »

gnfargbl wrote: post #67
larve wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here, thanks for reading. That is exactly the first question I would ask. If you ask me to make something better, I need to know what you mean by “better”. That’s where a productive discussion start, when we align the goals (and I don’t really care about them, they all turn into interesting technical challenges) and then discuss strategy (amongst which there is technology). If me asking what the goal is is per…

Well, if you actually asked what the goals of the manager's proposed evaluation/comparison were, great! If you had probed around the context of the discussion a little bit by asking some open questions like "So why did this article pique your interest in relation to our company?" or "That's interesting, I wonder how their approach compares to ours. What do you think?", then even better. However, that isn't quite what…

> it contains the implicit assumption that your knowledge of the business/tech crossover is superior to your manager's.

This might be the core of article.

Some things are knowable and don't need to be assumptions. In these cases, the author expects to have conversations that probe into what is true and what is false.

But some managers are offended by questions that challenge their assumptions. They feel their position gives them authority to overrule the deductive reasoning of their reports.

"Allistic" people sense this, and "up-manage" the egos and sensibilities of managers, without being aware they do it.

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