Disclosure of autism at work holds risks and benefits

Disclosure of autism at work holds risks and benefits
spectrumnews.org

I think it's better not to say anything and, if you wrong someone because of your illness, maybe tell that person in private and apologise. Unfortunately doing that makes it sound like an excuse.

I'm not saying I have a better solution. Some people simply aren't apt for the real world. That's sad but it's the truth.

The same argument might have been made before women's suffrage, civil rights, laws around accessibility, etc.

Beyond physical laws, "the real world" is what we make it.

I agree with the parent that you really want to think through the benefits of reporting a mental illness at work. How you will be treated depends on your employer, your boss, and the HR people involved in the discussion.

However as someone who struggles with a very real mental issue myself and has managed or worked with other people who do, please don't get discouraged like the parent poster seems to be. "apt for the real world" is not a static definition. If you struggle with mental illness, do your best to make the cost-benefit equation of employing you positive for your employer (and society). It won't be easy, but if you find an employer or line of work where you have the flexibility to create some guardrails around your mental illness in a way that allows you to create value, you will be surprised at what you can achieve.

20 years ago I was a failed engineering student who could barely pass most classes but did ok at and enjoyed practical coding. 15 years ago, after convincing a very good grad school that they should evaluate me on the basis of the actual code I had written and my GRE scores, not just my academics, I became a failed grad student who could barely pass many of my classes but enjoyed almost all of them and excelled at some. A decade ago, after dropping out from gradschool, getting fired from my first job as an engineer, and convincing a startup to hire me at less than market rate for a jack-of-all-trades sales-engineer type, I started doing ok and having a ball at work. Most of my colleagues would have told you I was a mediocre engineer, but I created enough value for the cost-benefit balance to be positive even if barely so. 5 years ago, after my painfully discovered role became a traditional desk job due to events outside my control, and I started failing again, I quit my job and started a business. My business has grown to several locations now. I still feel like a failure every day, because I fail at tasks most ordinary people would coast through. But giving myself time by being patient and persisting has allowed me to find a couple of things I am better at than most people and create an organization around me that makes up for my deficits enough to have a positive cost-benefit balance for the world.

Most people who work with me would tell you (and some tell me to my face) that I am simply not apt for the real world. And yet my business employs scores of people and serves a real need in multiple communities. I would have put the odds of this happening at close to zero at almost every point of time along my journey.

Accept yourself, but don't resign yourself to failure. If you fail, learn a little bit from that failure and change the next thing you try a little bit based on what you learn. Don't stop trying to create value for the world. You will find your niche. And, as that brilliant a*hole with evident mental issues said, don't expect this kind of clarity when you look towards the future, these dots only connect looking back after 5 or 10 years.

We have a minority gender? (Or is that a can of worms I shoudln't have opened?)