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There’s a difference between engaging in petty office politics and endeavoring to grow your soft skills. And everyone, including hard core techies, can benefit

There’s a difference between engaging in petty office politics and endeavoring to grow your soft skills. And everyone, including hard core techies, can benefit from learning how to better interact with other people.

scotty79 4y ago
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.
- mort96 4y ago
  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 major societal shifts, but it's a worthwhile effort. In the meantime, it's not a bad idea for an individual person to improve their soft skills, just to make their own life easier. For the individual neurodivergent person, learning how to effectively communicate with neurotypical people is a more effective short-term strategy than waiting for all of society to adapt.
  - larve 4y ago
    Author here. I agree, and both approaches are not exclusive. But I think you underestimate how much effort autistic people put into improving our soft skills in order to survive. In fact, I learned to be so good at social occasions that I never thought I could be autistic, given how many colleagues value me and how many friends I have and make. I reflect here upon situations where all these improved soft skills didn’t help however, and try to understand what might be going on.
  - mosquitobiten 4y ago
    >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.

scotty79 4y ago

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.

mort96 4y ago
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 major societal shifts, but it's a worthwhile effort. In the meantime, it's not a bad idea for an individual person to improve their soft skills, just to make their own life easier. For the individual neurodivergent person, learning how to effectively communicate with neurotypical people is a more effective short-term strategy than waiting for all of society to adapt.
- larve 4y ago
  Author here. I agree, and both approaches are not exclusive. But I think you underestimate how much effort autistic people put into improving our soft skills in order to survive. In fact, I learned to be so good at social occasions that I never thought I could be autistic, given how many colleagues value me and how many friends I have and make. I reflect here upon situations where all these improved soft skills didn’t help however, and try to understand what might be going on.
- mosquitobiten 4y ago
  >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.