The kind of company that sets up a neurodiversity program will also not be the kind of company OP is describing he likes. Big, slow, rich companies can do stuff like that but the development work will be more bureaucratic. Small startups have you wear many hats and always put out fires and cobble things together to a solution that’s fast and kind of works.
But those companies will never invest heavily into HR initiatives until they have like 1000 people.
This is a really important point. I left a job after 3 months despite a program like this for a number of reasons:
* the "program" was mainly lip-service, as far as I could tell there was no meaningful impact in daily management
* the company was so bureaucratic that it took me two weeks to get a development environment set up for lack of an MFA token setup, and that was just the tip of the iceberg.
* There were a lot of elegant abstractions over code that never should have been written, which demanded weeks worth of just learning topology for the application
* Political and ego conflict meant that any change I tried to make got shot down not for technical reasons but because I "hadn't paid my dues" for credibility.
I've done much better with early- and mid-stage startups with lots of problems to be handled and all the encouragement in the world to go after them, even without these "neurodivergence programs". Of course, you're getting into another world of life problems (e.g. these companies rarely have parental leave worth mentioning) but you can usually work around the edges.
>Big, slow, rich companies can do stuff like that but the development work will be more bureaucratic.
Ding ding ding ding ding ding! You hit the nail on the head. I'm currently working at such a company and you're 100% right. And the bureaucratic nature of it all drives me pretty mental. It's not a good environment for me at all. I'm going back to a smaller company.
Absolutely true, yet then at least I would feel at ease with myself if we agree to the terms. All cards on the table and I won't have to feel bad about myself because I procrastinated on filling 37.12 .xlsx files with the detailed diary about my work.
What kind of terms do you mean? Opening with "I might procrastinate" will make interviewing much more difficult - many companies will disqualify you regardless of their mental health initiatives.
But keep in mind one thing. If I go and say that I wrote at least one application in (probably more but, let's size it down) in 25 different languages people usually think I'm a con. I can't say I use the technology X and I'm expert on it neither because I'm going to be asked about some obscure thing that I don't care and it's the end.
What I always find the funniest is that the interviewers always sees the worst of me during interviews. Anxiety of evaluation is often breaking me. Most of the high profile interviews I had followed the schema: get nervous -> can't sleep -> sleep 1h/night prior to test/interview -> after 2 interviews forget basic math due to exhaustion -> uneven performance -> bye
However I'd like to be transparent about it, so that I can get a partner and feel better and deliver (as even though I procrastrinate it's not something I want - I'd love to deliver 100% of the time), so I help you, you help me.
And I do have a rather good rep sheet, thus throwaway. I believe people would feel cheated if they'd know otherwise.