[denton-scratch]

> They happen to me too.

And me. I'm not autistic. I don't think I have any kind of Asperger's either.

I didn't see anything in author's prose that suggested autism; it just sounded like a normie, perhaps with an autism diagnosis, who is fretting about communication with their boss.

There seems to be quite a few commenters here making critical comments, as if author is failing to communicate effectively. I wonder if they'd have been so critical, if author hadn't self-identified as autistic. I wonder if some of these commenters have a bad attitude to self-identified autistics.

I've never known an autistic person well; but I worked closely in an office with an autistic developer. I found his code over-complex and hard to follow. Pair-coding with this guy was a waste of time; he couldn't explain what he was doing. Author, however, seems to be able to explain himself fine.

[shlant]

what is the point of dismissing someones Autism purely based on a single blog post and one person you knew? Are you actually trying to convey something helpful here?

[denton-scratch]

I'm not dismissing anyone's anything. I believe autism exists.

> one person you knew?

I've only known one person who was diagnosed autistic. It's a rare condition; I've known a dozen people with bipolar, and half-a-dozen diagnosed schizophrenics (either I'm attracted to psychotics, or they're attracted to me!)

My point was simply that author's account could be anyone's account, apart from the author's self-identification as autistic. Without that, this entire thread would just be about how to deal with a crap boss.

[musingsole]

>I'm not dismissing anyone's anything.

>>I didn't see anything in author's prose that suggested autism

You very much are dismissing someone's something.

Worse, I don't think the author explicitly stated they were autistic in the piece...So, you're assuming someone's something just so you can dismiss it?

[denton-scratch]

> I don't think the author explicitly stated they were autistic in the piece

"I have read similar experiences by other autistic people" suggests that the author considers themself to be autistic.

> You very much are dismissing someone's something.

...And that's that, I guess. Can you please clarify what I am dismissing, and how? I don't want to dismiss anyone's anything.

[musingsole]

>>I didn't see anything in author's prose that suggested autism

[atq2119]

This doesn't read to me as dismissing the author's autism. It reads to me as observing that a non-autist could have written substantially the same article (minus making it about autism), and they then went off to observe that this comment section would likely have looked very different in that case.

It's an interesting thought experiment, and at least to me it feels like you're the one who is reading dismissal into it for no good reason.

[larve]

It's not a secret that autistic people have trouble communicating in the workplace. This is not a post about my life's story and me self-diagnosing as autistic. This is me relating my experience explicitly in response to someone saying something about autistic people.

Self-diagnosis is widely accepted in the autistic community for a number of reasons, I am also in the process of pursuing a more "traditional" diagnosis.

It's great that you think this post applies to everybody, it however is very much in response to someone stigmatizing autistic people.

[kderbyma]

spectrum......

[denton-scratch]

I find the term "spectrum" problematic. Is Asperger's part of the spectrum? Wikipedia says it's an invalid diagnosis. So did all those people with Asperger's just get dumped in the "Autistic Spectrum" bucket?

DSoes the spectrum run from ultra-violet to infra-red? Is this a spectrum for which every behaviour pattern has a slot? Does that mean we're all "on the spectrum"?

If that's what it means, then that seems like dismissing Autism as just being one extreme of being an awkward person.

I think a lot of devs wind up working with people who are awkward. They don't like it (who would?) Some of those awkward people self-identify as autistic. So the devs decide they don't care much for autistic people. I think that's a kind of bigotry; they should really dislike working with awkward people, whatever the reason for their awkwardness.

[Awkward: apparently this is related to upward, downward, northward, etc. "Awk-" signifies "at an unusual angle". I know of no other word that starts with "awk-"]

[faeriechangling]

> Is Asperger's part of the spectrum? Wikipedia says it's an invalid diagnosis. So did all those people with Asperger's just get dumped in the "Autistic Spectrum" bucket?

This is explicitly what happened. The DSM-V explicitly automatically gives you an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis if you had an Asperger’s diagnosis. I think it’s hilariously how blatantly political this criteria is.

As for the legitimacy of spectrum disorders, the only thing I have to say about the subject is the parable of Chesterson’s fence. Think about the problems people were trying to solve with the concept of autism spectrum disorder.

>is this a spectrum for which every behaviour pattern has a slot

You aren’t far off but are missing th forest for the trees. It’s part of a diagnostic system where every disorder is meant to be discrete and non-overlapping and you either have it or you don’t and other good traits you would want in a diagnostic nosology. The spectrum is an artifact of it having to bend to describe what are actually several distinct similarly presenting conditions. It doesn’t have to describe EVERYTHING, it has to fit a hole in the nosology. Asperger’s was depreciated in large part because of the overlap with autism.

If you want something to criticize take a few steps back and look at mental health and psychiatry as a whole. A lot of the assumptions underpinning autism underpin more of mental health.

[denton-scratch]

> take a few steps back and look at mental health and psychiatry as a whole.

Indeed.

Consider, for example, the diagnostic criteria for bipolar. There seems to be half-a-dozen conditions wrapped up in that term, not all of which have poles. Not all people with bipolar are psychotic (that is really important; if you're dealing with someone with bipolar, it makes a huge difference if they are subject to delusions or paranoia).

I believe (might be wrong) that "schizophrenia" is now a discredited diagnosis. Even depression is a fuzzy target. How do you distinguish ordinary sadness from depressive illness? Anti-depressant pills seem to work on both. And there's no "chemical imbalance" theory of depression that hasn't been discredited.

My sense is that we haven't progressed much in understanding mental illness since Victorian times, with their diagnoses of "melancholy".