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Adamantus
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11 Dec 2010, 10:31 am

At first the diagnosis was really good. I knew that I had autism / aspergers and so I understood myself. I didn't beat myself up about not being able to do things. But now I don't know what to think. What is possible? I have a whole load of options to choose from for work: Continue Web development, go into dispensing, which is what I'd planned, counselling - which I'm naturally predisposed to because of my history. I would like to continue wd but I'm affraid to because I'm so slow and worry about not getting work done in a business setting or in freelance. I'm worried about counselling because of the people aspect. will I understand other people's problems? With dispensing I'm keen on the logical nature of the work but I'm not to sure about the accuracy. but could be good at it. Have any of you had experience in any of these professions? If any of you work as a counsellor or web dev then I think that would be helpful as I don't know whether these are good ideas but I suppose nothing is imossible.

At the moment I'm at a major crossroads so I'm very unsure and feel a scared to go into the workplace again where I've been hurt before.



kfisherx
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11 Dec 2010, 12:07 pm

I would say that you should make the decision without respect to the diagnosis. Go with your heart.



guineapigirl
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11 Dec 2010, 2:51 pm

I wouldn't let the diagnosis affect your career plans. You've had AS all along, you just didn't know it.


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Callista
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11 Dec 2010, 2:54 pm

Yes; you should be capable of more now rather than less, with the new self-awareness your diagnosis lets you have.

Remember that Asperger's is a very diverse condition. That you have Asperger's isn't nearly so important as exactly how AS affects you. You have strengths; you need to identify those and work with them. You also have weaknesses; and now that you're no longer denying that you have them (many undiagnosed people simply label these weaknesses as "laziness"), you can try to work around them instead of trying to bash your head against them.


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Chibi_Neko
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11 Dec 2010, 5:19 pm

I was diagnosed when I was three, I did not talk and did 'weird' stuff so my mom brought me to the family doctor, and later to a specialist at the children's hospital. Lots of tests where done that I remember but have no idea why they where done... it almost felt like research... which would not surprise me, it was the 80's at the time and VERY little was known about ASD then. I was kept in I guess was a 'autism ward' there where other kids there and we had our own room. I was there for about a month or so.


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another_1
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12 Dec 2010, 1:42 am

In another thread a few weeks ago, you mentioned the difficulties you were having with your Web dev job. You said that you were working for a web dev company, and the problems were caused by your inability to produce enough sites, quickly enough. I will reiterate the comments I made in that thread.

I used to do web dev. I have gone back to school to update my skills, with the intention of getting back into the field, because that was the best line of work I've ever been in. You may find that a position where you maintain the website for a company to be more suitable than a production environment. I did work for Peterson Publishing, AAA, and a startup competitor to the Motley Fool, which probably would have succeeded if their primary financier hadn't gone to prison for mob-related activities 2 weeks before their IPO. 8O

When you work for a company whose business is selling websites, the focus is on completing as many sites as possible, as quickly as possible. When you are building/maintaining a website for the company itself, speed becomes less important than precision.

If Peterson Publications decides to change their site, they want it done by a certain date - but they can just keep using the old one for a month or two if they have to, while they get the new templates juuuuust right. AAA didn't care that it took 6 months to code their new site - they cared that there were zero errors on it when it went live. Much the same at the startup I mentioned. We were constantly refining the code for the existing site, and also working on the next version of the site. We rolled out an entirely new site about every 6 months or so, but if it took 7 or 8 for a particular iteration, that was fine - as long as it worked when it did roll out.

Web dev can be a great job for an aspie, but there are different approaches to web dev. You have to find a situation where the company's priorities match yours. If you're working for a huge, monolithic corporation, doing things by the book may be more important than either speed or accuracy. Working on a company's own website, accuracy is likely to be most important. Working for a company which makes money on volume? Speed will take precedence over everything else - always. It's not always what you do, it's who you're doing it for.



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12 Dec 2010, 12:18 pm

Thanks for the info on web development. I am changing careers due to my NLD causing a lot of problems with my current career (speech pathology), and have been seriously considering going into web design/web development. I have started taking courses in this subject area, and I am loving it. But I was worried about being blindsided with NLD-related difficulties in web design the same way I was in speech pathology. So it is good to know some of the pitfalls ahead of time. Any other advice you can offer about web development and AS/NLD would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: Could you post a link to the other thread where web development was discussed? I can't find it.
Thanks! :)


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Adamantus
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12 Dec 2010, 1:40 pm

another_1 wrote:
...In another thread a few weeks ago, you mentioned the difficulties you were having with your Web dev job. You said that you were working for a web dev company, and the problems were caused by your inability to produce enough sites, quickly enough....

...When you work for a company whose business is selling websites, the focus is on completing as many sites as possible, as quickly as possible. When you are building/maintaining a website for the company itself, speed becomes less important than precision....


Good points, and they relate to my position well. My first job in WD was like this. I produced company sites not freelance work. I seemed to be able to take months without them caring too much. I got faster as I went on and I'm a lot faster now but the trick is getting another job like that.

LostInSpace wrote:
...Any other advice you can offer about web development and AS/NLD would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: Could you post a link to the other thread where web development was discussed? I can't find it.
Thanks! :)


The industry is like this: Communication and people skills are as important as the technical skills. I made the mistake of assuming that the people skills were secondary probably because of my aspergers. My interest was in the field of websites so I assumed that's all it was making great websites. These days I know differently. You have to be able to deal with the clients and always be polite to them. Sometimes big problems will surface out of knowhere and will really test your ability to stay rational and keep a professional distance from the work. It's not art either. I used to think web design was a creative process but now I know differently. You basically have to go to a template website and rip something quick (template monster usually) and then fill in the personal details to match. Usually when working for a client you have to deliver 2-3 rough designs in a day so they don't have to be perfect as long as there is a rough choice for them to choose from. You then finish it off and send it back to them. They will say they don't like x, y, z and you will have to let things go you quite like in the design. But with design it's all about the details. Everything is about making things line up and be perfect, sometimes it's like playing where's wally. I recommend doing PHP development and not web design although it's up to the individual and their skills. The major niche I found was working in a design agency as a developer. You can get away with more as they don't know the code. As a developer it's more like, get that site done in a week. You have to get it done so there's no point in being perfect. You have to learn to drop things out that'll make no difference and live with it. Like redundant code, bad indentation (a pet hate of mine) or things that could just be achieved more logically. That's the other thing: Being logical, achieving things the most logical and simliest way and training yourself to think that way. You have to write things in a way that other people will understand and be able to pick up and change. The aspie logic is different to the usual kind. I found that I was able to make code run great, never go wrong but I understood horizontally and not vertically. In other words I learnt lots of code but could not do it if it was too difficult. If you are the same I recommend becoming a PHP developer and learning a framework like code igniter as it will save lots of work.
If you're doing a cms then you'll need to be able to make it simple to use but not allow innapropriate things onto the website. So text which is too long for fitting into a box of images which are too large in filesize need to be blocked.

Well there's my wisdom of web picked up over the years. I hope it does you some good. Personally I found I couldn't take the pressure too well so I'm not sure I want to continue but I'm sure there are aspies who for which this is not the case.

Edited
LostInSpace wrote:
Could you post a link to the other thread where web development was discussed? I can't find it.
Thanks! :)


Here it is:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt142867.html - Slowness, Work and Autism (bb code urls are broken).



another_1
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12 Dec 2010, 9:22 pm

Adamantus -

Your description of web dev is accurate if you are working in a production environment. I'd like to present an alternative viewpoint, from working on a major company's own website - AAA.

When I was hired, the design of the new website had already been determined - by marketing, not by the development team. They knew what they wanted from the site, we just needed to translate it into a working site. Office politics were non-existent - the only person I regularly communicated with was my supervisor. If someone else's - or my - code didn't work right, that person never even knew who discovered the error. I would send a bug report in, or I'd receive a bug report, and it would be dealt with. Personalities didn't matter. I'd come in, maybe sit down with Dave for a few minutes to get updated on what I needed to do that day/week, and get to work. If I found a problem, I'd IM him, or shoot him an email. I'd code until I needed to give my brain a break, and just let him know that I was going to take a short break to think something through. Obviously, I couldn't do this 20 times a day, but I never felt chained to my desk, or pressured to produce sloppy code just to get things done. If I was on a roll, I'd code for 5 or 6 hours without interruption before taking a lunch break. On other days, I'd take 4 or 5 breaks, plus lunch. On two occasions, I had to go to a meeting with marketing to explain why something they wanted just couldn't be done. My boss was there to do the ego-stroking and play the power games, and I was the technical expert, there to deal only with technicalities. I was treated as a valued professional, not a code monkey.

The result of this low pressure situation with no drop dead completion date? The project was rolled out early, with no errors found once it went live. I, regrettably, left to do something new somewhere else, at a company which subsequently folded. :wall:



LostInSpace
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12 Dec 2010, 10:08 pm

Thanks for the info, guys. I'm definitely bookmarking this thread. Sorry I can't contribute more to the discussion though since I'm not even in the field yet. Adamantus, I hope you figure out your situation.


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13 Dec 2010, 4:20 am

I know absolutely nothing about the careers you are interested in as I am, I believe to my disadvantage, more of an artistic person than a computer/maths/science etc. person, but my advice would be to not let you AS diagnosis stand in the way of anything. Were you happy in web design before you were diagnosed? That's what you need to think. The diagnosis hasn't physically or mentally changed who you are, it has just named a set of symptoms you have had all your life.

Hope that helped :)


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