I'm too stupid for my job

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Maybe but getting another job is not easy. That is reason enough to stick with my current job. I don't know whether or not the classes I'm taking are a waste of time. I might never use them or I might one day find a use for them in some way I can't now anticipate.

By the way, what does a sociologist do? What's in these books you can understand and what do you do as a sociologist?

I'm lucky enough to be disabled with a rare disease, so I can choose to work or not work. Right now I work unfunded studying the sociology of autism. I get private and state disability and therefore don't need to seek funding. A sociologist at my level (pre-PhD) doesn't do much. Post-PhD we only teach, so still, not really "doing" anything. Saying things that people already know, to paraphrase Jean-Luc Picard.

But see, YOU could actually do a few things, but it would depend on if you had the stomach to bother. With a base knowledge of programming, you could easily be a business systems analyst, making as much or more than you do now. You'd have to work with clients more, so you might not want to do that. You could manage programmers, which requires more people skills and little actual programming knowledge. You wouldn't think that, but that's the truth in practicality. You could do what I did, which was technical writing. You'd make half what you are now, though.

You could go back to school and put a graduate degree in something else on top of what you have and do something else entirely. I could have done that and saved myself time. I didn't realize I could. A person came into my sociology grad program from a computer science undergrad program. I used to know an MD who had a BA in FRENCH LITERATURE. He was actually a good doctor too!

Anyway. There are options!

In about an hour I'm going to get into so much trouble.

They've brought back their ridiculous quota system. I never make the quota because I'm slow. Yesterday I was about to finish a job just before going home when this low ranking bureaucrat told me I had to check it twice to be sure. He was basically telling me to redo the entire task from the beginning to make sure. I know it's going to get exactly the same result the second time but his new rule that he made up that day is everything has to be done twice.

This isn't a copy and paste job either. I actually have to redo all the steps. Basically I found a defect. This always slows me down because I have to write a long report on it without it adding to my quota. They have a defect reporting template which they follow religiously. What this means is that I have to take extra time to add extraneous information that isn't pertinent to the defect.

Then I have to wait for the bureaucrat to come back from his meeting to approve it because he thinks none of us can me trusted. Even though he's admitted we know the system better than him. We've been here for longer than him and he does NOT have a background in IT. He has a degree in management.

I think the best manager is with qualifications in the field of work (like some of the other overlords have). A degree in management is useless. It didn't teach him about IT. And he's younger than me. He's this shrimpy 25 year old.

I told him I'd already stayed beyond my hours to wait for him to come out of his impromptu meeting. When I told him I was ten minutes over he smiled and said I can do it tomorrow.

No problem for him but the team lead is going to see that I have an even lower quota than I would have. She has a proper background in IT but she sets the same quotas for everyone, regardless of whether they're part time or full time. This seems illogical to me, she says it's OK because it's only a minimum and we're all expected to exceed it anyway. Just that the full timers can exceed it by a wider margin.

It's like that seen in Office Space where the manager says to the waitress, you don't need only the minimum and she says "why don't you just make the minimum higher?"

Well in this case they do. They'll say "here is the minimum and here is the amount we expect you to exceed it by" and later that amount becomes the new minimum and we're expected to exceed that. It's like a feedback loop.

And it doesn't help that thanks to my irregular hours, I average a part time day but some days it's less (like today). She ignore that as well. Yesterday was a longer day for me but the network was down for about half of the day. To her credit she'll only expect a half quota but due to things going wrong just for me in the time when the network was up, I won't make that either.

I make mistakes. One of this mistakes meant I needed to start again yesterday morning. I could make the quota on an ideal day were I don't make any mistakes or get confused by anything or have to write any reports. The trouble is the ideal day doesn't exist. A day were I don't make a mistake is impossible. She doesn't change the quota depending on whether I have to learn a new task or perform a task I'm familiar with (it's all the same to her and some of my colleagues have the ability to learn things instantly).

Writing defect reports is a necessary (albeit unpredictable) part of the job. The annoying software they use doesn't save all of the details of the report so I'll have to do that again (but it's on a virtual machine so I could have saved the VM state. Dammit, why didn't I think of that).

Also the network is really slow (when it's working) so I have to redo all the WCEM stuff but wait for each page to load slowly. That's why I don't like having to redo things or have a quota in the first place.

Because of the slow network the others struggle to make their quota. I struggle to make half of it.

And I think having to say my quota for the previous day in front of everyone is degrading for us all. I thought they were trying to make an aspie friendly workspace.

It's getting to the point were I run things I know will fail because they count towards my quota, even though they have to be retested later, rather than run slower tasks I know won't fail. Bureaucracy rewards that kind of inefficiency.

Are these quotas the norm in this type of work?
I never heard of meeting quotas in this work before.
Is working at this place any better than working in regular NT company?

When I was working I had one temporary position for a programmer that I was allowed to fill sometimes. The person I chose was a dark skinned Indian with a thick accent, from the equivalent of a "country bumpkin" kind of village in India. Our company tended to socially discriminate against certain kinds of Indians (like my guy) and against aspies. Since it was a temp job and he was working for me, I didn't think it would be much of a problem. His fundamentals were solid and he didn't seem like a liar, which was why I hired him.

He was taking too long to do things and wouldn't tell me why. I had an aspie guy I trusted from another department look behind him and see what he was doing. My friend told me that the temp seemed to be new to coding, but was doing everything correctly and going back to fix his mistakes when he saw one, which was why it was taking so long. The other guys who had "helped" me on my project did things quickly and wrong, thinking I wouldn't know the difference.

With this information in hand, I asked the manager of my friend to allow him to help my guy for an hour here and there and then he also informally helped him as needed. I extended the temp's contract, tried to get another team to hire him permanently (they wouldn't, unfortunately), and then wrote him an iron clad reference when I couldn't keep him any longer.

Maybe you could find people like me or my friend in your workplace that would want to help you, simply because you're trying and that means a lot to them?

Ahh, this type of work? It is for my type of work. I think you all got the wrong idea. A misunderstanding. I'm not a programmer, I'm a software tester. I have a quota of test cases to get through. I rarely make it even half way.

I always have bad luck but when it happens every day it no longer feels like a freak occurrence. I'll probably have bad luck today as well. I'm on my way to work now.

Part of the problem is that the network is very slow. For example yesterday morning the bureaucrat told me it should only take me five minutes to retest. That was possible when the network was faster.

But now, even if you subtract for the time it takes to write in all the fields, it's about 20 pages to load that take 30 - 40 seconds each (and some of those pages have to load additional fields within the page itself, based on how questions are answered, also taking 30 - 40 seconds each).

Think of 25 * 40 seconds. No way that can be done in five minutes.

Some of it really is my slowness. The other guys are on the same network yet they get more done. With a slow network they make their quota (barely).

Yesterday morning nothing went wrong, no bad luck and yet I still didn't get many test cases done. So some of the time it really is me being slow, not down to circumstance. Part of the problem is I can't work flat-out. I take small pauses throughout the day. Is this normal? I feel guilty for not going constantly but I find that very difficult. I think my colleagues work flat-out constantly.

It's the same with my studies at community college. I go after work and I can't do assignments flat-out either. None of the other students there are super talented either but it's only community college. There's a university nearby and I'll bet the students there are able to study flat-out, even though some of them surely have jobs.

I have a Chinese professor who keeps saying the white students are lazier and less intelligent than the Asian students. I can't help but wonder if he's right. My former manager was Sino-Malaysian and she said when she studied engineering at university she also worked retail. She slept 5 hours per night and had 0 free time. I don't know she was able to concentrate with so little sleep. Flat-out too. Asians give me such an inferiority complex. I don't dislike them but it scares me what they can achieve. Their endurance and their capacity for self-sacrifice terrifies me. /tangent 

When I go slow I can do it more detail. When I got that commendation it was from a time when I was being especially slow and meticulous. If I go slow I have higher quality work. I dare not tell them this because I know they will say they want me to speed up, and increase my quality at the same time.

They talk about both. Corporate buzz speak is they want me to have twice as much detail, twice as fast. Not logically possible. They don't lower the quota when they add extra steps to the process. Some of these steps are necessary workarounds for unavoidable technical problems but some of them are just documenting things not pertinent to my test case.

Oh I didn't know it was software testing, for some reason I thought it was web design, I think I confused this company with job descriptions of another company that hires autistic people.
It makes more sense to have quotas in software testing, but the work environment is screwed up with this slow network.
Does anyone complain to get that fixed or changed?

Ohh...Okay. Yeah I thought you were a programmer. People are just picking on you, then. Some testers are quick and others are slow. There really isn't a "software testing type." A tester can easily switch over to writing though, and the salaries are usually on the exact same pay grade. The way to do this is to ask to help their department on a day when they're overwhelmed. Then you can see if you like it and build experience. Later you'll have both technical writing and software testing on your resume. Don't go to programming if you're already confused by the coding and environments.

There are also sometimes specialized kinds of testing within the department. We had something called Automation Testing, where the people were in charge of scripts that ran to test various things to make sure they still worked after we implemented changes.

The biggest thing to do is stop beating yourself up! Don't focus on it so much.

I agree. If they really didn't like you, they would have sacked you long ago.

All the testers complain daily. Nothing ever gets done about it. The trouble is, the building doesn't belong to HP, it belongs to DHS, whoever runs the network is on another floor and far removed from us. They like doing environment transfers in the middle of the day, taking anyway between one and four hours. I don't know why they can't do that at night. I don't know why they've been doing it every day recently.

Anyway, part of the trouble is the supervisory staff on my team doesn't actually test so they don't know how slow it is (on the occasions when it's working in the first place). They talk about tasks taking "5 minutes" that take much longer due to network slowness. That's why I got mad when the bureaucrat wanted me to do something right at the end of the day that would take 30 to 40 minutes and he said it would only take "5 minutes".

The next day he said to the team he knows that certain tests can take 3 or 4 hours and certain tests take "literally one minute". He repeated that phrase three or four times, always saying "literally". I can understand if he meant, it'll only take a minute, in the metaphorical sense but he kept saying "literally".

So he's either one of those guys who inserts "literally" into his metaphors (e.g. allegations literally flew around the room) or he actually thinks it's possible to complete a test in a minute. Writing up all the documentation would take more than a minute. Sometimes a single page takes more than a minute to load.

If the pages loaded instantaneously then the fasted tester on the team might get it done in five minutes (if there were no defects to report on). The fasted guy we have can do about 15 tests in a 7.5 hour day (one every 30 minutes). The DHS people (who are more experienced than us) can do about 46 tests in an 18 hour day (one every 23 minutes).

So the bureaucrat, who doesn't test thinks we can [i]literally[/]complete a test in a minute. Also yes I was extremely horrified about the working conditions for DHS. I spoke with a very disheveled looking woman in the lift on Monday morning. She said for the last 30 days in a row, she'd worked 18 hours per day, commuted an hour each way and slept for 4 hours per day. How can anyone seriously expect her to do that? That would be my nightmare.Yes and no. Sometimes they chastise me and sometimes they let it slide. I never know if they're seriously disappointed in me or not. They never use the f word (fired) so I don't if they want to do it or not. I dread the day when I get fired because I've spoken to people smarter and more qualified than me who are struggling to find work.Same pay grade? I was hoping it would be more. I was hoping I could find some way out of this slump. I get $55,000 per year now and I've been trying to think of a way to increase that. Maybe it's futile. I don't think the test leads get much more. Even my uncle (much more senior and experienced than me) only gets $70,000 a year. I hear plumbers get more than that. I think I'm doomed to never break out of lower middle class into upper middle class Yeah, that really is my problem. They don't chastise me that much but I spend a lot of time thinking about what they might say. Everytime I make a mistake that costs me another hour I think of how I won't make my quota and think of the worst thing they could say to me.

I do this a lot. I spend my mornings on the train comparing myself unfavourable to everyone else. The other workers, the couples who are 5 or 10 years younger than me, the university students who are 5 or 10 years younger than me.

Sometimes when I sit next to the uni students I read their notes. I see the engineering students with penned algebra and calculus expressions I can't come close to understanding. I see premed students reviewing notes about how aldosterone increases the number of channels in the luminal membrane and how anglioestigen increases plasma osmilarity?

I couldn't understand that stuff to save my life. Is it because they're just naturally smarter than me, or if the brain is like a muscle, is it because I spent too much time slacking off in school, so during my formative years my brain didn't properly develop owing to a lack of mental challenge.

The high schoolers on the train seem to be taking steps to avoid that problem. The train station is very close to my old school yet I see middle and high schoolers boarding the train to go to school at Hallet Cove Beach (rich neighbourhood, very good school) and at Hallet Cove Beach station after a bunch of school students get off, another bunch of school students get on to go to school in Brighton (even richer neighbourhood, even better school, Brighton Secondary excepts students from any district if they can demonstrate some talent to get in).

I guess for upper middle class families, even their own excellent school isn't good enough. Even if students travel a long way to get to their school, they have to go to an even better one. I think it's true what they say, that second generation college students do much, much better than first generation.

I think it's because middle class kids are just more ambitious. Yes middle class parents are pushy but they also give guidance in how to get into a good university. My welfare class mother never told me that, neither did my school. Not once did any of them explain the uni entrance requirements. And now the daughter of my snobbish aunt is taking extra subjects so she can increase her ATAR score and study veterinary science and make me look bad while my wealthy workaholic aunt boasts about her workaholic daughter. You'd think having her as a mum would mess her up in the head but she's happy and we'll adjusted. FML

You make more than me...and I'm twice your age!

Yeah, I guess it's pretty good when you put it that way. Remember it's in Australian dollars. In American dollars it's only $39,000.

Also note that while the full salary is $55,000 I take a 25% pay cut so I can work on 3/4 time. Because it's part time that means I'm able to claim 40% of my welfare payment, which is untaxed. The welfare payment is break even with they paycut so with both I still get approx $55,000 Australian per year but leaving at 3:00PM makes it easier for me to attend the technical college across the road.

There is this horrible myth that all people with Asperger's Syndrome are good/bad at (insert the blank).

For example, I have programming knowledge, and I can program when needed...in fact, I taught myself many of the languages I know, however people seem to be under the impression that those on the spectrum are absolute programming geniuses who revel in the minute details of programming languages, and can spit out tens of thousands of lines of code per day, and this is not the case. I can get a program running when I need to, but I'm by no means an A level programmer, and I think this perception that everyone with Asperger's Syndrome is, needs to go. In fact, most people on the spectrum that I have met, who have an official diagnosis, were not in anything related to computer science. There were actually a number of people in the arts and educational fields.

You might want to consider finding a new work environment which isn't so dynamic.

Can you look for another job? Surely there are other software testing position out there!

DHS... Department of Human Services?

Yes, you are right.
I'm worried that another software testing job may put me in a far worse position than I'm in now. I'm in a supported position. Without that they may be less lenient. Yes I make many mistakes but there are never any severe consequences for them.

When the DHS contract ends, HP will put me on another control without the support. I fear that day. At least I'll still be able to get training from HP...

If I tried to get a testing position from another employer I would be in dire straights. Black box testers from a nontechnical background (no IT degree) are so common they far exceed the number of available positions.

More in demand are white box testers, those who are good at coding and can communicate back to the devs what the problem is in technical terms.

HP can train me for whatever position they need me for. Other employers? They basically won't hire me without a degree in software engineering.

I'm essentially in the least bad job possible. Just think how difficult it would otherwise be for a guy without a degree to get an IT job. It's hard enough to get one with a degree.