Right now I am starting my own.
I generally gravitate towards the most autistic market niches imaginable. Usually areas which combine multiple autistic topics together that attract the weirdest people imaginable.
695 karma · joined June 30, 2022
I generally gravitate towards the most autistic market niches imaginable. Usually areas which combine multiple autistic topics together that attract the weirdest people imaginable.
I am extremely empathetic and honest. Most middle management at most companies optimizes for non-creative yet industrious which turns highly competitive over pettiness.
I just can’t see myself doing it anymore. Especially after what happened to me at my last role.
I had my naïveté taken advantage of.
And also my output is 20x higher than theirs.
I only learned about Aspergers way later in life due to YouTube and realized it explained everything about my problems and alienation.
From some of the coaches on YouTube, they talk about how this is a pattern that shows up a lot with Aspergers - At some point people get so fed up with everything about life, relationships, work and schools not working specifically for YOU.
Aspergers individuals have a particularly hard time with jobs, it is very common for them to have employment challenges.
My experience is most people in highly competitive environments are peer competitors in some form . The VP above you doesn’t want you to rise and take their job. Your peers don’t want to be surpassed.
Everyone wants to keep you in a certain box.
If you are able to jump completely out of the box ahead of everyone by 10 miles, no one is going to want that.
You will only get negative feedback and told to stop. Or worse.
The last few jobs in a row I entered with a specific, singular objective: “I vow I am not going to get into conflicts with people again.”
I try my hardest, and it doesn’t work.
A big problem is I hyper produce and hyper focus. I am juggling 18 balls and the “get along with people” ball eventually drops and when it does, it’s game over.
I have extreme capabilities for work but it also exhausts and overwhelms me.
I get extremely exhausted from thinking all the time, I am highly obsessive and always running my engine chewing over things mentally.
So I never rest.
And what inevitably happens is that I make social mistakes, and when I do - That’s the start of the end.
Word engineer.
It’s less respected and talked about in tech but a very real capability.
The best book I ever read was “stealing the corner office.”
I know people who are naturally intuitive and empathetic. They look at another person and go: “oh she is angry because her cat is sick.”
And I go “how the fuxk did you know that?”
More normal people have a sense sort of like this. I do not have this at all. The behavior and emotions of people are this continuous mystery.
If some VP is super angry, I can’t understand why.
Someone with more normal understand goes: yeah he is under a lot of pressure so that is normal just be more relaxed etc.
Corporations are confusing.
This post is going to sound pedantic and annoying because … that is what Aspergers does to you.
I can write dozens of pages of highly analytical and technical text without making mistakes in real time. I can speed read complex texts and memorize them with a high degree of precision.
From the “language” perspective I feel highly gifted and unusual. Not so much on the mathematical side. I almost have a disability with mathematics.
I have taught myself advanced skills and switched careers multiple times without the required degrees. Worked at the top companies in the world with PhDs and others.
However. I feel constantly discriminated against and treated like I am stupider than I am. And when people listen to me talk, they get incredibly threatened.
It has taken me years to understand that being around me and listening to me talk, reason and analyze is THREATENING to people.
I have had situations where, even after a few meetings where I felt I was just “talking about how things are” the other person left HATING me.
The way I express myself is perceived almost like being hit with a physical object. I believe I have Aspergers (have tested very highly for it).
I will tell you - it is INCREDIBLY CAREER LIMITING.
I have given up trying to work in the normal world. It just doesn’t work for me. The pattern always repeats - I join a company, I get targeted and singled out and ganged up on.
If you are like me it is like being incredibly advantaged while being incredibly disadvantaged at the same time.
It’s like being Usain Bolt except your sprinting lane has an obstacle course in it while everyone else gets to run in a normal lane.
The obstacle course is DELIBERATELY put there. It is human nature to instantly identify existential threats: People who are unusually more talented than them and take them out.
I have learned, and am adapting.
Unfortunately, if you want to succeed in this world you have to play a set of games, these are games that I really don’t want to play.
If I have to play them, I am going to try to play outside the system.
I have realized that all the advice which most people follow that works for them does not work for me.
I do things completely differently and have to come up with my own strategies about how to operate.
Here is the other reality: If you are very talented and gifted, NO ONE WILL NOTICE AND TELL YOU.
That sounds completely weird but it is true.
No one in my entire life, aside from a few offhand comments, took me aside and went: “uhhh…you are in a completely other category than these people and do not belong here. Do this instead.”
Instead it is the isolation - I do not understand why no one wants to interact or include me, and it happens very fast. Most people get a whiff and go “I have no idea what to do with this and don’t want to be around it.”
All the old management are still in place despite several ceo changes and it has become the poster child for failed big company.
you can even read the glass door reviews. Thousands of posts say the same thing I am saying: The bad people gang up on the good people and that’s why I left.
Then he left, started a 30 person company, got frustrated, quit and built another game entirely from scratch doing all the art direction and sold millions then retired.
One person.
The entire goal of salaries and “teams” in my experience, is to ENSURE that high performers get diluted and averaged in with mediocre performers so the company can pretend the high performers don’t exist.
This was my experience in (large co).
I have seen situations where a single IC is dragging a division of 30 people yet still being compensated for doing the work of one IC.
Management of that group took the approach “it’s a team effort!” And get the credit for that output.
Their boss looks down and sees Director managing 30 people and getting amazing result X, where X is 90% the effort of the one super star.
Eventually super star gets fed up and leaves, and gets paid what everyone else gets somewhere else “hoping to be valued.”
Management still win. They get the credit for the super stars work. Frustrated super star leaves. Mediocre management is still there.
A decade later nothing but the WORST and LEAST talented garbage are left. No one remotely talented would ever join that company because it’s a trap - you just get averaged in with mediocrity.
The “averaging the great in with the spectacular” to reduce the relative power of the spectacular is the entire point of “management.”
You have a team of six, pretend the work of the super star is “everyone working together” and attempt to grow your headcount off that super star.
That has been my entire career. Never seen it go differently.
It sounds like you are coming in and wanting to create a lot of extra work for everyone.
I have dealt with engineers like this before. You want to follow every single best practice, create automated testing and do everything “right.”
Creates incredibly massive extra work that is non value added.
These sound like some lazy ass engineers who don’t give a shit.
My guess is this team has had two years doing things a certain way, and you are trying to get them to do a lot of extra work and they are going “yeah fuck that.”
Probably they won’t get paid more for restructuring their entire code base.
I would guess most would rather leave then do that.
So they are just going to bicker with you.
Generally speaking, when you join a job there is a grace period where you decide if you can help them or not.
Or if you want to help them or not.
The reality of software engineering is it doesn’t make sense to EVER rewrite everything from scratch. Ever.
It sounds like your management are not on board with firing people or changing anything.
Sounds like either:
1. Give up and collect a paycheck and find something that seems useful to do but doesn’t actually change much
2. Make a play at changing your management style.
It sounds like you are trying to dictate to them what to do.
That NEVER works. EVER.
It sounds like you are coming in and telling them what to do.
LOL.
An alternative approach is to embrace a facilitation driven approach.
A facilitation driven approach looks like this:
1. Do lots of research 2. Come into the team with options of different approaches 3. Have the CTO and the team and whoever meet 4. Say “here are the problems and here are some options for solving them” 5. Facilitate a discussion around the options and get people to voice any opinions or support or concerns 6. Try to get the group to head in a direction of progress
My personal opinion, sounds like you are trying to dictate your approach and it’s failing entirely and management and the team clearly don’t give a shit what you think.
The harder you try to insist on your approach the more credibility you will lose.
I also sense that your management probably doesn’t actually care that much about the outcome based on their actions.
So if no one cares and no one wants to change, I recommend the facilitation approach.
It’s human psychology.
Your job is to make people like you.
If you are likeable you will never get fired.
You think they actually care about the $1M outage.
They actually don’t care. It’s not their money it’s the companies money.
And management doesn’t seem to care.
So just be likable and facilitate and make the changes people are willing to make and remain likable.
Let go all of this opinion and ego about you installing all the perfect processes and refactoring the code base to be perfect.
It isn’t going to happen.
Give up on that.
Instead, facilitate the team to do what it is willing to do by providing options and walking them through and letting them agree to a course of action.
Give up on getting your way.z
And realize no one gives a shit about saving the company money.
They had an outage, they fixed it by hiring you. If they have another outage you can blame the team later lol.
You spend tons of time organizing something, and they show up and start complaining because it’s not diverse enough and by implication you (the organizer) are “the problem.”
I snapped on someone who did this to two of my events in a row, and they didn’t even attend. Just swoop in online and point out problems.
I told them they were uninvited from all future events. It’s not PC but fuck them.
Professional complainers should be uninvited. Underneath it all is an attempt to gain power in the laziest way possible (complaining) and to portray themselves as victims (more power).
I simply have no room for it. Had hundreds of happy people and one pathological complainer.
ONE.
I just told them not to bother coming and blocked them. All my problems solved.
If I were this maintainer, I would say: “I am enforcing the code of conduct which is no name calling on you, you are banned for life.”
Call someone a Nazi, that’s against the code of conduct. See ya.
edit I should add this is AFTER inviting THIS SPECIFIC PERSON to join a panel to help it become more diverse: they didn’t come and STILL complained about the panel I invited them to join not being diverse enough on Twitter.
The smartest people I know are saying that the FOMC decided to pause and that means the recession is locked in.
When they are done hiking it means they will next slowly start to unwind.
Or rapidly unwind and start printing again if things really start to fail.
Startups and companies have had huge layoffs and haven’t been hiring and instead making their existing staff take on all the work.
You may have quit because you were getting run down and burned out from having to take on too much for too long.
It happened to me.
I quit my job same time, at the time it was because I was frustrated by so many pressures from my family and work at the same time and I got to the point where I just no longer gave a shit.
I was the #1 star performer having all the ideas and carrying all the heavy lifting and after several rounds of me asking for a promotion and being turned down, I just quit right before a big project shipped after getting fed up with being micromanaged.
So you may have just been on the wrong of the economy without realizing it.
I came to realize I was so burned out, I have had a couple months off and I still am not ready or excited to go back.
Low skilled / low talent in many cases and lower competence but in a ZIRP environment I saw so many situations where women and minorities were hired and given leadership roles, with massively streamlined hiring processes.
When the bottom line doesn’t matter these kinds of hires really proliferated.
I wonder if we will see a hard reset back to competence as the most in demand quality.
And yes I am assuming she is a DEI hire, $180K for four years of experience unless she was like a backend or ai engineer is crazy.
My opinion is we are at a severe dislocation period.
I have noticed massive changes in the emerging skills, tools and platforms. Pretty much no code, low code and AI.
Everything else looks useless or outdated.
Meanwhile, tons of startups and big tech companies are dying and laying off.
The skills those people have are dramatically out of whack with what the market actually wants.
They are also dramatically out of whack compensation wise from what the current market will tolerate.
It means we have a flood of garbage and ultra talented people who can’t plug in anywhere.
The ultra talented person will laugh at the offers that employers are willing to make right now and turn them down.
Employers are not staffing senior or skilled hires and want to low ball the ultra talented people who want nothing to do with these corny offers and companies.
So basically employers think they will get someone “good” and underpay them and people who are actually good are not yet willing to capitulate.
And salaries are dropping by like 20-30%.
And anyone in the market who has seen their bills going up due to inflation will not tolerate a salary drop on top of a downlevel / demotion.
People who have debt and a family think the idea of a salary cut is crazy.
So with all the dead and dying startups, tons of people flooding the market, interview process going to hell, people getting upset about the salary and skills disconnects, rapid change in which projects are getting funded and which skills are in demand.
If you are unemployed right now you are likely to be in pain for six months and you will likely need a salary or career reset and you will likely need to reskill and possibly relocate.
That’s where we are.
Find someone similar to your problems.
There are many others listed on LinkedIn and Twitter (X) if you search.
In terms of tips, the best advice I follow is having 90 day plans with set objectives and then coming back to them and checking on your progress.
With a coach the tip is honestly you meet with them regularly and talk through your problem to get outside perspective.
That is the tip.
You can try to solve all your own problems by watching YouTube videos, but it just is not the same as having someone to solve problems together with.
If you have a complicated situation; YouTube is not going to help. It is not customized to you.
the fear really damages your mental health. The longer it goes on, it will drive you crazy and make you do inadvisable things and get paranoid.
My recommendation is make use of video therapists and career coaches to help you make better decisions.
If you talk to your peers, you are giving too much information to people around you. It’s a bad idea.
You can usually find virtual career coaches and therapists. Work through with them. It is a great idea to rely on outside help.
Your family : wife can’t help you. My experience is talking to my family and wife didn’t help. They just don’t understand.
A coach is actually incentivized to be objective and help you talk through problems and find solutions.
Keeping all this struggle in your head, you will make bad decisions and you are not objective. You are in an emotional space.
A coach can help provide a neutral 3rd party.
They can also help you brainstorm a practical strategy, how to talk and how to get to a better place and steps to take and accountability to have important conversations such as with your manager.
It costs money but the alternative is to go into a fear spiral and shut down and ruin your mental health.
It’s worth it.
I started talking to someone semi regularly and it is so incredibly useful to have someone confirming and validating your experience.
For example, I was in a toxic and disrespectful environment and by coach immediately called that out. No one around me or my boss would admit it was a bad environment.
The most dangerous thing you can do is sharing too much information with your peers or manager about your situation. I have learned not to ever talk to others around me about what I am going through.
They are your competition or looking for reasons to flag you.
Only a paid coach is going to be your friend. That’s how it is. We are in a dog eat dog environment. Any weakness signs are often a death sentence in such environments.
I also recommend improving nutrition. Eat a fruit : vegetable shake every morning to improve your health.
If you have a mineral or similar deficiency it can cause additional problems managing your emotions and with your self confidence.
You are going to be looking at this situation for some time. Only the very top projects or projects in AI are getting funded, a lot of consulting has dried up.
Is anyone getting rich right now? I don’t know.
Take a serious look at the macro economic picture. It’s not great. This is a recession. It could last years.
Or the federal reserve may drop rates but they don’t seem to be close to doing that.
So take the pain you are in now and project it out until next year when the fed is saying they may drop rates.
You may be in pain for a long time.
Is this a level of pain you can tolerate for that time period? Are you in AI where the capital is at least easier to get?
A lot of startups are folding or have folded silently behind the scenes or died at this point.
We are in a bear market.
Understand the context. This is what happens in a bear market. It sucks. No one is getting rich. It’s hard to get money. It’s happening to everyone not just you. Everyone is in pain.
I personally am in pain myself. I got into startups when things were super hot and fun a couple years ago.
I’m not having fun right now.
I’m getting a real job and I don’t want to. I have debt. My quality of life sucks.
It has been going on so long, I mentally threw in the towel and decided to accept that I am going to just fail and then have to restructure my life.
I might have to sell some things I don’t want to sell.
The only silver lining I can find is: I have realized that it’s a combination. Nothing is working, so I can get rid of my whole life and only become happier.
Sell my house, move, find a new market.
It is actually very exciting once you let go of the albatross.
When the piano you are swimming with becomes too heavy, you cut the piano off and try to make it to shore.
Your embarrassment will turn into joy when you reach the beach, poor and wearing only a loin cloth going “oh my god, I am free.”
Cut that shit off if it is killing you.
There is a clock. You can only take the pain for so long.
It sounds like you are only being pulled downwards
Make a list right now:
Good things about this situation
Bad things about this situation
If the list of bad things is 2x longer, end it
- China and Russia carved off at least 30%+ of global AI, MCU, automobile, IoT, cell phone, robots - CHIPS act - RISCV - Global downturn - End of Moore’s Law - Seemingly very low overall datacenter traction after many years - Apple forked the IP - Qualcomm has been handed global 5G, SoC market since China modems and silicon banned, gives them tremendous leverage imo
The trade isolationism looks like it will only increase.
It feels like the wheels have fallen off and the train is on fire
I know many women who have a very weird instinct to compete against the other women in their environment which is not exactly the same as how men compete. And the WAY women compete is NASTY.
I have met a lot of women who have said they greatly prefer to work with men over women and that some women have extremely aggressive instincts towards other women.
It’s something evolutionary along the lines of: “If there are few women and many men (typical in most tech environments), you are competing not only for male attention and prestige but it is also a zero sum game based on appearance so another woman is threatening across multiple attack vectors … if she is more attractive, the men will give her more resources. If she is more talented, she will get more attention etc.
I think it reminds me of Chinese dynasty politics where an emperor who has many wives - They all understand that it is a zero sum game and the children of the woman who gets the most attention will have the most resources. Go read about how Chinese imperial concubines handled one another. It was very, very, very bad.
It is incredibly sexist to talk about. But the effect is real. Humans have hormones. They don’t go away because we have been in an office for 50 years out of the last million years.
I personally think that the chemistry between men and women can be magical for work and create super productivity. I prefer to work with and for women. It’s because if I work with men everything becomes a sort of dominance contest and I personally don’t care for it.
I’m sorry? Was this not obvious? If you are eating nothing but white bread and candy and alcohol, while undergoing severe stress combinations.
Downvote all you want it’s the truth.
If you are like me, I spent decades in your state. And then I magically noticed that when I eat food that actually has vitamins and minerals and take mineral supplements all these crazy anxieties become manageable.
If you are taking on all these problems and your health is off, you are garaunteed not to solve them no matter how you think about it.
1. Recruiting time wasted 2. Sunk cost in training and networking employees to one another and the culture and technology and problem domain 3. Laid off employees go to competitors and transfer key secrets to those competitors 4. Incompetent employees tend to gang up on competent employees every time so you are almost guaranteed to lose your best talent and get left with dunces
I would also guess but can’t establish that layoffs make the company more homogenous so you shave off the outliers
Another damaging thing I see is id your best leave and then recruit your remaining best then you get double losses