the funny thing is that almost every techie I know.knew after 40 years in the IT business - were diagnosed as ADHD - I was one of the last to fall when diagnosed at 56. The thing is I am a hyper concentrator type where I would get into my work and time food bathroom and noise, all disappeared as I tried to get something done. This does mean occasionally I would scream when someone would come up behind me and touch my shoulder to get my attention. I trained my bosses to stand quietly by my side and I would eventually sense them and look up. Of course that would cause the work to take longer since I would have to spend time getting back in mode. I think that is what they are looking for.

Which is perfectly fine, and necessary for this population to succeed.

Temple Grandin is funny, she swears that Silicon Valley is made up with Aspies and HFA folks, lol

Gotta love her.

the only way I succeeded at all was to draw people who were loyal to me and could work on their own. hard as it is to get some to believe this, if you accept responsibility for what goes wrong in your group and give credit when things go right, you end up with people who will fight for you and receive a lot of credit and, unfortunately, get promoted to a higher and higher level. Management in the upper levels is very combative and filled with egos and credit snatchers and nepotism and irrational people, very hard to work with when you try and be logical. I did train my people when something goes wrong, come to me with the solution as well and there will be no pain for anyone. So much better than lying and try to hide it.
a bad manager with a good staff still looks good.

It is an oddity that Management, which takes a very specific set of skills, is seen as a reward for years of hard work mastering a completely different set of skills. Particularly in technical companies it seems a bit backwards.

"Well you've had a great season there at Third Base, Unnamed player. And to show our appreciation of your mastery of those skills, next season you will be playing Left Tackle for our fair cities football team."

But I guess it's too ingrained in our corporate culture to really change.

Bryant

I know an awful lot of techies who are somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but very few I'd describe as having attention deficits or hyperactivity, which I think is what ADHD stands for, doesn't it?

Aspberger's and ADHD super concentrators without detailed testing.

I realize the article was about Autism, but the people I met were definitely disorganized and a bit nuts. Most were hyper concentrators as I was. Several of them had been diagnosed ADHD. I think it just shows that abilities that would be considered a detriment in traditional world are an asset in the modern world.

and it had a similar concept. Although not the primary focus of the story it described well a company that employed a select group of autistic people to look for patterns in some type of software that most people might miss. I found it an extremely interesting concept.

For some reason the blurb from the publisher makes it sound like it is sci-fi but really it is about how autistic people see the world slightly differently and it is informative.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/96063.The_Speed_of_Dark

we are , how we advance and sometimes, at what cost. Sounds like a book worth reading, as
the reviews seem to highlight they felt they could walk in another persons shoes as a result.

This is a topic of contention for many HFA and Aspies regarding Autism Speaks...who feel
marginalized by their view point..cure autism.


Thank you for the link.

I'm sure it had a cover like one of these when I read it, rather than the sci-fi looking one.




I usually remember books for dialogue which I like. I remember this one for the paragraph about flat meaning, "flat enough". Whenever I get too preoccupied with details I try to remember that to most people flat means flat enough. Sort of the like the Earth is a sphere except in reality it bulges around the equator. Most people looking would just call it a sphere.

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