Autism-Powered Career: Driven by Truth

This article is the first in a three-part series highlighting ways my career has been enhanced by my autistic brain.

Nothing exists until it has a name.

~Lorna Wing

Introduction

Earlier this year I was diagnosed ASD-1 (Autism Spectrum Disorder, Level 1); also known as Asperger's Syndrome.

My diagnoses has been, perhaps, the single-most life-understanding milestone for me. I've known since childhood that I think very differently than most people, but never understood why. I learned to mask my natural behaviors by mimicking peers or celebrities who were considered successful. This process of survival for Aspies (a colloquial term many of us diagnosed with ASD-1/Aspergers have adopted to self-identify) is absolutely exhausting, yet we continue to perform our "masking" ritual day-in and day-out. I'll save the difficulties of being autistic for another series. Instead, this series will focus on a sampling of strengths that often accompany the autistic brain.

I advocate for the acceptance of autism as part of a beautiful tapestry of neurodiversity in humans. Autistic individuals do not need to be cured, fixed, or prevented from existing; we need to be understood, accepted, and leveraged for the unique strengths we have brought and should continue bringing to humanity.

In three brief articles, I'll describe the top Autistic-strengths I feel have contributed positively to my career as a software architect, technology entrepreneur, and systems-theorist. They are: being driven by truth, an ability to think in patterns, and discomfort as the rule, not the exception. As a disclaimer, I do not pretend that all Autistic individuals will identify with these same strengths, as there are many abilities that come with Autism. These three items are also not intended to be comprehensive, but just a sampling of some of the ways I've found my Neurodiverse brain to be a benefit in my career.

Part 1: Being Driven by Truth

I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.

Richard P. Feynman

A common trait among Asperger-types is the intrinsic value of truth over all else. It is this very value that is at the heart of many problems we encounter during social interactions. If you've ever seen the movie The Invention of Lying, with Ricky Gervais, you can use this as a backdrop to envision what it might be like if everybody in the world had this trait of the Autistic brain.

If you ask me a question, please be prepared for the answer. This may seem like common sense, but having lived for 4 decades among neurotypical people, I've learned that a good many circumstances require a bit of truth-bending; a skill we Aspies must really practice to acquire, and more often than not, we fail miserably.

This trait has been the cause for a fair number of awkward social interactions and some strained relationships; but in the workplace, it has been quite a strength. I work primarily with complex systems that mingle human elements with technology (e.g. massively-scalable software systems or technologies that float somewhere between the analog/digital realms). The ability to look at a system objectively and point out weaknesses and flaws leads to a culture of continuous improvement and of healthy system evolution (so long as all parties can appropriately abandon ego).

Three Stories

I recall one of the earliest projects in my career when a well-known personal history and genealogy company came to our software development company for a proposal on building a new technology. As the lead technology manager, I put together a proposal I felt was as accurate as possible. The company returned stating they had received a bid for a much lower price with a much shorter timeline. In as professional of terms as possible, I let them know that our estimate was accurate and that the other company was either intentionally under-bidding or lacked the technical knowledge to have thoroughly thought through the project. We would not alter our bid, as it would only result in either a missed timeline or a loss to our company. The potential client moved forward with the alternate bid.

Six months later they returned to state that the alternate company had already exceeded their estimated due date, the cost was now equivalent to our original bid, and they were estimating that they were barely halfway complete. The client asked if we would still honor the original bid we had provided. We agreed to the project under our original terms as long as we were able to start from scratch, the way we had originally planned. They agreed, and we completed the project as planned, on-time, and within budget. My autistic need for honesty allowed our company to maintain integrity and ultimately win a loyal client, at a profit rather than a loss.

I recall another consulting engagement with a Fortune-100 CEO and project lead where I was given a copy of the latest SEC filings, their Pro Forma for the upcoming 2-3 years, and their current strategy for a forthcoming technology. I was hired to provide an analysis on their proposed strategy for technology development. To me, the pattern was quite clear (more on pattern-based-thinking in the next article of this series), that the company was attempting a project that did not take advantage of their strengths, and, in fact, was coupled with some significant weaknesses. The neuro-typical response might be to "tell them what they want to hear" as that usually leads to a bigger paycheck; but my autistic brain does what it does, and in my report, I called out what I recognized as flaws in their proposal. Their business "system" was not set up properly to execute on the technology they hoped to build and would not end favorably without significant revisions. I was not surprised that they decided to ignore my recommendations and move forward with the original plan, but was happy to have had the opportunity to consult with them.

A year or so later, they brought me in again and asked me to spend the next year on a full-time basis on a new project. I was surprised after the "bad news" I'd given on their other project, but took the job. At some point during my engagement on the new project, I learned that they decided to bring me for this new work after the original project played out as I'd predicted. Being a publicly-traded company, they decided that perhaps this new project would benefit from an outside perspective, particularly from somebody who had already proven an ability to state their opinion regardless of who else was in the room. My autistic need to seek out and expose the truth became a valued asset to this client over the course of several projects.

My final example was another consulting engagement with a startup technology. The founder had spent a considerable amount of personal income to hire a "Google-genius" (i.e. a really smarty-pants person who worked for Google) to build a system using artificial intelligence. The technology never worked properly and the Google-genius decided to pursue other projects (translation, he realized it wouldn't work and conveniently found another job, leaving this guy in the dust). The founder reached out to me because I had experience with A.I.; he was hoping I could "fix it." I told him that I didn't think his AI software would work with the current status of AI technology and that it was likely a "red herring" project; but that if he gave me a chance, I might be able to help him find an alternate solution. My autistic brain likes to understand systems, not just parts, so I asked if he would be willing to spend a week with me going through his entire business process. He agreed to my proposal and we spent a week discussing every aspect of the business, including meeting each employee and discussing the details of their day-to-day work.

At the week's conclusion, I put together a proposal that entirely bypassed the idea of AI, and instead relied on a group of his current employees to perform a statistically-equivalent process that would only consume 2-4 hours of their work week, each. He loved the idea and within 45 days and a much-smaller-than-allocated budget, we successfully changed his software to rely on the human-involved data and a new business system process. He immediately closed a couple of very large deals using the new system. Now, 7-8 years later, I still get a smile when I am included in an email campaign from his company; not because I like the "spam," but because I'm happy that his company is still thriving. Having an autistic mind helped me be transparent and forthright, saving this entrepreneur personal capital while drastically shortening his timeline to profitability.

Conclusion

While "honesty is the best policy" may be just a guideline for neurotypicals, for the asperger-brain, it is Standard Operating Procedure. This gets us into trouble most of the time; but when a company values honesty and truth-seeking over ego, the autistic obsession for truth becomes a valuable asset and a guiding example to others. I look forward to the increasingly autism-friendly workplaces that will allow fellow aspies to thrive in a career, ultimately bringing incredible value to their employer.

#HireAutistic #autism #aspergers

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Cover photo credit: (c) David Swindler, Action Photo Tours