I’ve been in and out of so many different jobs. Usually I get to a point where I burn out and just can’t go in anymore. Best job I ever had was as a tour guide in a distillery telling people facts all day and working with what I now realise was a whole bunch of other neurodivergent people. Only left that because I wasn’t paid enough to live. Honestly could have stayed there forever otherwise. Such is life!
Currently in the middle of a career change after realising the whole 9-5 office job life isnt sustainable for me. I’m hoping to be able to work for myself soon and not be beholden to other people’s schedules!
What jobs have you tried out over the years? What has worked well for ye?
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Generally: Programmer - Currently making video games but have also worked with a vast array of platforms and things. Corporate apps, mobile, AR, Weird art things with Raspberry Pi’s…
For me being able to fall into a hole to solve a problem is the best feeling ever, problem is then everything goes by the wayside and I forget to stop and eat or sleep 😅.
Of course the downsides is attempting to do anything I can’t latch my brain onto. I know now that I am not built for a corporate environment…
Just saw this post. Weird art things with a raspberry pi sounds very interesting. What kind of stuff did you make?
When I was coming to the end of school, I wanted to go into journalism. Dunno why, it just appealed to me.
Then I applied for an apprenticeship at a local ship repair yard and got accepted as a welder/fabricator. Had no idea what that entailed, but they’d be paying me and I’d learn a skill. No idea how I went from definitely wanting to go into journalism to becoming a welder, but learning some twenty years later that I have ADHD probably goes a long way towards explaining it.
Anyhoo, hated almost every minute of my apprenticeship, got sacked a few months before the end, but managed to find a job doing similar work where I could finish my college exams. Then spent the next seven years working for that firm, where I hated the work, the managers and all my time there. But looking for work is hard, and I hated what I did anyway, so what was the point of working somewhere else?
Then, at 27 my wife left me, so I fucked off the welding and went to uni to study radio production. Graduated with a 2:1 (still undiagnosed at this point, so I’m still really proud of that) and used the degree to score a job on a cruise ship. Spent the next year traveling the world, spinning tunes in the nightclub every night, drinking too much rum and making the most of the all night buffet. It was great.
Did a year on there, but missed seeing my kid, so jacked it in, where I got a series of shitty, barely-paying jobs to try and pretend I was in any way a useful member of society, while I desperately tried to find work in the radio industry.
I never did manage that.
Worked at a company who made those birthday cards with the year of your birth CDs in for a couple of years. Loved that job. I got to fuck about on Photoshop with a bunch of good people, but the economy sucked and the company had to let me go.
So I gave up on my dreams and reluctantly went back on my tools.
Tried to be self-employed. Lasted a year before I had to admit defeat. Then had a couple of jobs in welding before landing at the company where I’ve been for the past five years.
I got my diagnosis a few years ago, which massively helped me to figure out who I am. Between that and turning 40, my brain settled down a bit and I was able to accept that I was doing a job that I didn’t particularly love, but that I had a skill for and that paid the bills.
18 months ago I was offered a promotion to the role of quality manager, which has subsequently morphed into mostly providing training to our employees who need it. To be honest, I don’t really care for the training side of things, but management leaves me alone, and I’m independently working on getting a health and safety management qualification which will enable me to move to a better paying job at a (hopefully) better company than this one.
I got a job in R&D and it’s great. I also work for a great company so there’s that. I lead the Neurodivergent Support Group for my company! I really got lucky as I realize so many of us have issues with employment.
Research and development right?
That’s cool that there’s a support group for that! What kind of support do you provide?
When I was leaving one of the many office jobs that didn’t work out I had a heart to heart with my boss about why I was leaving and that looking into getting diagnosed with something (I struggle so much with holding on to employment). She heavily implied that a lot of people in the organisation were what you could call neurodivergent. I wonder if there had been a group like that if it could have made a difference!
We do a little bit of everything. We meet monthly and we keep it open forum so anyone can bring topics and get advice, support, or celebrate a win. We also do manager trainings on different conditions, walk people through the accommodations process, and mediate employee/manager issues. I’ve also done a couple of interviews and panels for different parts of the company. One of which they used clips of for Instagram. I was pretty excited about that.
Having the group has saved my career. I just need that extra support and understanding.
Be an engineer they said, its all about problem solving they said, they lied. No one mentioned the documentation and reports, just let me tinker/build/fix/test things. Turns out should be a technician 😂but i do love it really.
@EmrysOfTheValley @neamhsplach
Do computer programming (software development) so you only need to talk to computers.
Haha, just kidding. 90% of it is communicating with humans. Either directly (tickets, reviews, meetings, …) or indirectly (comments in code, commit messages, …). 😕
Switched about 10 jobs working for someone else. Now just doing UberEATS and Doordash deliveries. Money is not great but the balance of work/money/free time is good enough.
Having lots of free time is key. For me, that free time affords me all the time I need for all those self care activities that suffer when I’m working full time, like showering and sleeping and keeping my living space somewhat tidy. I don’t know how people manage that when they’re working full time!!
Yes! Maybe neurotypicals just have more control of their attention, less intrusive thoughts distracting them, kinda more “stable” internal weather.
I’m a lawyer with a background in business! There are a lot of lawyers with interesting wetware since the initial filters on the profession are almost entirely test-based and the tests don’t target things like emotional maturity, empathy, or interpersonal interactions.
I have a lot of lawyers in my social circle and this is definitely the case! I wonder if the “strong sense of justice” trait also attracts a lot of neurodivergent people to the industry initially.
I’m sure it differs from person to person, but a significant portion (possibly a majority) of the people at my law school seemed to be there because they didn’t have any other ideas about what to do with their undergraduate degree. Easy access to ruinous student loan debt can seriously warp a person’s decisionmaking process.
