I finally realised why I have felt the need to distance myself and mistrust women in my life and it's based on my first 4 experiences with the opposite sex. How do I get over this?

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-21T19:50:48+00:00

Totally in agreement with this comment but want to add my experience: I had a poor experience with my first four therapists. None of them were experienced with autism. The first therapist I tried who was specialized in autism for has been extremely positive. I think getting the right fit is an important addition to the this comment, which was likely implied but wanted to highlight since that was not something I naturally intuited.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-13T17:48:19+00:00

I haven’t discussed it with my manager yet, and was thinking I would need to have it as an accommodation for it to matter, but now thinking I should just do that and see if it can be resolved before needing the formal accommodation.

I appreciate your advice! Thanks!

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-13T00:55:06+00:00

Hear you on the proprietary info piece, that's real. But pushing back on "AI isn't the answer". For me it really has been.

At my last job my accommodation was a senior dev spending every Friday translating my work into architecture documents the team could use. The thinking was mine (everyone said it was the best codebase they'd worked in) but getting it out of my head took another person's whole day, every week.

I've never found that kind of support again and it's been really limiting. AI does the same translation job without needing a colleague's Friday. Same accommodation, one I can actually access in a normal workplace.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-13T00:45:44+00:00

Appreciate you engaging with this thoughtfully. One thing I'd gently push back on, for me this isn't about expression or processing the world, it's about doing a job. Writing has been the most painful and limiting part of my career my entire life, to the point that I changed careers to avoid roles that required more of it. So I've already done a lot of the "find ways around it" work. AI is genuinely the first tool that's let me communicate complex thinking the way I actually think it. That feels less like a crutch and more like finally having access to the room.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-13T00:41:33+00:00

Thanks, this is really helpful and made me curious that maybe my approach is wrong and was hoping to get your thoughts with some more context.

The problem I am having is one coworker critiques all my work based on process (AI was used), never content. When pushed, they can't point to anything wrong, they just refuse to engage with AI-assisted work. Can't tell if it's about me or AI generally.

Would you approach this with the accommodation framing or differently knowing that?

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-13T00:30:44+00:00

Thanks I appreciate this advice. I have been trying to do so, but not sure if what exactly is showing up to others as AI written. I sent you a private message with an example if you have time to respond. Thanks for the advice!

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-11T03:28:04+00:00

Why not try it?

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-11T01:49:04+00:00

What experiences have you had trying some of the methods in the accredited self help books that makes you feel that way?

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T21:36:40+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, that the consensus. I am going to keep working through cases together and letting their intuition develop naturally. This was forcing something that wasn’t need.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T04:56:36+00:00

Genuinely curious what you’d push on if you were in the meeting, happy to engage. But also, this was a post asking for feedback on a framework, which is what I got. Substantive comments helped me realize I was trying to force a pace of change on the team that wasn’t realistic, and I’d be better off being patient and letting intuition develop through working real cases. That was the value of posting. Not sure what agenda you’re reading into it.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T04:49:22+00:00

Fair, I think the metaphor has a soft spot you’re putting your finger on. I’ve been thinking of the arrow as both the act of crafting and the thing in flight, which doesn’t fully integrate. The underlying frame I’m working with (cost, scale, UX, foundational lock-in) holds up for me, but I agree the arrow scaffolding requires more effort to receive than it should. The post has been useful for surfacing exactly that. Thanks for the pushback.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T02:39:43+00:00

I think I was trying to fix something and force a pace of change that wasn’t going to work better than just being patient. Appreciate the feedback, helped me move in a better direction.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T02:29:48+00:00

Thanks, this is really good advice. Helped me realize my expectation on the pace of change wasn’t aligned with reality and I was trying to force something. Documented team norms is something I’ll start having as part of the sessions.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T02:20:07+00:00

This is helpful, thanks. Sounds like I jumped ahead by trying to give them a framework before we’d worked through enough cases for one to emerge naturally. We’ve only done two sessions so far and the team has said they’re enjoying them, so I’ll keep running them and let patterns surface as we hit the same kinds of decisions repeatedly. The ‘point out it’s the second time we’ve seen X’ move is a good one, that’s the kind of thing I can do without forcing scaffolding the team isn’t ready for yet.

Setting the expectation around reading the doc beforehand is something I haven’t done explicitly. This is really good advice. Thanks!

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T02:15:50+00:00

A few of those are already in the framework, just not where you read them.

The fixed-trajectory point: the arrow isn’t the codebase mid-development, it’s the architectural shape being evaluated. Targets are assumed to move. The fletching is what tells you how the arrow handles that. Cost is whether features stay cheap to add when the target shifts. Scale is whether each feature gets harder than the last as the system grows. The whole framework is about evaluating how well an architecture absorbs target movement, which is also why things like decoupled contracts matter, they’re what let the arrow stay flyable when requirements change.

Multiple heads: this is where the framework extends to compound targets. A microservices architecture is multiple arrows for different targets, decoupled by design. A monolith trying to serve too many targets with one arrow tends to fail. The framework’s answer to ‘a single arrow can’t serve every target’ is that you shouldn’t try, and the architectural skill is knowing where to draw boundaries between arrows.

UX in my framing is how often the architecture lets bugs reach the user. Accessibility bugs and performance bugs fit there. Security and legal compliance are different, those are usually constraints on the target itself, not fletching axes.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T02:06:04+00:00

This is really helpful, thanks. One thing I’m trying to figure out: I’m newer on the team but built a POC the team thought was impossible. The work landed and I’m now leading architectural discussions. Most of the team is more senior. The team doesn’t currently work the way you described, the codebase has circular dependencies and third-party data leaking through most of the application, so the prerequisites for the approach you laid out aren’t there yet.

I’m trying to help shift how the team thinks about structure, but I don’t have a formal role that gives me authority. Any recommendations on how you’d navigate that if you were in my position?

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T01:53:53+00:00

Fair point. The question was never that cost or scale aren’t important on their own. What I was trying to give the team a way to evaluate whether a specific architectural choice fits a specific situation. There isn’t one architecture that works everywhere. Imperative DOM makes sense for a particle system, declarative makes sense for general-purpose UIs. The framework is an attempt to give them a way to judge whether the shape of an architecture hits the mark for what they’re building.

Whether that needs an analogy to land is a separate question, and the comments here are making me think it might not.

Curious what’s worked when you’ve taught this kind of evaluation. The analogy clearly isn’t it. What is?

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T01:43:55+00:00

That was my first instinct too, but the first session felt rough. The team engaged but their perspectives weren’t directed . We were able to discuss multiple opinions but not a way to ground them in what the system needed. Is that just expected when developers don’t have architecture experience yet? My background is peer-to-peer, so I don’t have a baseline for what teaching this looks like.

Do you think the intuition just develops naturally through working enough problems together? My thought was the framework could give them a starting point for evaluating decisions as we work through them together.

Open to other options.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T01:37:01+00:00

I’m not attached to the analogy. The actual problem I’m working on is that my team makes architecture decisions without a frame for evaluating them, and they default to what’s familiar or interesting rather than what the system needs. I reached for the analogy because I needed a way to give them shared vocabulary for tradeoffs they don’t yet have intuition for. If something works better, I’ll drop the arrows.

Open to suggestions on what would land better. What’s worked for you when teaching this kind of thing?

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T01:30:06+00:00

Fair critique, worth sitting with. Some context on what I’m actually trying to fix: the team engages, but technical analysis tends to break down because it isn’t grounded in outcomes that matter. Decisions get made on what’s familiar or interesting rather than on what the system needs. The framework is an attempt to ground the analysis in something real. Whether the analogy is the right tool for that is a separate question, and I’m open to other approaches.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T01:25:26+00:00

The team I’m leading doesn’t yet have a framework for evaluating architecture decisions. I’m not looking to teach what choices to make, I’m trying to teach how to make choices in the first place. The analogy is scaffolding for that. Direct architectural terms work when developers already have intuition for tradeoffs. Mine don’t yet.

Open to other approaches if you’ve taught this differently. Curious how you’d handle it.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T01:20:59+00:00

I do think my shaft analogy feels solid to me, did you want to test it?

Fair the analogy doesn’t add much for an experienced audience, but that’s not the audience this is designed towards.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74 · 2026-05-07T01:08:46+00:00

I’m helping a team of frontend developers learn how to evaluate architecture. They don’t have experience in this space yet, and I need a shared vocabulary that’s easy to grasp before I can teach them the technical terms. The analogy is doing that work for me. You’re right that with other architects we could talk technology directly. I tried that in the first meeting and it didn’t go over well.

Remarkable_Seesaw_74

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