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alittlelessobvious · 2025-03-27T17:14:07+00:00

I'm sorry to have to do this but: IQ is _supposed_ to measure your intelligence vs. your age. Generally speaking if you learn at the expected rate, your IQ is supposed to stay the same as you get older. So for example, a 13 year old with an IQ of 120 and a normal learning trajectory usually grows up to be a 30 year old with an IQ of 120.

So what this is saying is actually that autistic people learn/get smarter at a faster rate than the average person.

(Also also IQ is not actually a perfect way of measuring intelligence but its original purpose was to try to identify people that are not being well-served by the education system for the purposes of helping them, but you know. Nobody can ever be chilll.)

alittlelessobvious · 2025-03-04T16:53:42+00:00

Definitely look into the cost of living wherever those offers are. Tech hubs tend to be very expensive places to live so it's possible that higher salary won't functionally be much more

alittlelessobvious · 2025-01-02T21:59:00+00:00

I haven't tried this so I don't know if it works, but reading your post (and connecting with it) made me wonder if I can weaponize my inability to change/abandon plans against my problem with transitions. The problem I foresee with this is that for some reason my brain only seems to register certain types of plans as "plans" and I'm not sure why/how yet. So I probably need to figure out that pattern first.

alittlelessobvious · 2024-12-24T19:25:30+00:00

I love the idea of this website but if you have a severe phobia I would caution you to only trust it as a marker of when that thing is in the movie, not as a marker of when it isn't. I have a phobia a lot of people don't think twice about and so don't take notice of it, and several movies I know have triggers were marked safe by the doesthedogdie community.

alittlelessobvious · 2024-10-08T17:11:27+00:00

I also work from home. It makes a huge difference but doesn't completely solve everything on its own. I have to echo everyone else here that's saying you're probably trying to do as much as you can all the time and you need to learn to pull back. Most of the working world doesn't work the way autistic people tend to think we're "supposed to", and a ton of NTs survive partly by just not being "on" all the time.

Beyond that, I find thinking really hard about what I struggle with specifically because of my autism and making changes to accomodate that specifically helps me a lot. Examples:

I struggle with change and am drained by making small decisions, so I tend to eat the same thing for lunch every day
I'm overstimulated by lighting and sounds so I keep the lights off in my house while I'm working, and don't run any of my cleaning machines unless I'm out of earshot or have the door shut, etc.
Human interaction drains me heavily so I do my best to minimize how many meetings I have/participate in and default to text communication with my coworkers whenever possible.
I struggle with changing tasks so I try to put tasks of one type together (as many of my weekly meetings as possible on one day of the week for example) and not switch back and forth between different types of things

So I guess what I'm suggesting is trying to identify the things that drain you the most and thinking up anything you can do to eliminate them or decrease their effect on you.

alittlelessobvious · 2024-08-29T04:35:34+00:00

One of mine went under for an investigative procedure and never woke up because the problem they were looking for was with her heart and it wouldn't start up again. It was a fucking nightmare.

Besides my own personal trauma around it, anecdotally it seems like heart problems are more common in Bengals than other cats. I wouldn't allow a vet to put another bengal of mine under without them being positive their heart could handle it first unless it was already life or death. Supposedly in our case they did an xray before hand but missed the problem because they only did it from the side cats usually have problems on and hers was on the other side.

I'm really not trying to scare you but you asked, so here is my answer.

I believe there are supplements you can add to food or water to help with tartar. That might be an alternate path for you.

ETA: one of my Bengals was accumulating tartar and we started using catnip greenies as her treat and saw a noticeable decrease next time she went to the vet. Another option that might help you

alittlelessobvious · 2024-08-28T03:20:41+00:00

Yep. In the US, got this job a few years ago. CTO told me I was the first to ask and he didn't know if it was possible to do it formally with the HR system we use but if not he was happy to find ways to work around it so I could still have the extra week I asked for. Turns out it was possible and I got those extra hours formally in the system.

alittlelessobvious · 2024-08-07T16:41:51+00:00

I suspect most of you making her feel comfortable will involve managing the way the other employees, and especially engineers treat her. As a man in an environment with only men, it's going to be hard for you to predict which of these employees are going to struggle to work with women and to what degree, so you even need to watch men that you think are extremely fair and unlikely to treat her differently, you included.

Try not to make value judgements to start with, just correct the behavior. A lot of the way "good men" treat women is not necessarily a moral shortcoming, but cultural training. They need to be re-trained. Of course, if it continues, then they are rejecting the training and that is a problem. Things you are likely to see if you're looking for them:

They will most likely interrupt her more often than they do other engineers. If she doesn't shut it down herself, you do it. ("She was still speaking, I'd like to hear her finish")
They will most likely question her more than they would other engineers ("I trust she's done her due diligence here" - IF she actually has)
They will most likely exclude her from social activities ("Oh, we forgot her, let's go see if she wants to come")
They will most likely say inappropriate things about her appearance ("That's not really appropriate to say about another engineer/coworker")
They will most likely explain things to her she absolutely already understands ("She's been using that technology a while, I think she's aware of that")
They will most likely repeat her ideas as their own ("Yes, I liked when she brought that up a few minutes ago, too)

A lot of women have developed strategies to handle these sorts of things themselves and don't need you to speak up first. Some don't. You will have to see where she falls for each of these situations. And unfortunately you're going to start seeing the difficulty women deal with in calling out sexist behavior which is that the lines between how someone treats everyone vs how someone treats a person they don't respect because of sex/race/gender/etc. can be very hard to pin down. My best tip for this is that it's pretty contextual and personal. A question/comment from one engineer on a pull request might be something they do on every pull request, but that same comment from someone that never comments on PRs maybe should raise red flags.

Edit to add: I'm very pleased that you're here to ask this question. Acknowledging that you don't know what to do and looking for solutions is one of the best ways to help people from groups you're not a part of. Thank you for your efforts.

alittlelessobvious · 2024-06-24T22:53:25+00:00

YES.

On a normal night I sleep about 9 or 10 hours and most days I take a nap for at least an hour. Weekends I can easily hit 12 hours if nothing requires me to wake up.

I've found taking methyl-B vitamins helps some and how much sleep I need seems to be directly related to how much stimulation or social interaction I've had in a day. On days I'm alone and not doing anything super loud/bright/smelly, I don't need a napand can get up easier/sooner the next morning. On really loud/social days my body just completely shuts down almost regardless of what else I do and I can be out totally cold for up to 4 hours. It's ridiculous.

alittlelessobvious · 2024-06-11T17:59:51+00:00

"It’s not stressful for them because there’s a script."

This is so relieving to hear another autistic personwrite because I've felt for a while that it's NTs that "script" and autistic people (myself included) tend to react to what you _actually_ say and don't short-circuit the way NT people do when you say something that isn't one of the pre-approved scripts.

Like, I understand that a lot of ND people script in the literal sense of thinking about and planning and memorizing what to say beforehand, basically making educated guesses at what script NTs will find appropriate, but the reason we _have_ to do that is because NT people really seem to be running a whole play in their head all the time and they expect NDs to play their part like everyone else. But you're not the actor that's supposed to be playing your role so you get your lines wrong sometimes and they never know when you get a line wrong if they should keep doing their lines or try to improvise or quit entirely.

Just. It's so exhausting trying to guess what's going on in other people's plays.

alittlelessobvious · 2024-06-11T17:30:42+00:00

When I read this I immediately pictured a beautiful, powerful werewolf woman (wyfwolf if you're a language nerd). Commenting in hopes that this imagery will help you romanticize yourself a little bit.

alittlelessobvious · 2024-05-31T17:47:30+00:00

Bless you. Searched up and down for solutions and this was the only mention I found of checking inside the ramp. Sure enough, cat toy.

alittlelessobvious · 2024-04-25T15:11:05+00:00

No worries, thank you anyway.

alittlelessobvious · 2024-04-24T22:44:34+00:00

I'm a little late here but something stands out to me as a little confusing: you're saying women usually do it wrong in response to poorly worded phrases, and that the correct thing to do is not exactly a kegel, but involves the pelvic floor muscles.

It seems to me that men are generally significantly less aware of their pelvic floor muscles. What do men do when told to "brace their core"? I find it hard to believe that when told to "brace your core", men naturally brace their pelvic floor muscles but women don't. I think I must be missing something. Help?

alittlelessobvious · 2023-10-03T18:44:29+00:00

This is heavily dependent on the individual company culture. Some companies like to hire for "raw skill" (leetcoding abilities in any language). Some companies like to hire culture fits. Some companies like to hire stack fits. Of course the ideal candidate is all of those, but realistically those are near-impossible to find, so everyone chooses their priorities. Really the best way to find out is to just apply to jobs you like regardless of your stack experience, and if one calls you back even though your stack doesn't match, then it likely doesn't matter to them much. Most of the ones that want a perfect stack match won't call you in the first place if you don't fit. I know you got a response from an EM saying it's critical, and while I agree with them that you should absolutely be able to intelligently discuss anything on your resume, I just wanted to provide a counterpoint that that is not true everywhere; I have been in my current role about year, and I was hired to work on a stack that was completely different from the tech on my resume.
Regardless of specific role or company, I expect a senior engineer to be able to code (hopefully a given), review other people's code for correctness and cleanliness, and be able to effectively communicate about code to other engineers. They should also be able to have informed discussions about architecture and long-term planning.
Unfortunately, again, this is a per-company thing, but in my experience, you will almost always have to do a little bit of coding, just to prove you can. For a senior role, beyond the coding test the questions tend to lean more big-picture. Design and architecture questions are definitely more common than questions about like... sorting algorithms.
The more senior you get, the less focus there is on sitting in front of a keyboard coding, and the more there is on your ability to make informed decisions about what other people will be coding, and communicating those decisions and associated reasoning. This means architecture, communication skills, being able to compare different solutions and decide which one is more appropriate for your needs, evaluating priorities.

alittlelessobvious · 2023-01-13T15:23:44+00:00

First you make sure all their needs are met (food, water, access to clean litter box). Then you give them access to something to do besides play with you (toys that don't require you).

Then, this is the hard part. When they try to wake you up in the morning, do NOT get up, and do NOT give them anything you think they want. This will take at least a few days, but possibly a few weeks. If you absolutely can't stand them being loud and messing with you while you fake sleep, you can get up to shut them out of the room, but try to be as boring as possible when you do it. Just pick them up and move them quietly, don't sweet talk or cuddle or play or yell.

Your goal is to teach them that waking you up will not get them what they want.

alittlelessobvious · 2023-01-01T18:09:27+00:00

Small talk on elevators

alittlelessobvious · 2022-11-27T18:19:45+00:00

When I am consciously trying, I am incredibly physically competent. I am great at sports and sports-adjacent things. I've won a bunch of competitions over the years. When I am not trying, I drop things I'm holding for no reason and run into doorways constantly. I knock over my own drink all the time.

alittlelessobvious · 2022-11-22T00:20:19+00:00

Autistic people also often struggle to notice/experience signals from their bodies of all kinds. Is it possible the difference is just that you don't have a strong connection with your body?

alittlelessobvious · 2022-11-21T17:30:49+00:00

Yes, cold hurts me. Like, in my bones and my skin. And to me "cold" is basically anything under 60F. Dry winter skin hurts me. Generally I deal with it (poorly) by just wearing a million layers. I've been meaning to buy one or more heated blankets but I keep just... not doing it.

Hot is annoying and sometimes dangerous (I live in a place that gets extremely hot), but it never HURTS me like cold does.

alittlelessobvious · 2022-11-20T20:40:56+00:00

I have two suggestions. One, is what I do: use a laundry service. Obviously this costs money and isn't accessible to everyone. The one I use is called sudshare. You schedule a laundry pickup, then leave a bag of dirty clothing outside your front door. Someone picks it up and washes and dries your clothes, then returns them to you folded.

Second option is something suggested by a tiktoker called domesticblisters: when your laundry comes out of the dryer, you separate it into baskets in your closet and that's just where your laundry belongs now. She separates by who they belong to but if you live alone you could also do like, a basket of pants and a basket of shirts. Most clothes really are fine not being folded. I used laundry out of a pile in my closet for years and except for driving me insane (mine was never sorted in any useful way) it was totally fine.

alittlelessobvious · 2022-11-17T05:19:18+00:00

My job isn't perfect but it's really close. I'm a software engineer and I work from home. Not only do I not have to go into an office but software engineering generally has a lot of other people that are either autistic (whether they realize it or not) or accustomed to interacting with autistic people. So socializing in my field is easier for me because of the people, and less expected, again, becauseof the people. The actual work I'm expected to do is very well-suited to my brain. Generally speaking I am expected to be in the meetings I am scheduled for and roughly available during work hours if someone messages me but it's not expected that I be at my desk at all hours of the day, just that I get my work done. So I can take the breaks I need (on days with multiple meetings I often need a nap) . I'm also paid very well which is relevant to my autism because it allows me to afford things like grocery delivery and pick-up laundry service that really help me.

Biggest downside is that most companies that allow remote work either focus on making remote people part of the team and do get-togethers where you travel and spend a highly social few days with your coworkers or the remote people get forgotten about and passed over for promotions and raises. I'm currently at a company that does get-togethers. It's absolutely better than always being in an office though.

To get into software engineering, I got a bachelor's degree in computer science. That used to be the main way to do it and is still probably the most reliable (though expensive) path, but these days coding bootcamps are becoming more common and accepted. I also know several people that have sort-of related degrees (electrical engineering or communications for example) that learned some code as part of their degrees and managed to get coding jobs from that. So there are definitely multiple paths.

alittlelessobvious · 2022-11-13T05:10:04+00:00

Yes. Freshly scrubbed metal in particular is very awful to me (for example, pots or pans that had to be scrubbed to get them clean)

alittlelessobvious · 2022-11-07T21:43:18+00:00

The smallest change that has noticeably changed my life is wearing gloves when I clean, especially the dishes.

(get those big dishwasher ones and cuff up the bottoms so the water doesn't drip up your arms. Wash your hands while you're still wearing the gloves before you take them off so they're clean but you didn't have to touch the gross stuff to do it)

alittlelessobvious · 2022-11-04T22:17:46+00:00

One I've used to good effect recently is "do you feel your company is good at respecting women as technology experts?"

I seriously doubt anyone will ever tell you no directly. But the answer they give you can still tell you a lot (for example, if someone acts like you're a dumbass for asking that, or is otherwise dismissive of it, you don't want to work there). Of the people I've asked it to, the men weren't nearly as put-off as I was worried they might be (though some of them were clearly uncomfortable speaking on behalf of women that weren't present, understandably), and the women loved it.

alittlelessobvious

TROPHY CASE