Gary E. WalkerI’m not going to sugar coat it. I have worked my strangely flabby ass unduly hard the last two weeks, but my code is starting to look like something I won’t hate immediately and I call that progress.
I am not doing tech stuff because I care deeply about it. I do it because other people need it done. But it is my trade, and I have to say it feels good after a 9 month layoff to find your edge again. It’s so elusive, that subtle difference between floundering in syntax and seeing everything clearly in whatever language it is going to be this time.
I wish every syllable of that wasn’t an indictment of mainstream recruiting processes, but it SO is. I talked to precisely two companies in 9 months who treated my Neurodiversity as anything other than a black mark: Apollo, and my present employer, #wearecisco. Not turning shill for corporations now, but I believe in publicizing what people and orgs do right. Apollo’s recruiting experience and Cisco’s recruiting and onboarding experience were head and shoulders above the rest.
Chris (so far)@perigrin very seriously? Cisco has an AMAZING neurodiverse community. They are supportive of our presence and, so far as I can tell, really invested in people who have chosen to be out about our challenges at work.
@perigrin Here's another datapoint. I had a real, serious, fuck-you-Gary kind of bout with my depression over the last year and a half. It flared up again right after I started this job. Long story short, my team did what I most needed. Telling my reporting mgr. about it the other day, I got teary. It didn't matter.
I have since talked to other ND people here who have had the same experience.
I am not stupid and do not believe this to be a coincidence.
@gewalker y’all don’t need a engineering manager with a metric ton of book reading and a baptism by fire in a startup do you?
I also had a psychiatrist look at me and say “yeah you’re probably autistic” in the last two years too. So like … lotta self discovery.
Y’all don’t happen to need one of those?
I also had a psychiatrist look at me and say “yeah you’re probably autistic” in the last two years too. So like … lotta self discovery.
Y’all don’t happen to need one of those?
Marge吴静玫@perigrin I mean, I'm obviously of the opinion that, ASD and being a bit of a douche about yourself notwithstanding, I think you'd be an excellent candidate for anything we have that fits what you actually want to do.
@perigrin Get over that imposter syndrome, son. That shit's deadly. ;) (I have so fucking much imposter syndrome, man).
@perigrin True story: a few weeks ago, my team lead and the software engineer who has been onboarding me both called out that I was off. That literally prompted me to make what has been the best improvement in my med regimen I have experienced in ages.
I was telling my reporting mgr about this. I cried. Everywhere else I have ever worked that would have been a total debacle.
It was treated as a normal expression of emotion.
@perigrin It wasn't merely not a problem, it was accepted for the genuine feeling that it was. It literally prompted my mgr to give my lead a public kudo. That's non-trivial. That's an at least moderately healthy organization.
@gewalker it’s been a rough several months man, as you well know job hunting ain’t easy on the soul.
@perigrin As for being yourself at work? I made that choice almost 3 years ago and haven't looked back and increasingly I look at it as the 3rd best choice I have made in my life behind asking Becky to marry me and not killing myself several times in the late 80's and 90's.
@perigrin I'm not saying the experience has been made up of entirely positive experiences. I'm saying that the net over 3 years give or take a few months, is overwhelmingly that other people are actually understanding of what I am going through, or at least wish to be for the most part.
@gewalker as long as I remember to take the pill … that mood swing from my teen years does threaten to swamp me.
@perigrin Med maintenance is a bitch and a half, man. Do you mind if I ask what sort of meds you take? I'm open about my regimen: cymbalta and trazodone at night (trazodone is great if you have dopamine related insomnia), methylphenidate, wellbutrin, and buspar in the morning. Honestly? I had kind of forgotten what feeling like a human being is like. Depression will creep up on you like that.
@perigrin I added the wellbutrin almost 3 weeks ago and it was like flipping a switch. I've been myself again, and it feels great.
@perigrin Also, I'm ADHD and Major depressive disorder (now with Atypical Features! The fun depression!), so your mileage may vary. But seriously, there's somebody in the ND community at Cisco who will, presuming you apply and are hired, which I think you absolutely should do and would be respectively, who will, on hearing you express yourself about some symptom after you've been there a month, express their relation in a way you cannot ignore. I am confident in that.
@perigrin I think part of this is because at the size of Cisco, a company which is, no bullshit, over 50% engineers, and totally more thoroughly populated with women in leadership positions (although not as many as I would like) than anywhere I've ever worked, simply cannot afford to ignore the needs of neurodiverse folk. We're literally at every level of the company. I'm genuinely deeply energized by the community I've found there and I gush a bit.
@perigrin And we're organizing. There's an existing disability community in the company who are fostering us as a new org. We're going to be an actual special interest at cisco before you know it.
@gewalker I’m just taking the Wellbutrin at the moment and yeah it wasn’t exactly a switch but as I said to my doctor “I should have been spinning out about [situation at work] and I haven’t been” “that’s the Wellbutrin” … followed up with forgetting enough times I can tell when I haven’t been taking it and start feeling extra swingy … and I’m pretty sure I’m spot on.
@gewalker the insomnia is also triggered by not being good about the pills, ramping on and off causes sleep to be wack.
@perigrin Oh, yeah, it's definitely unblocking something in the dope-rgic system. And something that duloxetine (an ssri and norepinepherine reuptake inhibitor) weren't touching.
@gewalker I’ve got close family it did *not* do well with, brains are weird man.
@perigrin Brains are absolute assholes man. Trust me. Mine's a doozy.
@perigrin So, based on my mastodon profile banner image, my mom (who is stalking my mastodon apparently, hi mom!) decided to accuse me of, wait for it, demon worship.
I entirely wish I was kidding. Brains, my friend, cannot be trusted. They get old. They make poor judgements. I honestly believe the most important lesson that people who have mental illnesses have to onboard is that our judgments are, from time to time, suspect.
@perigrin Not always. And, I daresay, not about that which is most important. Because otherwise what even is "judgement". But I like to try and reframe things when I may.
@gewalker I was watching a video today of a psychiatrist make a fairly convincing argument for “what even is ‘judgement’”. I’m not sure I agreed with her but I strongly suspect my disagreement was in intensity not kind.
However … yes. Something that has trickled into my family unit is responding with “heard” to acknowledge that you heard and understood something. Comes from kitchen culture, and yeah … I quite like it.
However … yes. Something that has trickled into my family unit is responding with “heard” to acknowledge that you heard and understood something. Comes from kitchen culture, and yeah … I quite like it.
@perigrin Bro. I so understand. Do WHAT YOU CAN with WHAT YOU HAVE. And remember, the public domain translation of Epictetus' Discourses is actually both amazing AND free.
@perigrin Re: forgetting your pills. I think about this exchange:
assholes: "That adhd med is just as addictive as heroin!"
Me: I wonder if that's why I see so many heroin addicts walking around with a headache and the shits wondering, "did I fix this morning?"
@gewalker seriously …
@perigrin I literally had to piss in a cup today to get the meds that are the difference between me as a ward of the state or, frankly, a menace, and a genuinely productive member of society. Medications which I have gotten without submitting my fucking urine to the goddamned state for 15 years. I have no particular comments.
@perigrin Understand. I haven't run out of anything and that's why I'm relatively cool about this, but the attitude toward people with manageable illness is ridiculous.
@gewalker I’m currently without insurance. There is a low level of tension I haven’t felt in a half decade. I may not _understand_ … but I understand.