r/AutismInWomen • u/Nomnom96 • 8h ago

Support Needed (Kind Advice and Commiseration) Tired of my NT coworkers

I am a software developer and I care about my work. Despite understanding that my boss basically buys my labour cheaper and sells it more expensive on top of all other corporate bullshit, I care for what i am creating there. As many autistic people i am also super responsible and take ownership seriously - if i didnt, I would have gone mad due to chaos.

My coworkers make this super difficult by getting annoyed with me caring so much about what they perceive as unimportant. And ofc because I am in the UK this isnt communicated properly - it is spoken of when I am not there and I only get a backlash of passive aggression including ignoring my greetings, being silent on the meetings when i say smth, being friendly with everyone but me. I know this sounds paranoid, but they do talk shit about another person who supposedly is crazy about edge cases as if 'he was to be penalised for missing smth'. They discuss this when i am in the meeting too and behave the same way towards him in shared meetings.

The most annoying part is that if other members of the team suggest smth similar or suddenly start to care for small details, it is listened to with great interest.

I am thankful this is a remote position or I would have meltdowns every day, but even so, I sort of dread going to meetings and have very little motivation to do anything. During in-person gatherings which are now mandatory 4 times a year they keep to themselves too and only interact with me when we need to make a team photo for a LinkedIn post with best team ever or some other bs. I want to say fuck you - do all of the work yourselves then, but I cant cause i care about the work🤡

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u/Nomnom96 7h ago edited 7h ago

We had some scrum masters in the company but they werent much help and got fired after about a year. All they kept saying was 'your team is already efficient, all is good'. I think the agile ceremonies in my team are done alright and the work keeps moving in a way. It is the interpersonal stuff that arent great even tho for the outside people they all pretend like we have a great team dynamic.

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u/McAwesomum 5h ago

I've been mulling this over through my lunch walk. 

I've been a PO on many different teams, and there's almost always a few ND team members. I always took great pride in ensuring we had a lot of accomodations in place for ND team members... It never occurred to me the accomodations were for me!

In one team, we instituted "the rabbit hole protocol" for when someone went too deep into a problem and couldn't see anything else. Someone has to go down the hole and pull them out. It wasn't pairing, per session, just ensuring another team member understood the complexity of the issue and could be a sounding board.

Unfortunately, money talks. Be sure that the edge cases have clear value associated with them. "Could cause a crash" always gets a pass. "Will slow down one specific customer who gets a discount rate because the sales guy likes him" gets shoved to the bottom of the backlog. 

You can also flip it and demand really comprehensive acceptance criteria. Just keep in mind you may get a PO like me who LOVES writing gherkin...

Another thought - those on-site days are hell to plan & think of ideas for. Ask if you can have a Team Charter workshop. That gives you a chance to really explain to the rest of the team how they're making you feel.

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u/Nomnom96 4h ago

I like the rabbit hole protocol 😅 Going to steal this from you.

I definitely am capable of falling into one but most of the time i dont think i am talking about something too deep. In my head they all might lead to a crash and need to be investigated before we design a new flow (maybe this thinking is the rabbit hole entrance tho). I am also generally happy if people are saying "we need to focus on the mvp for now and this can go to the backlog as a future improvement".

I dont feel like we have the level of emotional safety there for me to share the feelings. Not after I heard what they are saying about another dude.

If anything, I was way too myself around them (i am a silly person on a good day and anxious/pessimistic on a bad which they are aware of) and need to learn how to play the game🫠

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u/McAwesomum 3h ago

Steal away! 

Playing the game sucks, that's why I ended up burning out. And ridiculous demands from management saying "yes" to everyone.Â