[W4ldi]

It's called narcissistic entitlement to expect the whole world to change their behaviour because of ones own inability to fit in. I'm not saying it is fair. Life is never fair. The only one who has the ability to influence those situations is oneself. You can't rely on other to change - it won't work anyways. You have to be the one that improves those interactions. For your own good.

[scotty79]

> It's called narcissistic entitlement to expect the whole world to change their behaviour because of ones own inability to fit in.

Is it not exactly what allistic people are doing?

Autistic people communicate just fine with other autistic people. It's allistic people that don't fit in and want to change everybody around them because they can't suffer a bit of diversity in thinking and communication.

[stkdump]

I think in the end people who are different (no matter if autistic, bipolar, whatever) need to learn to get along with each other. Whenever one side says: "I am right, I don't move a bit to accomodate anyone else", he is doing the opposite. This piece reads exactly like that. It calls people who communicate and think differently indistinctly bullies.

If you claim to be a complex thinker, you also consider people in your analysis, then that should also apply first hand, not just as a part of the solutions you propose. If you are unable to do that: fine, nobody is expected to be perfect. But don't claim to be perfect.

[brainwipe]

Neuro diverse people can't necessarily change their behaviour because it's how their brain is wired. It's like asking a visually impaired person to just see better. Many neuro diverse people have to force themselves to "fit in" causing untold stress and trauma. That's not for their own good, it's forcing their brains to work in a way that they don't.

[Beltalowda]

That is essentially saying that autistic people can't learn. That's not really the case.

Furthermore everyone has to adjust to the people around them, often causing untold stress for everyone. This is one of the aspects of the neurodivergency movement I am less impressed by because I feel it's just handwaving away any issues as "suck it up, not my problem, deal with it". I've worked with a few people like this over the years, which also caused untold stress for the entire team.

To give an example from this post, "is our checkout page not performing well?" to the React rewrite manager comes off as a rather dismissive "why would you want to do that?" While certainly a valid question – and I wasn't there and I don't know if it was phrased like that exactly – but I'm sure those questions could have been asked in a way that came off as less challenging and dismissive, resulting in a more constructive conversation. You really can learn these things.

Or, maybe the manager was just an asshole/idiot and the unconstructive interaction is all completely unrelated to the author's autism. Could be too.

The first point – "the non-autistic person is not hearing what I'm saying" – sounds like the author might benefit from trying to understand why that is, and adjusting the way they say things. Sometimes small changes can make large differences, and it really doesn't need to cause untold stress. Effective communication is hard and also something everyone has to learn.

[MichaelZuo]

I'm fairly sure everyone alive has a neural plasticity above zero.

[faeriechangling]

The thing about the autistic masking causing trauma thing is that I haven’t really seen high quality evidence for the theory. It just sounds intuitively correct.

[musingsole]

You're reading more into this piece than is there. The author never advocates that the rest of the world should change. This post only claims that these miscommunication scenarios between experts on the autistic spectrum and allistic people HAPPEN.

They happen to me too.

Understanding the nature of the miscommunication is the first step towards averting it in the future.

[denton-scratch]

> They happen to me too.

And me. I'm not autistic. I don't think I have any kind of Asperger's either.

I didn't see anything in author's prose that suggested autism; it just sounded like a normie, perhaps with an autism diagnosis, who is fretting about communication with their boss.

There seems to be quite a few commenters here making critical comments, as if author is failing to communicate effectively. I wonder if they'd have been so critical, if author hadn't self-identified as autistic. I wonder if some of these commenters have a bad attitude to self-identified autistics.

I've never known an autistic person well; but I worked closely in an office with an autistic developer. I found his code over-complex and hard to follow. Pair-coding with this guy was a waste of time; he couldn't explain what he was doing. Author, however, seems to be able to explain himself fine.

[shlant]

> expect the whole world to change their behaviour

Who is saying this? The article provides a perspective that is not discussed very often as a way of helping people understand these situations from a vantage point they might not have considered. Nobody is demanding anything.