03-03-2008, 08:02 PM
Let me offer a few thoughts. Bear in mind that I don't *know* anything. I've had many experiences of employment and self-employment and after 30 years, I don't have any answers.
* People compete for work.
This is so obvious that it's easy to overlook. We're all in competition; so long as the more-or-less-free market holds, there will be winners and losers. To guarantee everyone work would require a complete tear-down of the world economic system.
Most jobs are already makework -- fake jobs: the vast majority of government jobs certainly. Many jobs don't really need to be done. They're routine and boring; to my way of thinking, they're not *work* at all, only substitutes. Some of us accept this makework, some don't.
* Work is not an entitlement.
Food, clothing, shelter, education -- I might make a long list of basic human needs, all of which I believe every single human is entitled to enjoy. There *is* enough to go around.
But work does not make this list. Perhaps it should but I can't see a way to fit it in there. When I say "work", I mean something that you do that's of value to somebody else -- not only of value but of more value than similar offerings from other people. You can't demand this work. You can demand makework -- and possibly get it. You can demand basic human needs -- and possibly get them. You may even demand enough spare cash to invest in a hobby and spend your time, say, painting in oils. Some would call this "work" even if they never sold a canvas and they'd be happy as a clam. I wouldn't object. If you can't find work, you should be permitted to occupy your mind and your hands, even if there's no obvious use for what you do. I call that a hobby.
Enforced idleness is evil. But I draw a distinction between hobby time and work time. I don't see that anyone is entitled to work. There is only so much of it to go round -- far too little for the 6 billion that we share with. As a society, we really should face this fact squarely, provide basic needs to all, and permit the majority of us to "work" at our chosen hobbies -- discarding this fiction that everyone should be working full time between the ages of 18 and 65.
If your only reason for wanting work is because you need money for basic needs, I'd like you to ignore the rest of my post. It just doesn't apply in this case. I will back you in your demands for these needs. I share them -- and I share the shortage of cash, believe me.
I could not have enough money not to want to work. I might settle reluctantly for a hobby or three but I will always want to be a part of the working world, to see my time, energy, and creativity rewarded with cash and respect, to know that my efforts are valued. But I don't think I have a right to this limited resource.
* Autistics are people.
On the one hand, we need to struggle to establish our status as people -- people on a level with anyone else, including typical people. On the other hand, I say we should not overreach and demand to be put ahead in line for anything. Demanding special treatment is a road to an uncertain destination. (Think of the backlash over "affirmative action".)
Some of us do have special needs -- and to the extent that reasonable accommodation can be provided, we should demand that. We aren't alone. Many people -- maybe most -- have special needs of one kind or another at some time in their lives. There is nothing wrong with asking for reasonable accommodation; if the denial is unreasonable, nothing wrong (in principle) with fighting for it. (But remember to choose your battles.)
Also, I'm not talking about blatant bigotry. If you stutter and twitch at the bank and the teller sneers at you and calls you an idiot, you are in the right to make a stink about it. (I might go so far as to say you have a moral obligation to cut short that kind of comment but again, choose your battles.)
I do say it's possible to go too far. For example, cars are expensive to operate and public transit may very well suck in your city. That applies to everyone. Before you sue the transit agency, demanding door-to-door car service, I'd like you to ask if you are sure that you're suffering much more than everyone else -- who equally can't afford auto insurance and maintenance, can't or won't drive, live a long way from the bus stop, and hate the looks, smells, and sounds of the trashy bus.
Life is painful for most people; there are many challenges to overcome. It's a Utopian fantasy to hope that all challenges will be removed for autistics. I think we need to keep a clear focus on removing *unnecessary and bigoted* challenges. Let's not demand extra advantages.
* Autistics compete for work.
This follows from the last two points. We compete with each other and with the typicals. It's a brutal game for all of us and -- if you agree with my reasoning so far -- we don't have any special right to a better outcome. We only have an equal right to equal opportunity. Nobody can guarantee that equal opportunity will lead to equal outcome -- indeed, I can guarantee it *won't*, any more than people with equal bankrolls will equally come away winners from the poker table. Nobody has to cheat for somebody to go home broke.
* The competition is tough.
There are many reasons for this. Industrial automation is one; all sorts of semi-skilled jobs are just gone. It's a fiction that every tailor can be retrained to make sewing machines; or that every person on the sewing-machine assembly line can be retrained to program the automated sewing-machine factory robots. The whole point of automation is to increase productivity. That means fewer people making more goods. At some point, everyone who wants one has got a sewing machine -- and only one person is employed at the factory, to turn it on in the morning.
The world economy is badly broken. War and politics play a part; so does the immature state of the science of macroeconomics. Nobody really *knows* how to adjust the money supply or stabilize production and distribution. People with good jobs are thrown out of work and then they, too, are competing for what's available.
The job market is very badly broken. This is a truism among professionals in the field -- people whose job it is to get other people jobs: job jocks. Jobhunters can't find positions suitable for their skills; employers can't find workers with the skills they need. Companies are regularly stuck with "workers" who somehow got in -- and just don't work. In some cases, it may take years to get rid of a worthless employee. The entire paradigm of employment serves everyone in it poorly.
Self-employment is an attractive alternative -- but many of the same rules apply as in the regular job market. There are usually many competitors, so it's difficult for the independent worker to get the work itself. The people who need the work done have a hard time sorting through offerings to find good contractors. Those who invest heavily in business often lose their bankrolls.
All this applies to all people, typical and autistic alike. We can certainly look for ways to improve the process for everyone -- but that may be beyond the scope of this forum. To the extent that we want to address our special needs here, I think we need to consider them apart from the general marketplace mayhem in which they operate.
* Autistics are different from typicals and from one another.
There is no one model autistic. We share in common a way of viewing the world around us (and particularly its people) that is different from the typical. We may tend to think more rationally and logically than typicals, who often rely on instinct, emotion, and superstition to solve problems. We may be more honest, saying what we mean, meaning what we say, and doing what we promise. We may be more able to focus our attention tightly on something -- and we may be more easily upset by small distractions. There is quite a range of autistic attitudes.
For those of us at the so-called low-functioning end of the spectrum, a hobby may be just as suitable as employment. (I disagree with the label but I don't know a better one.) Those of us nearer the middle of the spectrum are more concerned with social status and social functioning, although not to the extent of typicals. We are not entirely comfortable doing nonproductive hobby "work" -- we are hungry to participate and contribute. We just have significant limits to our ability or desire to conform to social expectations -- especially those that don't seem to have direct bearing on the task at hand.
On top of this, we autistics suffer from the same true illnesses and disabilities, mental and physical, common to all humans, including typicals. We too can be unintelligent, psychotic, blind, or wheelchair-bound. And we may need the same accommodations and treatments available to similarly disabled typicals. Again, this is beyond the scope of this forum. While we should be supportive of our autistic brothers and sisters, regardless of their disabilities, we should not confuse those disabilities with autism itself. Autism is not a disease.
* Autistics are especially poor at finding work because that requires salesmanship.
Like all general statements, this is fuzzy and imprecise. I don't doubt that some of us will want to argue with me about it. I'll beg you in advance to concede that the general does not imply the specific. You may well be ripping your way up the career ladder. But one theme common to comments and complaints I hear from fellow autistics is just this: difficulty, sometimes extreme difficulty, finding work. Another is lack of sales skills.
It doesn't seem to matter whether a job is sought or a business is run. Work must be found and we don't seem to be good at it. I'll hold up my hand here and now. I've been largely self-employed but I've also taken many jobs in my life. I haven't been successful either way. I believe I've learned many ways to ask for and get accommodations -- and make accommodations of my own, meeting the typicals halfway -- that may help me to keep a job once I get one; this was not always true. But the same shortcomings that have made it hard for me to sell my business, customer by customer, make it hard for me to sell my labor as a package to an employer.
I hear similar stories from other autistics and it seems to me that there's an obvious reason. Salesmanship is intensely social; it requires that the seller get into the buyer's head. Typicals often buy -- or hire -- based on emotion, superstition, and bigotry. Successful salesman often exploit these weaknesses. I'd like to think that most autistics, even if we can do these things, just won't.
We are workers -- often superlative workers. We are, by and large, not salesmen.
* * *
I write in response to the many cries for help I hear from fellow autistics -- maybe more than anything, I respond to my own difficulties in finding work. Work is terribly important to me, for itself. Maybe it is important to you, too. I cannot be comfortable at a barbecue with people I don't know; the activity seems aimless, the talk empty. I have no interest in establishing my social status in such a group. But I can take pride and satisfaction as part of a working team -- and I do enjoy it very much when I can get it.
On top of this, of course, is money. Money alone is not enough to make me happy; I need to work. But money is very useful -- and the lack of it is quite limiting. As I wrote earlier, nobody ever should lack for basic needs -- but in practice, they're not always easy to get. The simplest way to get a decent income sufficient to buy necessities and luxuries is work -- employment or self-employment.
Thinking of autism as a different *ability* is liberating. We may be poor salesmen but some of us are fantastic technicians. Below the "savant" level there are many autistics (such as myself, cough cough) who have exceptional abilities, even if we don't make the teevee news. Typicals are *unable* to do what we do. They must work very hard, often in teams, to accomplish what a single autistic does easily.
Truly, we do the difficult immediately -- and the impossible just takes a little longer. It's not a boast.
Still, any reader who's got this far isn't a salesman -- any autistic salesman is busy writing his rebuttal and thinks I'm a fool.
I don't quite know how to proceed from here -- I'm terribly sorry if you read this post and made your way down here looking for THE ANSWER. I haven't got it. But I feel I have put some of the pieces of the work puzzle in some sort of order.
We need to partner with those who complement us. Salesmen do, after all, need something to sell. We need to be sold. Those of us who seek self-employment need to take on partners who are very different from us -- and find a way to work *with* them. Those of us who want a job-type job need to find recruiters and headhunters who appreciate our strengths.
The bootstrap problem comes in here -- how do you get started getting started? Salesmen are themselves notoriously hard sells. If they're good, they're constantly offered products (or resumes) to sell. They learn quickly to disregard unpromising prospects -- or perhaps, for them, it's instinctive. On the good side, though, salesmen must and do buy -- or they have nothing to sell. And they usually know a good thing -- *if* they see it.
I will leave you with two sketches for possible action.
1) When asking for help -- free help, basically -- perhaps we should not be asking for help finding a job or getting a business started. That kind of help may be available but it is in the nature of today's fish. What do we eat tomorrow?
Perhaps we'd be better to ask for help finding a smart recruiter or business partner, one willing to work with an autistic. Actually flogging a resume or getting a business running is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. But it may take much less effort to match up autistics with typicals and let us make our own way from there, or with help from conventional channels.
I say, "smart" typicals because only the smart ones know their limitations and can see past our surface differences to our great strengths. Individually, we're just wasting time trying to convince less-smart typicals to accept us for what we are. Overcoming mainstream prejudice is a long term goal and needs to be a group effort. In the short term, any one of us will do well to find just one or two partners (in business or job search) who do not need to be reprogrammed.
If we look past cynicism and dare to form the expectation that some typicals with complementary skill sets may be open to such a partnership, it may be easier for us to ask for help finding such people.
2) I believe we need to practice a great revolution in our own thinking and talk about ourselves. Yes, I think it is important to overturn mainstream stereotypes. But that is not the effort of which I speak here, now. I speak for myself when I say that the image of the drooling, useless autistic has leaked into my own head. Even before I was able to identify as autistic, I constantly viewed myself as diseased, disabled, disordered, incompetent.
This is not without precedent -- and I think we can learn much from those who came before us. Ethnic and religious minorities, women, and gays have all gone down the same road. They all have spoken and written about self-hatred borrowed from the mainstream stereotype. And in each case, fighting that stereotype "out there" in the public mind began with internal, individual battles: the destruction of the internalized, broken self-image.
Each of us -- especially those middie autistics who are most able to articulate -- need to identify as people with *gifts* as well as needs. We have much to offer. We need to know that. We need to say it. We need to learn to sell it -- as alien as that skill may be -- at least to better salesmen and future partners.
* People compete for work.
This is so obvious that it's easy to overlook. We're all in competition; so long as the more-or-less-free market holds, there will be winners and losers. To guarantee everyone work would require a complete tear-down of the world economic system.
Most jobs are already makework -- fake jobs: the vast majority of government jobs certainly. Many jobs don't really need to be done. They're routine and boring; to my way of thinking, they're not *work* at all, only substitutes. Some of us accept this makework, some don't.
* Work is not an entitlement.
Food, clothing, shelter, education -- I might make a long list of basic human needs, all of which I believe every single human is entitled to enjoy. There *is* enough to go around.
But work does not make this list. Perhaps it should but I can't see a way to fit it in there. When I say "work", I mean something that you do that's of value to somebody else -- not only of value but of more value than similar offerings from other people. You can't demand this work. You can demand makework -- and possibly get it. You can demand basic human needs -- and possibly get them. You may even demand enough spare cash to invest in a hobby and spend your time, say, painting in oils. Some would call this "work" even if they never sold a canvas and they'd be happy as a clam. I wouldn't object. If you can't find work, you should be permitted to occupy your mind and your hands, even if there's no obvious use for what you do. I call that a hobby.
Enforced idleness is evil. But I draw a distinction between hobby time and work time. I don't see that anyone is entitled to work. There is only so much of it to go round -- far too little for the 6 billion that we share with. As a society, we really should face this fact squarely, provide basic needs to all, and permit the majority of us to "work" at our chosen hobbies -- discarding this fiction that everyone should be working full time between the ages of 18 and 65.
If your only reason for wanting work is because you need money for basic needs, I'd like you to ignore the rest of my post. It just doesn't apply in this case. I will back you in your demands for these needs. I share them -- and I share the shortage of cash, believe me.
I could not have enough money not to want to work. I might settle reluctantly for a hobby or three but I will always want to be a part of the working world, to see my time, energy, and creativity rewarded with cash and respect, to know that my efforts are valued. But I don't think I have a right to this limited resource.
* Autistics are people.
On the one hand, we need to struggle to establish our status as people -- people on a level with anyone else, including typical people. On the other hand, I say we should not overreach and demand to be put ahead in line for anything. Demanding special treatment is a road to an uncertain destination. (Think of the backlash over "affirmative action".)
Some of us do have special needs -- and to the extent that reasonable accommodation can be provided, we should demand that. We aren't alone. Many people -- maybe most -- have special needs of one kind or another at some time in their lives. There is nothing wrong with asking for reasonable accommodation; if the denial is unreasonable, nothing wrong (in principle) with fighting for it. (But remember to choose your battles.)
Also, I'm not talking about blatant bigotry. If you stutter and twitch at the bank and the teller sneers at you and calls you an idiot, you are in the right to make a stink about it. (I might go so far as to say you have a moral obligation to cut short that kind of comment but again, choose your battles.)
I do say it's possible to go too far. For example, cars are expensive to operate and public transit may very well suck in your city. That applies to everyone. Before you sue the transit agency, demanding door-to-door car service, I'd like you to ask if you are sure that you're suffering much more than everyone else -- who equally can't afford auto insurance and maintenance, can't or won't drive, live a long way from the bus stop, and hate the looks, smells, and sounds of the trashy bus.
Life is painful for most people; there are many challenges to overcome. It's a Utopian fantasy to hope that all challenges will be removed for autistics. I think we need to keep a clear focus on removing *unnecessary and bigoted* challenges. Let's not demand extra advantages.
* Autistics compete for work.
This follows from the last two points. We compete with each other and with the typicals. It's a brutal game for all of us and -- if you agree with my reasoning so far -- we don't have any special right to a better outcome. We only have an equal right to equal opportunity. Nobody can guarantee that equal opportunity will lead to equal outcome -- indeed, I can guarantee it *won't*, any more than people with equal bankrolls will equally come away winners from the poker table. Nobody has to cheat for somebody to go home broke.
* The competition is tough.
There are many reasons for this. Industrial automation is one; all sorts of semi-skilled jobs are just gone. It's a fiction that every tailor can be retrained to make sewing machines; or that every person on the sewing-machine assembly line can be retrained to program the automated sewing-machine factory robots. The whole point of automation is to increase productivity. That means fewer people making more goods. At some point, everyone who wants one has got a sewing machine -- and only one person is employed at the factory, to turn it on in the morning.
The world economy is badly broken. War and politics play a part; so does the immature state of the science of macroeconomics. Nobody really *knows* how to adjust the money supply or stabilize production and distribution. People with good jobs are thrown out of work and then they, too, are competing for what's available.
The job market is very badly broken. This is a truism among professionals in the field -- people whose job it is to get other people jobs: job jocks. Jobhunters can't find positions suitable for their skills; employers can't find workers with the skills they need. Companies are regularly stuck with "workers" who somehow got in -- and just don't work. In some cases, it may take years to get rid of a worthless employee. The entire paradigm of employment serves everyone in it poorly.
Self-employment is an attractive alternative -- but many of the same rules apply as in the regular job market. There are usually many competitors, so it's difficult for the independent worker to get the work itself. The people who need the work done have a hard time sorting through offerings to find good contractors. Those who invest heavily in business often lose their bankrolls.
All this applies to all people, typical and autistic alike. We can certainly look for ways to improve the process for everyone -- but that may be beyond the scope of this forum. To the extent that we want to address our special needs here, I think we need to consider them apart from the general marketplace mayhem in which they operate.
* Autistics are different from typicals and from one another.
There is no one model autistic. We share in common a way of viewing the world around us (and particularly its people) that is different from the typical. We may tend to think more rationally and logically than typicals, who often rely on instinct, emotion, and superstition to solve problems. We may be more honest, saying what we mean, meaning what we say, and doing what we promise. We may be more able to focus our attention tightly on something -- and we may be more easily upset by small distractions. There is quite a range of autistic attitudes.
For those of us at the so-called low-functioning end of the spectrum, a hobby may be just as suitable as employment. (I disagree with the label but I don't know a better one.) Those of us nearer the middle of the spectrum are more concerned with social status and social functioning, although not to the extent of typicals. We are not entirely comfortable doing nonproductive hobby "work" -- we are hungry to participate and contribute. We just have significant limits to our ability or desire to conform to social expectations -- especially those that don't seem to have direct bearing on the task at hand.
On top of this, we autistics suffer from the same true illnesses and disabilities, mental and physical, common to all humans, including typicals. We too can be unintelligent, psychotic, blind, or wheelchair-bound. And we may need the same accommodations and treatments available to similarly disabled typicals. Again, this is beyond the scope of this forum. While we should be supportive of our autistic brothers and sisters, regardless of their disabilities, we should not confuse those disabilities with autism itself. Autism is not a disease.
* Autistics are especially poor at finding work because that requires salesmanship.
Like all general statements, this is fuzzy and imprecise. I don't doubt that some of us will want to argue with me about it. I'll beg you in advance to concede that the general does not imply the specific. You may well be ripping your way up the career ladder. But one theme common to comments and complaints I hear from fellow autistics is just this: difficulty, sometimes extreme difficulty, finding work. Another is lack of sales skills.
It doesn't seem to matter whether a job is sought or a business is run. Work must be found and we don't seem to be good at it. I'll hold up my hand here and now. I've been largely self-employed but I've also taken many jobs in my life. I haven't been successful either way. I believe I've learned many ways to ask for and get accommodations -- and make accommodations of my own, meeting the typicals halfway -- that may help me to keep a job once I get one; this was not always true. But the same shortcomings that have made it hard for me to sell my business, customer by customer, make it hard for me to sell my labor as a package to an employer.
I hear similar stories from other autistics and it seems to me that there's an obvious reason. Salesmanship is intensely social; it requires that the seller get into the buyer's head. Typicals often buy -- or hire -- based on emotion, superstition, and bigotry. Successful salesman often exploit these weaknesses. I'd like to think that most autistics, even if we can do these things, just won't.
We are workers -- often superlative workers. We are, by and large, not salesmen.
* * *
I write in response to the many cries for help I hear from fellow autistics -- maybe more than anything, I respond to my own difficulties in finding work. Work is terribly important to me, for itself. Maybe it is important to you, too. I cannot be comfortable at a barbecue with people I don't know; the activity seems aimless, the talk empty. I have no interest in establishing my social status in such a group. But I can take pride and satisfaction as part of a working team -- and I do enjoy it very much when I can get it.
On top of this, of course, is money. Money alone is not enough to make me happy; I need to work. But money is very useful -- and the lack of it is quite limiting. As I wrote earlier, nobody ever should lack for basic needs -- but in practice, they're not always easy to get. The simplest way to get a decent income sufficient to buy necessities and luxuries is work -- employment or self-employment.
Thinking of autism as a different *ability* is liberating. We may be poor salesmen but some of us are fantastic technicians. Below the "savant" level there are many autistics (such as myself, cough cough) who have exceptional abilities, even if we don't make the teevee news. Typicals are *unable* to do what we do. They must work very hard, often in teams, to accomplish what a single autistic does easily.
Truly, we do the difficult immediately -- and the impossible just takes a little longer. It's not a boast.
Still, any reader who's got this far isn't a salesman -- any autistic salesman is busy writing his rebuttal and thinks I'm a fool.
I don't quite know how to proceed from here -- I'm terribly sorry if you read this post and made your way down here looking for THE ANSWER. I haven't got it. But I feel I have put some of the pieces of the work puzzle in some sort of order.
We need to partner with those who complement us. Salesmen do, after all, need something to sell. We need to be sold. Those of us who seek self-employment need to take on partners who are very different from us -- and find a way to work *with* them. Those of us who want a job-type job need to find recruiters and headhunters who appreciate our strengths.
The bootstrap problem comes in here -- how do you get started getting started? Salesmen are themselves notoriously hard sells. If they're good, they're constantly offered products (or resumes) to sell. They learn quickly to disregard unpromising prospects -- or perhaps, for them, it's instinctive. On the good side, though, salesmen must and do buy -- or they have nothing to sell. And they usually know a good thing -- *if* they see it.
I will leave you with two sketches for possible action.
1) When asking for help -- free help, basically -- perhaps we should not be asking for help finding a job or getting a business started. That kind of help may be available but it is in the nature of today's fish. What do we eat tomorrow?
Perhaps we'd be better to ask for help finding a smart recruiter or business partner, one willing to work with an autistic. Actually flogging a resume or getting a business running is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. But it may take much less effort to match up autistics with typicals and let us make our own way from there, or with help from conventional channels.
I say, "smart" typicals because only the smart ones know their limitations and can see past our surface differences to our great strengths. Individually, we're just wasting time trying to convince less-smart typicals to accept us for what we are. Overcoming mainstream prejudice is a long term goal and needs to be a group effort. In the short term, any one of us will do well to find just one or two partners (in business or job search) who do not need to be reprogrammed.
If we look past cynicism and dare to form the expectation that some typicals with complementary skill sets may be open to such a partnership, it may be easier for us to ask for help finding such people.
2) I believe we need to practice a great revolution in our own thinking and talk about ourselves. Yes, I think it is important to overturn mainstream stereotypes. But that is not the effort of which I speak here, now. I speak for myself when I say that the image of the drooling, useless autistic has leaked into my own head. Even before I was able to identify as autistic, I constantly viewed myself as diseased, disabled, disordered, incompetent.
This is not without precedent -- and I think we can learn much from those who came before us. Ethnic and religious minorities, women, and gays have all gone down the same road. They all have spoken and written about self-hatred borrowed from the mainstream stereotype. And in each case, fighting that stereotype "out there" in the public mind began with internal, individual battles: the destruction of the internalized, broken self-image.
Each of us -- especially those middie autistics who are most able to articulate -- need to identify as people with *gifts* as well as needs. We have much to offer. We need to know that. We need to say it. We need to learn to sell it -- as alien as that skill may be -- at least to better salesmen and future partners.