Aspies For Freedom

I have been working since 1999 at DTI Associates, a Navy contractor of excellent repute since 1988, and later an Education-Labor contractor of excellent repute, and still later, since 2004, an acquisition of Haverstick Government Consulting of Carmel, IN (suburb Indianapolis), the technology coordinating group will eventually solicit our biographical statements.  When Haverstick bought us they bought a piece of me, too.

Starting in 1999, I was transitioned from a more general role as an analyst (Access database support for conference planning, the 2000 Export-Import Conference in Washington) to a specific role in the Applications Development Group by January 2001.  I already knew HTML, style sheets, and SQL, and had researched the W3C Web design guidelines that were adopted by the Section 508 Federal Web design standards.  The ColdFusion server programming language and Javascript were next, eventually followed by Active Server Page server programming in Visual BASIC plus some feet-wetting in ASP.Net, and finally some advanced SQL Server training.

Today, the vast majority of our Web design work supports the conference planning branch (registration for conferences and the like), but we have also supported Federal resource sites (http://www.onestoptoolkit.org, a Labor site for disability employment) and Education data submission (http://www.edcountability.net).  We also send mass emails from their Access databases of attendee data.

I will celebrate the eighth anniversary there on August 10.  

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(draft 1, employee biography)

Christopher Marsh was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Kensington, Rockville, and Waldorf, MD, and finally graduated high school in WV after his father's retirement.

He has some unique abilities and experiences, however.

Life seemed fairly conventional through undergraduate study at Shepherd College (today, University) until nearly the end of his graduate study at Marshall University in sociology with a research emphasis.  

Six weeks before graduation, Chris first heard the words Asperger syndrome from the campus Psychology Department, after his boss in the Research and Economic Development Center, a social work professor, recommended a psychological inventory.

It is a subcategory of autism, but without the gross severity and academic incapacitation, and indeed his fellow graduate student had to explain that Asperger only attacked the social learning process and non-verbal learning, obviously, in Chris' case, leaving academic ability quite intact.

Asperger, at least for Chris Marsh, would not even really be a bad thing for an employer.  He was successful in writing research briefs and grant proposals at Marshall, suggested variables for theories, questionnaires, and research designs, and even analyzed data with SPSS.  Wired magazine suggested that Asperger was generally bundled with excellent math, science, and computer skills, and Chris had all of these, plus abilities in history, social sciences, and foreign languages

Chris could never learn fine-tuned social customs without his conscious mind, and only started reading non-verbal signals with his fully conscious mind.  Sociology was an excellent major, not only for his research activities in WV domestic violence at the Center over the summer after graduation, but for a secondary strategy to approximate normal social interaction.

But as the summer ended, Chris never worked in applied research again.  Eventually, there would be interviews for jobs, even coming with some regularity, but to no successful outcome, as the traditional job interview process is designed by and for adults with no social interaction disabilities whatsoever.  

In the short term, Chris became one of the highest educated Food Stamp recipients ever seen in the Cabell County Department of Health and Human Resources.  After returning home, and after a short but successful battle with cancer, Chris also became one of the highest educated Medicaid recipients the Berkeley County DHHR office ever saw, too.

Before Chris had an unsuccessful attempt with Federal employment in 1998, he had also met with West Virginia's Division of Rehabilitation Services.  Before leaving the Census Bureau later that year, he had also met with Maryland's counterpart as well.

Maryland did more for its vocational rehabilitation recipients, especially on-campus studies at a Baltimore facility, which, coincidentally, was going to offer its first graduating class in computer programming, originally intended for twelve months.  Maryland had decided that computer programming was such a hot career field, rather than let a business simply hire an H2B visa candidate from abroad, businesses could be forced to accept successful graduates in the field, even if they had disabilities.  State funding and Catonsville community college faculty and courses would combine to provide full employment for a few Maryland adults with minimal disabilities.  

But it meant that the state would ask Chris to stand down his applied research career, at least for the time being, but perhaps forever.  No big deal, Chris had already learned computer programming as a teenager.  Mostly from his younger brother, who already had over eight years in the same field by then, without much more than a semester of college.

Chris and six men started studies in January 1999.  For two months Chris was possibly the best educated candidate in the Community Living Skills Training program, and perhaps its only college student that semester.  After extricating himself from daily living skills he already used in Greenbelt, living alone, the previous year, Chris completed a total of 22 Community Colleges of Baltimore County credits by June, when the program leaders decided to end the training at six months.

After joining DTI six weeks after graduation, on his sixth post-Baltimore resume and first post-Baltimore interview, Chris first used his new skills with Word, Excel, and Access with supporting the conference planning branch, especially with the database needs of conference registration.  But he also wrote a formal research brief on the W3C Web design guidelines that the Federal government eventually codified into Section 508 accessible Web design requirements, studied style sheets and SQL without formal training, and also took a formal HTML to add to the HTML Chris taught himself, again with his brother's counsel, during his Census Bureau work.  

After formally joining the Information Technology Group, Chris studied Javascript and the ColdFusion server programming language.  Cold Fusion allows Web pages to come alive with HTML dynamically written by the Web server based on databases, IF statements, and loops, and also allowed e-mail, password security, uploads, and more.  Eventually, he would also learn Active Server Pages programming in Visual BASIC, ASP.Net, and advanced SQL Server, plus more opportunities to write intelligent Access databases and Excel spreadsheets using Visual BASIC modules.

These activities continued after Haverstick Government Consulting bought DTI Associates in January 2004.

Social research?  Who cares?  Computers pay more.  Can't do something you like?  Do something else you like as much that someone needs worse.  

The years-long struggle to work just like classmates in college or grad school?  No, it's not just the skills.  It's the motivation to use them.  

Perhaps we should feel sorry for the 35 other places Chris Marsh interviewed, instead.

I love my job.  Al Qaeda won't scare me out of town, close as I am to the Washington Monument.  (My co-workers saw the smoke from the Pentagon.  I rode the subway under the Pentagon maybe 25 minutes before impact.  We felt this massive shock wave.  My late boss, maybe been an Aspie, said relax, it was the Air Force scrambling fighters, and to hell with the sonic boom, it was war)

Guess Who that would have been scary, especially given the events that transpired soon afterwards.

I'm not sure I'm understanding about the work biography you've posted? Is it you, or something who you know? It's true that these days, experience and knowledge seems to count for very little unless the person can promote themselves to prospective employers.

After consistently being knocked back for jobs, all but the strongest people soon become depressed and demotivated. We need a complete rethink about how people are selected for jobs but it will only happen in areas where there are shortages of trained staff and the jobseekers have more power in determining where they will work.

Whilst it is an employer's market, they will continue to use unreasonable methods to employ staff and this will continue to marginalise people with poorer social skills and in minority groups.

1.  Did you mean to say that 9/11 was scary?  Yes, we are very close to the Pentagon.  My then-boss hustled us into the stairwell (concrete enclosed), asked that we not make any cell calls, but I quickly told Mom I was safe anyway.  Mom thought she was watching a movie.  25 years ago they had Special Bulletin, a fictitious account of a nuclear bomb plot in Charleston harbor, made to look like a news broadcast.  

2.  That is my biography, CJ.

3.  Yes, numerical competition is generally a very important consideration in theories that describe the employment or unemployment of people with disabilities.

I think 9/11 would have been scary but I suppose the shock wouldn't have really set in until after the event.

Does your job mean you have to wear a shirt and tie all the time? Your picture has a shirt and tie that look tight and uncomfortable and surely that could have implications for aspies with sensory issues if employers say you have to wear them.

Monday to Thursday, yes, men must wear shirts and ties and slacks.  Women have requirements but can wear slacks instead of skirts.

Friday, the rules are relaxed, can wear a golf shirt or Hawaiian shirt instead of shirt and tie.

Recently, those who donated $5 per week to American Heart Association could wear blue jeans on Friday.

I have grown used to starched and pressed slacks and shirts, but I understand the possible sensory problems others might have.

Is this a job where you have to deal much with the public? I don't see why they would have all these requirements otherwise. Do women have to wear stockings and high heels and make-up?

It depends on the division.

Conference Planning, our neighbors.  Front line soldiers.  We don't require high heels and stockings and I don't think make up is specified, but I know make up is helpful, maybe perfume is too, but you can wear slacks.   I even see a few of them taking causal Friday too far and wearing blue jeans.   Right now several folks are in Minneapolis supporting a Faith Based and Community Initiatives conference (http://www.dtiassociates.com/fbci/)

The Web sites.  We are the troops in the bunker you never see.  In fact we can do our jobs from anywhere on or above Earth, like those pilots who fly UAVs by remote control.  

Yes, the dress codes are intended for our publicly-involved staff, of which we have very many.  We have managers, conference planners, and people who work directly with customers (military weapons engineering, Web sites, space rockets, conference planning, PR).  We in the bunkers conform to the same requirements.

Today makes 8 years with these guys.  :-)

But what's wrong with blue jeans? As long as they are neat and clean, I see no problems. Also, jeans can come in other colours besides blue.