I have had so many communication issues, and being that I spent most of my life as an entrepreneur, this whole "don't speak to the boss like an equal" is just another in the long line of social faux pas that I make because I don't understand the unspoken language of the allistic world. And this cost me my job. This is apparently EXTREMELY COMMON for autistic and neurodivergent people.
The video I'm referring to that I watched: https://www.tiktok.com/@csmijango/video/7037149653892222255
And here's the video where I talk more about the "hierarchy thing": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2zW3S5M3ro
If you like this video please like and subscribe, thank you for your support!!
#autism #adhd #audhd #neurospicy #neurodivergent #socialanxiety
this was originally supposed to be only two paragraphs, but it uh… expanded. but i feel like screaming into the void, so here goes.
wow. great timing. i was recently constructively terminated after over a decade in a ‘flat hierarchy’ company under very similar circumstances.
thanks to financialisation and an upcoming IPO: they started aggressively bullshitifying our day-to-day to fit investor expectations; 1:1 copy-pasting procedures and org charts from places like Amazon and Google without interrogating why they work like that. more than 2/3 of our job was now time estimation and timekeeping, and all of the engineering and maintenance work i was previously doing was outsourced, and instead i was being very obviously tricked into doing feature work on things literally no customer wanted, but which we needed to have because ‘all the big players are doing it’. (this eventually included third-party ‘“AI”’ — to replace already existing solutions to already solved problems, just so we could say we were doing it as if customers can somehow verify that or fucking care — my ethical reservations to which were a contributing factor to my demise.) for the first time ever, my performance reviews were poor because i was out of my element and completely disinterested and disengaged.
this after they internally promoted a coworker to be our ‘lead’, while maintaining the ‘flat hierarchy’ claim (under the usual ‘we’re a family’ toxic rhetoric, but also ‘we don’t do hierarchies in this country’).
a coworker who consistently gave me glowing performance reviews, but then reported to the C-suite that i was a ‘culture issue’ and that i lacked clear communication — coming from a person who never checked Slack or email and who regularly misread messages or shut down conversations around process to protect their ego, to a person who had sent over 70% of Slack messages in our team channel and who wrote almost all of the documentation and was treated like the office mom/secretary. (i had male coworkers regularly pressure me into writing their emails for them…)
a coworker who went on to sabotage all of our existing procedures which i had primarily designed and implemented because it didn’t align with the vibes-based, top-down advice in the one-week managment seminars they were being sent on. granted, they didn’t need much help with that: getting anyone to improve anything at that company was like herding cats if you weren’t at least one step up on the org chart.
after years of burnout and postcovid malaise, months of medication shortages and being pestered about sixteen different things at once and only two of those things really being even remotely actionable, and once again being told i don’t communicate enough: i went off. i demanded proof of my communication problems, and had receipts to knock down every example they had off the top of their head — some of which had been resolved years ago, but they conveniently forgot that, and i had to show them receipts also of when we already talked about those incidents. i responded on the spot with receipts of every time their own incompetence led to downtime or failed projects. in the end, they made it clear that it wasn’t my communication that was poor, it was how i communicated — unemotional, clear, to-the-point — and (A) how i didn’t clean their shoes, (B) how i didn’t participate in the office plaguerat games, (C) how i didn’t work overtime, and (D) how i didn’t respond to every single message or request for ‘a quick call’ immediately no matter the time of day and with a resounding and positive ‘yes, sure’. i was even told i don’t use enough emoji. i repeated what i was seeing back to them, and their response was to sigh deeply, say it’s ‘not personal’, deny my observations by saying it’s ‘just’ about my ‘communication problems’, and then end the meeting early. surprisingly, no consequences for at least another quarter.
i had two more meltdowns after they got more and more aggressive, saying i should more actively solicit feedback on my work; work that was my sole domain. they started micromanaging and impulsively videocalling me to demand status reports. then issues started to pile up because task requirements were being filled incorrectly (by my manager), leading to incorrect work, which i was then blamed for for ‘not asking’ — as if i should always automatically assume that every task i’m given is incorrect and needs more clarification than ‘is everything you wrote here accurate?’ and confirming the usual bottom-up troubleshooting steps were done, or that i should just know precognitively what will go wrong in troubleshooting/implementation and what questions to ask before starting a task.
finally, the RTO order came, with a bonus PIP and a change of roles to put me physically next to my manager. because i love being hypersurveilled while trying to work. they refused my accommodations, telling me that i had ‘lied’ to them about my work, and that it was a ‘privilege’ that they would now revoke that i was allowed to work remote or skip unactionable, unnecessary meetings or have uninterrupted times of the day to focus. i also wouldn’t be allowed headphones or music, and i would have to log what i did every day down to 5 minute intervals with doctor’s notes for appointments, and my login, lunch, logout and appointment times would need to be preapproved (meaning: no more flex time to take care of myself, or my sick family member, who would now be left alone without care). my (now former) union said this is an ‘internal dispute’ and wouldn’t help me. this was illegal on several levels, but i already pay an extremely high ADHD tax and i was too tired and overwhelmed to deal with any of this, so i dropped the receipts of my manager’s fuckups to HR (which made the company more upset with me), along with my resignation.
i’m now effectively blacklisted in my industry in my area, because my current country operates almost entirely off nepotism hires, and word gets around. i want to switch careers, but to get work placement support, they want me to commit to going back, and i’ve told, kindly and not so kindly, ‘no’.
the thought of interviewing (again) makes me feel physically sick, and every fibre of my being fucking hates the lying and manipulative games you have to play to get a job. getting ghosted by 200+ companies only for the one responsive employer to ghost-reject you really sets off an emotional spiral. i hate having to upsell myself. i hate that i can’t answer ‘why do you want this job’ with ‘because i like to eat’.
i’m trying to get trauma and ADHD treatment, but i used one too many big words so the psychologist told me i’m ‘smart enough’ to ‘just handle it’. this set off another meltdown that put me out of commission for over a week, particularly because it reminded me of something my parents and teachers used to say to me all the time: ‘you’re so god damn smart, so why do you have to be so fucking stupid?’
something something i want to break an ablebodied neurotypical’s kneecaps and destroy capitalism. i don’t know how to end this comment.
After reading your story and feeling my blood boil, same.
You
Me
People loving that we’d fix things procedurally and documented things and then completely ignored all of our work. (In my case actively hiding my FUCKING MANUALS from everybody.)
Many years ago I found myself in a similar situation with a different outcome.
No IPO or corporatization of the company (it was a non-profit), but a colleague who got their start working in a particularly soulless branch of advertising was promoted to management - specifically, my manager. They set about eliminating every position in my department and replacing them with contractors. Well before they had set their eyes on me, I knew the game was afoot, and was desperately trying to get out of the company, but at the time, the job market was absolutely terrible. They began by cutting the meager standard raise the company gave every year, criticizing my work and work practices, and putting me on a performance improvement plan. So I meticulously complied and documented all of their demands and the steps I’d taken to resolve those demands.
At the conclusion of the PIP, my manager scheduled a meeting that included her boss - the COO of our organization, and they started the meeting by both flipping open identical folders, reading out what the PIP had stated, and saying that they felt I had not made satisfactory progress, and then attempting to move to the next set of papers in their folders. I (politely) interrupted by opening my own folder with several printouts. I could see the COO visibly disengage and go a little cloudy-eyed. They were not really paying attention. They were simply waiting for the conclusion of the meeting, so they could fire me.
The printouts I provided to them were fairly comprehensive, including information that detailed every daily ‘huddle’, every weekly ‘touch base’, every spontaneous meeting, and every catchup chat conversation with dates, times, and summaries of the meeting, as well as a count (but not comprehensive) breakdown of every email my boss had been CC’d on (which was every email I’d sent from my work account during that time period). I briefly ran through the information, and said something to the effect of “The effort of keeping you informed of my work projects currently consumes about 20% of my work time, as you can see. I don’t know how to better inform you of my work processes, but I’ve fulfilled everything on the PIP, and if you feel there’s more I can do, I’d be happy to oblige.”
The COO was still disengaged, with a practiced expression of boredom. I continued, explaining that in the time that my manager had taken over her role, I’d noticed a definite behavior and attitude shift from her. I said that I felt she had gone from being a friendly colleague to someone that treated me with hostility. The COO blinked hard, and actually looked at me while I pretended not to notice. I continued, saying I felt that my boss had made an effort to make the workplace less welcoming to me (noting several examples where she’d enforced personal policies that were not backed by or were contrary to company policy). The COO shut their folder. I asked how we can move forward. My boss was about to speak, and the COO jumped in, saying that this was all good, they were going to terminate the PIP immediately, and to keep up the good work. I never got to see what else was in their binders, but my boss looked upset. They later had to attend managerial training.
I left a few months later to a great job that is still mostly enjoyable nearly a decade later.
I guess my point is - if you find yourself in a similar situation, document it all and don’t be afraid to insinuate you’re going to sue the shit out of them for creating a hostile workplace while you line up other plans.
Oh, and there’s no shame in telling your therapist that self awareness does not equal the ability to solve or develop coping strategies. Often, being able to identify and fluently discuss how you feel about something does not come with an ability to identify how you can overcome/avoid that problem or successfully manage your feelings about it.
edited for my own self, need to come back and smack this against my forehead occasionally
Thank you for putting this so succinctly.
If you are not from the United States, I suspect the majority of an employed population being hired by nepotism is a common theme in most Western/capitalist countries.
I have the same issue here. I have been a contractor for two years working as an IT person that has to support developers, engineers, architects, etc. that use ChatGPT to do their work without any modification, meanwhile I have more experience with scripting, programming, git, etc. than most of the company. We keep losing more IT people and rarely recover our numbers. Our manpower is less than half of the required capacity necessary to maintain the infrastructure of the company. After a few years since the last person was hired, we are getting another higher level manager, because we obviously needed another person to listen to meetings and not more IT members on the floor to meet the company’s ridiculous demands.
There’s multiple recent contractors that have taken a major pay cut to work here, and they absolutely hate it here because of how moronic most of the company is. The company is the epitome of Idiocracy. I have to teach people basic life activities, meanwhile higher level IT teams are just circlejerk silos that have worse computer literacy than some of our normal users.
If I search for positions online, there are mostly IT manager positions. I can see 100s of people across the state trying to get an IT job.
Most of the full-time people that work at my job have no outside experience, and most people only attain positions at the company either by selling their soul working many years as a contractor (if they are lucky) or through nepotism.
I feel so much dread and hopelessness. I have to pull off herculean tasks because I have only managed to acquire work in positions where I am expected to work 3 jobs with less than a skeleton crew for support.