this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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Autistic Devs

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Icebreaker Discussion - Dealing with ableism - What works and what doesn't? (self.autistic_devs)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by th3raid0r to c/autistic_devs
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Let's discuss able-ism in our industry.

For me, I mostly experience it whenever marketing has a "genius" idea that everyone should be little mini-marketers on social media. Essentially, they wanted us to make a lot more noise on social media and do cold outreach in our network. I was in no mood to exploit what little friends I have on social media. Not to mention the fact that I'm really no good at this stuff, and it's likely to backfire.

I put my foot down on that one - called the initiative ableist right in their "party" channel. And stated that if my participation was an issue, then I'd like to request non-participation as a reasonable accomodation for my autism.

Not sure that was good for my career though. Despite getting many DM's expressing thanks for standing up. I'm pretty sure higher ups will just think I'm "not a team player".

So did it work? Yes, but also there may be other consequences to my direct nature that I haven't seen yet.

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[–] RonSijm 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I used to behave like this, and it's not very helpful, and usually turns it into an argument. Just silently ignoring it works much better.

I put my foot down on that one - called the initiative ableist right in their “party” channel. And stated that if my participation was an issue, then I’d like to request non-participation as a reasonable accomodation for my autism.

In your example - marketing sends a message on slack to post something on LinkedIn. You can:

  • Just do it
  • Just not do it
  • Not do it and be (very) vocal about not be willing to do it

Picking the last option and complain is probably the worst thing you can do. You just open a can of worms, and - especially if you do it in a public channel - you put them in a position where have to be defensive or explain themselves.

Basically instead of taking what they say at face value "this is what you must do" - as a real concept - so "therefor you must defend yourself and try to get out of "doing what you must do"" by complaining against it - take a step back before even considering that is really something you must really do. It's not. So just don't do it... but don't throw it in their faces that you're not gonna do it. Haha

Like 99% of these things - if you just silently ignore them, they'll just go away without a fuss.

It's not your problem if you don't do it, so not even worth trying to argue over. It's their problem. And if they think it's a big problem enough they'll probably send some more reminders in public first - like "We see not a lot of people have posted on LinkedIn! Please do, it's very important." - still just ignore it. If at some point they start DMing you about it, that's about the right time to put your foot down and directly tell them you're not going to do it

[–] th3raid0r 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Fair, and I think I'd have gone that direction if it wasn't a slack channel where everyone was invited to, and then questioned if they decided to leave. It was also a very noisy channel where it was disrupting my work.

I didn't just throw this into some channel in which I wasn't invited or anything. I actually felt like I wasn't allowed to leave, which is why other NDs privately thanked me afterwards.

I can ignore the ignorable, but if you're going to hunt me down if I ignore it (like they were doing), then I needed to speak up in order for it to stop.

Typically I do just what you've described, just kinda ignore it.

[–] RonSijm 2 points 5 months ago

Fair-ish, but it's still just a public channel - even if you were invited into it.

Like you can right click a channel -> "Change Notifications" -> Nothing. Then @Channel or @Here or even @'th3raid0r' just stops working. And then mute the channel. Not more notifications from the channel. So that's not totally unignorable yet

You can leave a channel, but yea, that triggers a channel notification saying that you've left.

But yea, I don't know to which degree they were 'hunting you down'. At some point it's seems fine to put your foot down.

I put my foot down on that one - called the initiative ableist right in their “party” channel. And stated that if my participation was an issue, then I’d like to request non-participation as a reasonable accomodation for my autism.

I probably would have approached that a bit differently though - on one hand, less hostile, like of name calling them an "ableist" -
And on the other hand, even less compliant and requesting to not participate. I wouldn't really phrase it as a request. If you've been ignoring them so far, and they DM you, wait half an hour to respond and just somewhat politely decline and say "yea, I'm not gonna do that." - and then continue to ignore them some more. By requesting it and asking for accommodations you're already way too far into accepting it as your problem

As long as it's becoming loads of work for them to even get close to anything compliant, the more likely they'll just give up on it