I’ve been in and out of so many different jobs. Usually I get to a point where I burn out and just can’t go in anymore. Best job I ever had was as a tour guide in a distillery telling people facts all day and working with what I now realise was a whole bunch of other neurodivergent people. Only left that because I wasn’t paid enough to live. Honestly could have stayed there forever otherwise. Such is life!
Currently in the middle of a career change after realising the whole 9-5 office job life isnt sustainable for me. I’m hoping to be able to work for myself soon and not be beholden to other people’s schedules!
What jobs have you tried out over the years? What has worked well for ye?
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Be an engineer they said, its all about problem solving they said, they lied. No one mentioned the documentation and reports, just let me tinker/build/fix/test things. Turns out should be a technician 😂but i do love it really.
@EmrysOfTheValley @neamhsplach
Do computer programming (software development) so you only need to talk to computers.
Haha, just kidding. 90% of it is communicating with humans. Either directly (tickets, reviews, meetings, …) or indirectly (comments in code, commit messages, …). 😕
I’ve held 3 jobs in my 42 years where I worked for someone else. I’ve been independent and on my own for 15 years and tho the money could be better. I wouldn’t change it for the world. I have ADHD, so it works for me.
I’m working my way towards being self employed too! I’m a little worried about managing my finances that way but hopefully it will be easier than being someone else’s employee which statistically has not worked out for me so far. I’ve quit 3 jobs for burnout/stress, almost quit a 4th only the pandemic came along and I was let go anyway. And a 5th I was fired from. So I’d be mad to try that all again!
Switched about 10 jobs working for someone else. Now just doing UberEATS and Doordash deliveries. Money is not great but the balance of work/money/free time is good enough.
Having lots of free time is key. For me, that free time affords me all the time I need for all those self care activities that suffer when I’m working full time, like showering and sleeping and keeping my living space somewhat tidy. I don’t know how people manage that when they’re working full time!!
Yes! Maybe neurotypicals just have more control of their attention, less intrusive thoughts distracting them, kinda more “stable” internal weather.
Oh to have stable internal weather!
I got a job in R&D and it’s great. I also work for a great company so there’s that. I lead the Neurodivergent Support Group for my company! I really got lucky as I realize so many of us have issues with employment.
Research and development right?
That’s cool that there’s a support group for that! What kind of support do you provide?
When I was leaving one of the many office jobs that didn’t work out I had a heart to heart with my boss about why I was leaving and that looking into getting diagnosed with something (I struggle so much with holding on to employment). She heavily implied that a lot of people in the organisation were what you could call neurodivergent. I wonder if there had been a group like that if it could have made a difference!
I am a software engineer. It gives me a good variety of work to keep myself interested, especially since I can work on different features and projects regularly. I have a lot of slow days, which can end up being painfully underestimating. Thankfully since I’m work from home most of the week, it gives me the opportunity to step away and clear my head/find something small to work on around the house.
I really love programming because i feel that I can understand it very well with my chaotic mind, even if corporate work is mind numbing at times
Variety is key!
For sure! I’m realizing that i’m in a bit of a rut currently because I haven’t had enough variety in my work, so I’m deciding to try and learn something new. That way I can also give myself a new project to work on
IT Swiss Army Knife. My current position is in Infrastructure but I dabble in SQL, Azure, AWS, Kubernetes, team management, MDM, etc. The infrastructure here is solid and requires little maintenance so I’m sometimes glad to have other areas to work in. I’m looking for a move soon to something less all over the place and focus on more on Azure as a whole. Something remote would be nice vs. coming to an office on the daily to work in nothing but cloud services.
Something remote would be nice vs. coming to an office on the daily to work in nothing but cloud services.
Hard agree! So many admin roles have no place in an office.
90 percent of my day currently is working in Azure portal and PowerShell. I commute 20 miles to the office to do this. Upper management says we need to be on site because we are team oriented. And teams need to be present to work well together. The other 10 percent of my day is complaining with my team.
Generally: Programmer - Currently making video games but have also worked with a vast array of platforms and things. Corporate apps, mobile, AR, Weird art things with Raspberry Pi’s…
For me being able to fall into a hole to solve a problem is the best feeling ever, problem is then everything goes by the wayside and I forget to stop and eat or sleep 😅.
Of course the downsides is attempting to do anything I can’t latch my brain onto. I know now that I am not built for a corporate environment…
Just saw this post. Weird art things with a raspberry pi sounds very interesting. What kind of stuff did you make?
I have an undergraduate degree in computer science but currently work in marketing. I hate it most days, because it doesn’t align with my values. I hate that my job consists of increasing profits for bullshit companies, and I have no say in which clients we take on.
My day to day consists of getting tasks, feeling overwhelmed and do anything but work. I browse reddit(rip), get coffee, use the toilet, pretend I’m busy most of the day. Then I get a rush of productivity and do what I actually have to do reasonably quickly. It’s either random or I get pressured by deadlines.
Every day is a countdown until I can get home, and then realise I have to do it again tomorrow.
I’m a lawyer with a background in business! There are a lot of lawyers with interesting wetware since the initial filters on the profession are almost entirely test-based and the tests don’t target things like emotional maturity, empathy, or interpersonal interactions.
I have a lot of lawyers in my social circle and this is definitely the case! I wonder if the “strong sense of justice” trait also attracts a lot of neurodivergent people to the industry initially.
I’m sure it differs from person to person, but a significant portion (possibly a majority) of the people at my law school seemed to be there because they didn’t have any other ideas about what to do with their undergraduate degree. Easy access to ruinous student loan debt can seriously warp a person’s decisionmaking process.
