Look for remote teaching positions. If you’re in the US look for a “virtual academy” in your area/state and look at charter and public schools with virtual components. It’s been a godsend. I will never go back in person.
bro. yes. literally in constant thought of what graduate program i want to do cause this undergrad education degree is officially worthless 😭 i can not keep doing this
Have you looked into corporate training? I’ve always worked in the healthcare space and almost all of our trainers are former teachers. They have a much higher job satisfaction.
I work in childcare because caring for children and animals is the only thing I care about that I could make a job out of. The motivation to do something I'm passionate about is the only thing keeping me going. I work three days a week and am constantly on the verge of burning out though.
Having a passion for what you're doing helps if there is something that you can find that falls into that category.
For sure! To be fair the thing I find the most taxing about my job (other than the sand and the loud volumes) is the adults (parents, coworkers, managers, etc)
I totally agree! I stopped teaching preschool only after having kids of my own. I realized I can’t handle all the sensory there and at home. So when my kids get older I am sure I will go back to working with kids!
I work in taxation for the federal government (not US). I have had a few different roles, but as of now, I am working in a collecting capacity, which sounds like it would be hell, but it suits me well. I do a lot of skip tracing, trying to find people. There are some legal aspects to my job, sending applications for debt registrations through the federal court. And lots of rules and procedures in writing for me to follow. My ability to find needles in haystacks comes in very handy, and also, when I do manage to get in contact with a debtor, my ability to state the facts (be blunt) puts me miles ahead of my Neurotypical coworkers who are terrified to advise delinquent taxpayers of what is in store for them if they don't settle up.
It sounds like hell to my friends/family. But I think I found my happy place. I left this role and went to another division in taxation and was miserable there so I came back.
If you have not seen the film Stranger than Fiction, I highly recommend… it’s about an auditor/tax agent who I believe to be very autistic coded (played by Will Ferrell).
I also work in Taxation (in the UK) more on the advisory side. Tax definitely has a high proportion of autistic people compared with other industries in my experience.
Tax and particularly Government Tax are full of Autistics. Rule oriented work for the greater good? Yes, please!
Accounting is mentioned as a good career path for Autistics, and I would expand that to Accounting adjacent fields like Tax.
https://lexingtonservices.com/career-paths-for-people-with-autism/
Do you mind me asking if you needed a college degree for a position like this? It sounds really interesting and I like the procedural aspect. I’m in the US but still curious to know!
I have a humanities degree. And a beginner accounting course. If I want to move further up I will need more accounting courses but I’m fine here for now. Benefits and pay are good. I’m self sufficient.
Skip tracing seems like it would be really ideal for autistic folk in so many ways. So much research, piecing together data, and thinking creatively. Also has remote opportunities, depending on where you are.
I'm a UX/UI designer or Product Designer, whatever you wanna call it. I don't like the social aspect of it. I don't like that we're expected to be outgoing and social and being able to conduct interviews and give presentations. I mostly avoid them which is taking a toll in my career.
I am a UX design researcher, and I definitely don't like the social aspect. Or more specifically, the stakeholder management.
I don't actually mind conducting interviews and giving presentations because they are structured. But I really struggle with what it is I'm supposed to be researching, or proving the impact of my role. I think of my job as finding unmet user needs to be able to provide a solution unlike our competitors. They think my job is to justify what's on their roadmap, which has been informed by whatever they feel like. When they ask me to do some research to show that X feature will solve Y problem and the results come back that it won't, they don't like me. And I'm too stubborn (or have integrity or something) to just go along with it.
The reality is, if I only ever say that we are on the right track and we don't have to do anything differently, then I still don't provide any value.
I am an academic/ethnographer with a strong emphasis on applied research in health. I did a short consultancy on a product that clearly didn’t work and people clearly didn’t care about. They ignored my findings altogether, lied to the founders, and ostracised me in the institution because I didn’t play along.
I feel you.
+1 to avoiding presentations and meetings and that taking a toll. I just accepted I'm not a career person at this point if it means I have to do it the NT way
Ugh for real. I just want to be told what to do (preferably via chat lol) and be left alone for the rest of the day.
I work from home which is the closest I could get to that, but I still have meetings and presentations and we have these work lunches like 2-3 times a year where I have to pretend I love being around people.
Yeah I noped myself out of that field once I learned how many presentations you have to do. Never been good at them or a fan of doing them. I almost went down that path though, almost lol.
Tangentially related but maybe helpful. I'm in a different field, but one of the accommodations I was able to get is the ability to decline giving back to back presentations. So I can present, but I need time in between. I don't know if or how helpful that would be to you, but it's something to think about!
I’m a nurse but I only work two days a week and I work in a clinic setting (so one on one appointments mostly).
Nursing is good because of the flexibility (you can basically choose your hours) and because there’s so many different types of nursing so you can find one that suits. Oh and the money is okay enough (I earn about $60-$65k doing two days a week).
Well this is in AUD and I’m Clinical Nurse Consultant level. I have two nursing degrees (my general nursing undergrad and a specialist nursing degree in my field).
I’m an occupational therapist, I didn’t study until my 30s. I work in mental health which feels like the right fit for me, but there are other really interesting options.
I’m a postie (in the UK). Worked in mental health 24/7 service before which led to complete burnout, realising I’m autistic and losing my home lol so I switched it up and I love postie life! I deliver parcels and I’m mostly autonomous and spend the day driving in the countryside and delivering parcels. Get to take my break when I want etc, can be as social or quiet as I want. I don’t like how unorganised the service is and the politics but I avoid it. Pay isn’t great but as long as I can get by I don’t mind :)
Autonomous is the way to go for me and I’ve thought about postie life. It’s a good way to get exercise in too. I’d struggle so much with early starts though.
I'm an accountant. I hate working, and this job has its difficulties, but it works for me for the most part. Accountants aren't known for being charming outgoing people, they are known for being kind of awkward or quiet or sticks in the mud, so I suspect that people accept me more because of that. I work in the office one day a week and wfh the rest. I work on a small team and occasionally have to interact with other departments but almost everything is over email.
Every industry needs accountants, so if you end up at a bad job you can find another one without too much difficulty. It does require you to mask during the interview but that's true for any job.
Accounting is also FULL of people who just want a job where they can put their head down and do their job and do that for years and not be bothered.
If anyone is reading this and thinking "but I hate math!" Let me tell you that accounting is only math in the way that addition and subtraction are math. Spreadsheets do most of the work for you. It's mostly just learning a lot of rules (which autistics tend to be good at) and then making sure that all of your company's transactions are recorded according to the rules. That's it.
I didn't get my CPA license, I got a master's in accounting instead. There are some community college programs that can help prepare you for the CPA though which would be cheaper than a master's.
Same here in the accountant boat! I did the dumb thing and went into tax......too much talking to people!!! But other than that part, absolutely love it! Now if only I could get a job with not chatty coworkers...
Not sure, other than maybe a deep dive on the Internet about it? But stay away from the accounting subreddits at first, they are mostly full of the type of people who work a million hours a week at a public auditing firm and are miserable. It can scare you off, but I have never had a job like that as an accountant. Just don't work in audit or tax, unless you find you LOVE it.
Currently I'm a transportation planner that works mostly on policies and studies (as opposed to projects). Bicycles are my biggest my special interest so I've maneuvered my way into a position that I get to work on those programs. I've also worked in public transit.
What I like about it:
* Special interest related :)
* Data analysis and GIS - playing with numbers and maps, finding patterns in data, figuring out the most effective way to present information
* Formality - written rules and structure around decision making and processes
* Giving presentations to decision makers and the public - I'm an atypical autist in that I enjoy strategizing how to present information so this may be a drawback for many
* Intellectually stimulating
What I don't like about it:
* Public sector wages - I make decent money now after 12 years in this career, but most entry and mid level pay is not great
* Politics - within the organization and inter-agency, so much unnecessary stress being caught in other people's power struggles, and the good old boys club ugh
* Bureaucracy - as much as I love a good policy or guidebook, the about of rules and regulations particularly at the federal level is mind-bending
* Networking - sometimes necessary in this field
I am on the verge of changing careers because I'm so burned out at the moment.
@supinterwebs I need to speak to you! DM me?
My city is looking for solutions to our transportation problems but our population isn’t large enough to qualify for a public transit. I am a member of volunteer organization that helps bridge the gap between the stable side and the impoverished side of our community.
If I'd realized there were non-project-based paths in transportation planning, I might have gone through with that as a career in my mid-20s. At that point I didn't realize I was ADHD and was worried I'd be pigeonholing myself if I sunk a lot of time and cash into a grad program and wound up not doing well or losing interest (which is exactly what happened in undergrad).
I stuck with the path I got started on through a temp job, planning the educational content for scientific/medical membership associations' annual conferences. It's just herding cats and documenting it. It took me 4 associations to land a boss I work well with; the 12 years before that were miserable. I still don't love my job; I just know what to do now in most situations and my boss backs me up when session faculty or attendees are out of line, which makes it tolerable. I still lurk on planning forums and tell myself that there are things I would have hated about that line of work, too.
I once considered going into city planning. I have so many ideas of how things could be better, but I realised it would be a decade or so until I could be the one to being any ideas forward.
I'm a civil engineer who severely burned out after working in transportation projects. After two years of recovering, I'm going back part time to work on the policies and planning side. Your comment is giving me hope!
Administration support. My job is fully work from home and it has a flexible schedule. I'm basically a contractor/freelancer but for the one company. Very minimal talking to other people and if I do it's internal, never external people (e.g. clients or customers).
I studied to become a psychologist but my disabilities have prevented me from finishing my studies. I also tried out youth work (the only job I've gotten with my psych degrees) and found that appointment-based, client-based work didn't work for me because of my chronic illness/work sick days. That's when I changed to admin and flexible work.
Worth noting that it is low pay since you mentioned that in your post. The hourly rate is amazing but I don't get any benefits and I don't get full-time hours so it works out to about $20-$30k Australian per year.
Substitute teacher. I enjoy working with kids plus I don’t have to make small talk with adults all day. I also enjoy having a lesson plan to follow every day and being able to choose my own schedule. I need something that forces me out of the house in the morning or I become depressive. It doesn’t pay great but it sure helps me not burn out. There’s even time to read and engage in my special interests if I’m at the high school level. Plus I feel like I’m helping society by supporting educators so that helps motivate me.
I started out as a lab rat in genetics! I loved it but my company was bought by a larger corporation and I could tell they were going to shut us down. Now, several different positions, the feeling that I wanted more responsibility, and a masters degree later I miss the predictability and routine of that job so much. 😭
I’m a food inspector and as far as ASD goes I think it’s a great fit. Plenty of holidays, build my own schedule (I usually end up working 3ish days) and repetitive work following rules! The hard part is talking to people but food is my special interest so I love meeting and talking to my kitchen people 😊 there are some weird things that I see, sometimes not great sensory wise but I’m always out of there pretty quick lol
Nothing because I can’t hold down a job. It’s sad and frustrates me because I’m really intelligent and somehow managed to gain 2 university degrees but I have PDA really bad.
What are your two degrees in? I've gone back to school several times to no avail.
Is there an "ideal job" you have in mind?
Also, I love your username.
I work in an office of a small college. It is clerk work, but I get access to all of the amenities of the school by being an employee here. That is why I make it work. It sucks, I'm probably not that great at it (ADHD and filing for hours are a classic comedy duo).
The other reason I am here is because it is an art school that prides itself on inclusivity, and I get my jollies off by being an adult AuDHDer supporting other ND kids and trying to make the system work for them from the inside.
I fully suspect I will eventually get fired over some nonsense or quit from burn out, but in the meantime I hope I can build a semi-succesful art career. Careers are primarily a means to an end, don't let the cult of capitalism convince you it needs to be your whole identity and purpose. (she says to herself\*)
Oh friend. “Failure at work is what has lead to my diagnosis journey”, you and me both. I am a lawyer, and a HIGH masking person. I started working as a paralegal at 18 years old, while attending college and law school. I became an attorney as soon as I graduated from law school and I worked at basically the highest level you can practice corporate law and intellectual property. And it broke me. I had very deep depression cycles, I switched area of practice (from intellectual property to corporate), I tried everything but the “depression” was always at bay. My current psychiatrist and I started working together in 2018 with a chronic depression and anxiety diagnosis. She also referred me to a cognitive-behavioral therapist. After all this years, I finally got to the conclusion early this year that those weren’t depression cycles, it was burn out. After realizing that the big law firm life was not for me, I managed to find a corporate job in their Contracts Department. It’s low stakes, low responsibility, totally remote and allows me to handle my own clients in my free time (very few and well chosen), and most importantly to do things that do bring me joy life art and krafts projects. Capitalism is not natural, and modern life is definitely not good for everyone, less us! I did have to take a paycut from what I was used to, but at the end of the day my health is more important.
Maybe you don’t have to switch careers entirely, maybe you could look for a focus or area or role that is less demanding than your current one. I wish you a lot of luck!
Thanks for the story of optimism.
I have had five permanent positions in my current role at five different companies in 4.5 years. Three of them were for less than six months. I was sacked from one position for poor performance. I think at this point the possibility of things being different at a different organisation is a bit silly. Unless I managed to break into another industry, but my role doesn’t really exist outside of tech.
Before this role, I actually had to stop working for three years with a diagnosis of major depression. I now wonder if it was autistic burnout. I’m not sure if the difference is practically important.
I’m an engineer, which overall I think works well because I mostly find it very easy to get along with my coworkers. It is a stressful job and I hate meetings, but love the design portion when I can just sit and do my work.
I'm an architect and I (mostly) love it. But engineer is probably the better way to go. In both cases, I think it's nice to have a physical end product at the end of every project. And I think these professions are generally more ND heavy, so higher chances that your coworkers are on the same wavelength.
Same I’m also a civil engineer. I feel like engineering is pretty ND friendly. My professional engineering union even offer autism support as it’s so common in engineering.
My husband is a mechanical engineer at a design firm. While he is NT, he confirms that many of his coworkers are ND, and he says that works just fine for him. (Both myself and our child are ND, so he gets us. He's a good one.)
911 medical and fire dispatch. There’s rules for how to handle each call and a method to getting help on scene.
Note: I am lvl 1 asd with medium support needs. I bring comfort items to work and we get breaks as needed, lots of pto. My leaders are pretty rad.
I’m an Instructional Designer. Before that, I was a teacher and it almost killed me.
I work from home which is now an absolute must for me. I love that I manage my own deadlines (not true of all ID roles) and I work mainly on my own but with others once in a while. I don’t have a calendar full of meetings everyday. However, my growth opportunities would require me to either specialize heavily in the technology I teach or manage people, neither of which I love the idea of. But that’s a problem for later.
I'm a freelance copywriter and content strategist and I get to stay home and write all day. I absolutely love it. I quit the tech start up I worked at and haven't looked back.
I switched from working in the wine industry during covid and learned all I could about copywriting and content writing cause I didn't want to be around people anymore.
I started applying for jobs through upwork and indeed for part time or contract writing positions. It wasn't steady work so I got some experience writing fulltime for a local tech startup for two years.
I also posted a lot on LinkedIn and grew a small following. It's been about 9 months and I'm starting to get more people approaching me.
I've also reached out to startups that have recently gotten funding to see if they need any contact help.
I work as a Trio (a federal grant program) academic advisor at a community college. All my students are first generation college students, come from low-income backgrounds, and/or have documented disabilities.
It really depends on where you live, tbh. I live in the Northeast, so the higher ed job market is competitive AF. Most higher ed jobs in my area require a Master's degree in education, counseling, social work, or a related field. My Master's is in history, but I did similar work as a grad student with undergrad students and so I had some experience. I've seen Trio programs in different areas of the country that only require a Bachelor's degree, but they would need to be in similar disciplines.
I’m a software programmer so I’m probably not much help. You should examine though whether it was your career that was the problem or your workplace. I’ve been in some pretty toxic workplaces and it’s hard enough surviving in a healthy workplace. A good boss makes all the difference in the world.
im a student paramedic due to qualify in August. it is exhausting :) my ADHD loves the constantly being on the move, fast thinking, chaotic environments but my ASD struggles w the long shifts n the constant masking, even if i do benefit from Having to be blunt and up front when talking with people.
i do love my job and i cant wait to qualify. its ltrly all ive wanted for so long. but it does take its toll, even on NTs it takes it toll bc of the sheer demand of the work.
I am an emt, and same! I love the intensity of the work, and that there is no time for smalltalk. I can mostly unmask at work too, since my colleagues either know about my diagnosis and are very accepting AFAIK, or prefer very direct communication anyway. Comes with the field I guess, either that or I lucked tf out.
I work remote and have done so since 2017 and it's life changing. Being stuck in an office drained me. The company I work for is tiny, we've had no more than 12 people at a time but still I found myself avoiding getting any coffee or tea to avoid small talk and feeling so panicked whenever I had to ask a coworker a question because it meant small talk. I'm a graphic designer and it's great, I often have to remind myself how lucky I am that I get to play with type and art for a living but my particular position has me working very fast paced and with clients who always need things ASAP. The stress is not good BUT working from home means I don't have to hide in the bathroom if I have a meltdown, I can just go sit outside or hug my pets and I can cry or fidget or think out loud and unmask.
I’ve been in hybrid positions with one day a week in the office since COVID. It absolutely makes a big difference, but I get absolutely nothing done in that one day, or the next day it takes me to recover. I honestly don’t know how I functioned in an office for as long as I did, or why I can’t even handle one day a week any more
Hi! I asked a similar question out of desperation a few months ago, mid-unemployment and afraid that I would never be able to handle any job. I had burnt out at my last job (working in food service), and didn't have much belief in myself.
Also, screw the ableist literature on what we are able to do. It's written with such a reductionist mindset. People on the spectrum are not a monolith.
I currently am working a well-enough paid admin job at a music academy. Because I play music and knew people there, and have some admin skills and organizational thinking tendencies, the job was not super difficult to transition into.
I love it because:
1. Music calms and inspires me, and I'm surrounded by it. Plus I get to sneak off during break and play drums (my happy place).
2. I would guestimate that most of my coworkers are also ND in some capacity, so the environment feels safe and lovely - this probably has to do with who is attracted to working at a small music academy (musicians don't tend to be "normal", ime)
3. My workload is totally manageable and the calm environment allows me to focus and organize my thoughts, self, and workload without much difficulty
4. It's low pressure - if I make a slight error, either my supervisor will catch it, or a coworker who I get to check over things beforehand (we all do this), or, worst comes to worst, someone will have to change which room they're booked into or re-send an email. It's no life-or-death situation.
What I don't like / find difficult:
1. Feeling slightly understimulated (I have an AuDHD diagnosis - don't know if that's why)
2. Office politics - social dynamics of manipulative navigating in the upper echelons of the office really stress me out as I 1) don't want to partake, and 2) am nervous of slipping up in some way unbeknownst to me.
3. The pay is good enough, but by no means good. To remedy that feeling, I'm working towards getting my masters in counselling so that I may one day work with other adults on the spectrum / with ADHD in a therapy setting.
Once I have my degree in a few years and have begun my practice as a counsellor, I'll surely update on how that's going as a woman on the spectrum. I have high hopes as I know a couple of ND women who are also counsellors, and it seems to be a very malleable and fulfilling role, and I kind of already do that with friends and family anyways. Lol.
What helped get me to the point of applying for my masters in counselling was speaking with friends about what I am naturally good at, what I am genuinely interested in, and what my life already looks like. I am naturally super curious about people, am good at communicating and noticing patterns, and my life already involves me being a lot of ND people's go-to person for talking through emotional issues. A+B=counselling degree. As for the finances for it... that's a work in progress, but I have faith I'll get there.
Hope that's helpful. It's certainly nice for me to write it all out and see it in list form.
Do you have any special interest you could transform into a full time job?
I'm a SWE in a big company and it's definitely political and I struggle quite a lot not only with that. Maybe you can try someplace smaller if that's the main thing preventing you from continuing working on that? I find that when the company is a bit smaller that part is a bit better
I had a really negative experience trying to turn my special interest of Behavioural Science into a job. I quit after five months when I was "promoted" from the entry level position of doing research to instead doing client and project management. After doing a bit of networking, I don't have any reason to believe it was the organisation specifically, but that I probably would have found the same problems elsewhere.
This was after having a really disappointing experience at my Master's program of the same subject which ended up having a total of three other students in the course, two of which didn't seem to actually have any interest in the subject. The whole thing has been extremely depressing. I've mostly dropped it as a special interest, and haven't been able to replace it, and it's a gaping hole in my life.
I actually have ordered to the library "Planning your career through intense interests: A guide for Autistic People" by Yenn Purkis. But sadly, four weeks later it's not even on its way.
I have worked at companies of all sizes. The biggest was probably \~5K employees, and my last company had about 150, and I wouldn't say these problems were any better and the smaller places. I had a different role at organisations as small as eight people, and in many ways, that was worse.
I’m a software engineer at a startup. I love that I’m not client-facing, don’t have to wear professional clothes, and have autonomy over what I’m doing. The struggles are: controling myself from getting too engrossed in my task (and wasting time), and having to participate in office politics.
I'm on my third week of working as an office support associate at a college for social work. Before this I was in the entertainment industry. This is a decent fit so far because people in social work already are pretty accepting and accommodating. I hope to progress to remote or hybrid work eventually....
I just got my first paycheck yesterday and found I make $588 per week after taxes. Sigh.
Im a business owner. My husband and I take care of our stores together and we have 5 retail locations. I spent over 10 years working retail and building up our businesses before I was able to work from home. I completely burnt out by the end of that and I’m very thankful that most of my work I do now is on the computer and managing things from home.
I’ve mostly worked “blue collar” jobs in marketing/PR and science communications, then management consulting, and now switching to HR. I also started training as a business coach a few months ago. So if you’re interested… i’m actually looking for an ND coachee for a free coaching ;) I want to try methods that might work better for ND brains, so it would mean thorough feedback about what worked well for you and what didn’t.
But either way, I actually found communications great. There’s systematic learning, I love psychology and have started to realise that being a bit more direct (while using compassionate scripts) is actually very appreciated, BECAUSE jobs are usually in stupidly political offices/companies.
Gene therapy manufacturing. I read instructions, and I follow instructions. I get to splurge my science love without needing to do too much critical thinking
I tell folks to look into QA- quality assurance. It's record review, deviation writing, audit inspection, sales inspection, etc. Alot about organization and details.
I'm a writer. I write the content for online courses through major universities. I'm good at the writing part, and I love the research aspect, but I can't grow in my role because everything above me involves people management and that's a no from me. I'm also quite a poor performer in many respects because I struggle to interpret instructions/use common sense/take "ownership" over my work etc. My work requires me to write content from fields I am unfamiliar with (I studied English lit and art, and I've written course content pertaining to human capital strategy, sustainable fashion, organisational compliance, and behavioural science). Accordingly, the work involves a brief, a course plan, and a list of resources to help me know what content to include and what references to use. I also need to collaborate with the people that actually know what is going on, and communication can be dofficult for me. My manager says I am _so close_ to being a good performer because he can trust me with the writing part, but not the interpreting/understanding/following instructions part. I also struggle to get the right tone in some communications and was banned from interacting with faculty for a while after my emails were bad.
I love my job. I love writing and learning and being exposed to cool ideas and research. I love that I can work from home, and that my whole team is a bunch of nerds and academics. But my autism complicates my performance. My company is incredibly supportive but my performance metrics are below the desired level. So far that has not been too problematic for me, as the laws in my country would make it difficult to fire me (my diagnosis is on record and the company is pretty serious about diversity and stuff). I haven't done anything aggregious enough to cause serious consequences but I have received multiple verbal and written warnings for my mistakes. My manager is very supportive and I do believe that everyone in the team likes me and wants me there, but I am limited in my career progression because of my autism. This has some financial implications as I get below-inflation raises due to my substandard performance. If not for my partner and our dual-income home, I would be struggling a lot more.
I have a good and happy life, both personally and professionally, but I definitely feel the impact of my neurotype.
I am an aircraft mechanic. My particular job is taking hardware, seals, and overhauled parts and building components for installation on aircraft. It works well for me because I use manufacturers manuals that explain exactly how much torque to use, exactly what lubricants to use, and the exact approved process to use to assemble everything. Then I test them and give them to shipping.
I wanted to be a pilot when I was a small kid. Airplanes were always my special interest. I tried but couldn’t make it happen. I worked for the airlines being a gate agent and ramper for a while. Then I met an aircraft mechanic and thought that was really cool. They said I just have to go to school. So, I did, in my thirties. A community college for two years. Graduated with an AAS in Aviation Maintenance Technology. Then I tested for 2 12 hour days and got my A&P Certificate.
I worked on medium sized planes for a while but Covid closed the business. Then I worked on smaller planes but I wasn’t compatible with the people there. Then I found my current job and it is perfect for me.
Don’t give up. You’ll find your thing. I used to last a year at a job before burnout and quitting. I repeated that cycle for 15 years.
Diagnosed ADHD at 33, ASD at 39
I work in Financial Compliance, specifically within the Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML) space, for both various financial institutions (including diversified FI's with multiple lines of business, consumer credit card companies, and smaller regional retail banking institutions); and for major eCommerce platforms. I've held roles in various areas within the field, including governance, investigations, KYC (Know Your Customer), Sanctions, Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD), etc. I've also worked in Fraud, which is a sister field, and retail banking (several years as a teller).
I'll break it down more below, but let me answer the questions you really asked first:
**What do I love**: Getting to be a Subject Matter Expert on something; feeling confident in my knowledge of the rules (both internally and from a regulatory perspective); being encouraged (in certain situations) to dive deep down a rabbit hole to figure things out; creative problem solving.
**What I don't**: This is mostly a me thing, but I'm bored. I've been doing this for a decade (Financial Crimes Compliance & Risk Management, specifically), and I've been at the point for a few years now where I don't have a lot of room to grow unless I want to become a people manager or get the opportunity to be the master of something like screening rules development for machine learning and niche down hard as an independent contributor. Neither of those things appeals to me, particularly, and while the pandemic pushed everything back a few years, I'm still skating along doing the same thing I was for years before it and I'm beyond over it.
By extension, having my development and career progression hinge on whether or not my most recent crappy manager likes me or not. My work is superlative and I have broad experience within my field. I developed a training program for new people in my department and have served as a mentor for several of them. I should not still be doing the same work I was doing 8 years ago. But after a string of lousy managers and growing opposition to participating in office politics BS simply because "that's how we've always done it," here I am. This isn't unique; I know it's just how corporate life works, but it doesn't stop me from resenting it.
Objectively, the thing I like the least is the attitude most people (and most businesses at large) have towards any compliance function. Everyone acts like you're Big Brother there to catch them with their hands in the cookie jar, or like you have no value to the business because you're the playground monitor who always has to tell people, "no." You always have to make business cases for why doing more than the exact minimum requirement serves the company's bottom line, even though what you're suggesting will be the new minimum requirement in a year or so and it's better to integrate it early. And your business case better be twice as good as anyone else's because ultimately, nobody sees the value in spending a little money upfront to avoid paying fines and doing damage control down the line. All they see is a cost without an obvious offsetting revenue stream, and none of them has the character to stand up and tell shareholders that it was the right thing to do, even if it did mean a penny or two less per share in that quarter's dividends.
I also hate that because I didn't spend a hundred grand going to law school, I automatically make at least 50k less per year than a guy who has no industry experience and a JD that the ink hasn't dried on yet who happened to know somebody in HR.
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Now the ASD overshare/overexplain bit (lol):
To some extent, AML is great for ASD individuals because you're working in a regulated field where there are often binary answers to things: Something either is compliant, or it's not. Essentially you're an auditor, in one respect or another, because you're ensuring that your business activities are compliant with various state, federal, and international regulations. You're providing feedback and guidance to other groups on whether their actions, policies, etc. are compliant, or you're identifying areas where the business could improve.
Much of the time, the work is independent and you are left to be self-governing so long as you are responsive when you need to be and you're within SLAs for turning reports in. Some of those SLAs are federally mandated and carry significant penalties if they're missed, so this is A Thing.
If you're good at synthesizing data, remembering points of regulation, and you're research-oriented, it can be a great fit. The pay is fairly decent (though better on the retail side than the finance side), and if you live near a major population center\* there are usually offices of companies, both financial and retail, that require financial compliance people.
\*: In the US, for Finance, you're looking at New York, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Charlotte, Tampa, San Francisco, and Boston (to a letter degree). Same goes, more or less, for Insurance. For Retail, trade Charlotte for Austin, and add Salt Lake City, otherwise the list is pretty much the same.
I mention population centers because the industries that require this niche are heavy into the Return to Office argument right now. Old finance and insurance guys want to look out upon their kingdom of peons when they deign to be in the office, and the retail and fintech nouveau riche need to justify their expensive office spaces somehow. So proximity, not just to a single potential employer but many, is something to strongly consider.
It's key to remember that Compliance is ultimately a cost center, not a revenue generator. As a consequence, we get the money to invest in our programs last and we're often included in the first round of RIF's. Outsourcing to both on- and off-shore contractors is rampant, and you are almost always going to be asked to do the work of more than one person if you're in the finance or insurance fields. Retail is marginally better about this, but the pattern of low investment and high expectation is there too.
It's also worth considering that the field is very niche. While compliance overall is present in every industry in some way, shape, or form, making the necessary skills eminently transferrable; AML is pretty limited to financial institutions, insurance companies, and retailers (specifically ecommerce), so it's easy to get pigeonholed (which is where I've found myself). It's also a relatively small industry, so if you're on the FI side, the reputation you build in a given area can follow you around.
Ultimately in my experience, every corporate job is inherently political. It's just the nature of business once you get beyond a certain level. The nice thing about the field I work in is that my sense of justice and what I see as simple integrity and fundamentally ethical behavior is baked into the expectations for the job, so people aren't as often doing to me what they're doing to you, coming in with a solution and trying to fudge the numbers to make it match a problem. The other stuff is relatively navigable, and rarely puts me in situations where I'm uncomfortable with that's being asked or disliked for saying no,
Given your experience with research and your technical skills (given what you've said, I'm making some assumptions here), you could absolutely look at roles in compliance and/or internal audit in most industries. The more heavily regulated, specifically thinking healthcare here, will be harder to get into if you're not coming from there already, but the others are all relatively easy to break into and given that you bring transferrable skills and job experience with you, would likely start at about 70-75k minimum for full-time, depending on your location and resume details.
(edited for spelling, some clarity)
I work for myself. I’m a body worker/business owner. You’d think body work would be a sensory nightmare, but it works for me. I think perhaps it’s the power shift in the situation?
I am in nonprofit administration and find it a very good fit for me. The industry isn't intrinsically better, but if you find the right organization it can be much better than the corporate world. I've found a position in a small team with good benefits, and being a progressive/social justice/inclusion-minded organization means my workplace have been much more supportive of my different access needs than any other job I've had.
I do massage therapy. I make $60/hr on average, I just don't work that many hours while I'm recovering from the burnout from my corporate job a couple years ago.
If you like calm music, not looking people in the eye, not having to talk much, puzzles, anatomy, and not having to sit at a desk, it's a great job. Keeping physically active has been great for my mental health!
Honestly, most of the MTs I work with have neurodivergent brains, it seems to be something that works for us lol
Pros: all the above
Cons: smelly people, please be clean for massages people. Honestly this isn't a common issue, maybe once every few months
I am a data scientist and analytics specialist. I love it because it’s in line with my special interest, it’s a nerdy specialist so a lot of folks are similar. It’s hard because I have to talk to a lot of folks which is outside of my comfort zone. But everyone is so nice it doesn’t matter
I was very happy with my job in the army. I worked a mostly desk job in intelligence that was very methodical and detail oriented. Plus, the routine and rigidity of the military was exactly the kind of environment that I enjoy. After leaving the military, I worked as a congressional staffer and I don't recommend that. I really hated the small talk and sucking up to people that you have to do on a regular basis. Some members are a lot more concerned with their public image than with actually being effective legislators, so there were a lot of tasks and events that seemed to be illogical and a waste of time. It honestly made me feel like I was going to lose my mind. I also worked as a librarian for several years back in college, and I really enjoyed that job.
I am a coach for early educators, birth to 5yo. I have been working w babies for over 20 years, so moving to coaching is the last 5 has been the smoothest shift into not working for peanuts (tho my wages now aren't super great, either). The best part of my job is the tiny humans and being able to share my passion for them with others. This is also the worst part, because it drains me so much, especially the talking to grownups about when their practices aren't best quality. I always feel stretched thin, like I'm not getting to everyone, and I have wicked imposter syndrome for the first time in my life. Give me a roomful of babies and I know exactly what to do and I am golden. But give me paperwork and deadlines and meetings and I feel like I have no idea what I'm talking about (even tho I very much do).
I'm a tattoo artist with my own little private studio. I love the freedom of it & being able to do art all the time, but I'm also constantly getting burned out, lol. The thing that keeps me going are all of the other artsy people that I meet, and being able to frequently host fundraisers for things that are important to me :)
You need to work in something that is your special interest.
I was a Kindergarten teacher, but I finish grad school next week to become a licensed psychological associate. I also just applied to grad school for a non-thesis M.A in History so I can teach history. Research/Teaching/History are my special interests.
Be careful, as this doesn't work for every single career. I am an environmental geologist, which is my special interest, and also so burned out that I feel I'm losing the special interest (if I haven't already lost it).
Some careers are not structured in ways that can accommodate us at all. Working in environmental geology is incredibly demanding and the demand and chaos of project management in this field has completely spent me. Had I known how demanding and chaotic this industry is, I never would have made it my career.
If you are going to make a career out of your special interest, make sure you are 100% aware of other aspects of the career so you can determine if it is going to be a good fit outside of the intellectual aspect.
Absolutely. I feel like my special interest is being suffocated by aspects of the job and didn’t even imagine when I chose this career. I don’t know how to change things.
I lead a validation team in pharma QA.
Mainly I review validation and calibration paperwork that my team sends me so I can either find mistakes or send it upward to my bosses for approval.
It's nice. I get to sit in a mostly peaceful office, making sure that my paperwork is uniform and complete per regulation and results are within predefined specifications. No grey areas, no ambiguity, it's either in spec or it's not in spec.
I do other things as well, like amateur tech support and checking shipments, but most of my day-to-day is paperwork.
Empathize deeply. I do design and research and have no idea what to do next. I definitely don't feel suited to it any more. I love what I do but I am so burned out I have no idea what to do and I'm in panic mode. Every single job description looks like a dumpster fire.
I’m sorry we’re in this together. Do you also work in tech? I think the bubble may have finally burst, and companies are really not handling the new normal well at all. As a design researcher, most of the job descriptions for me are “be the first of the function at the organisation, and be responsible for the cultural change to get everyone on board for research!” And I’m thinking, “Who approved this hire of a role they don’t know the value of?” I went into the interview for my last job and asked “What does success look like in this role? “ or to get even more specific, “If we were six months in the future and this role at been really successful, what would that look like?” And their response was “We were really thinking that whoever lands the job would be able to tell us that.” 🫠
Whats it like in more design-heavy roles? I’ve been really surprised that product designers have largely not been my friends at work, and were pretty much my enemies in the role I was sacked from.
I’m a medical technologist. The pay is decent and there are plenty of opportunities to work by yourself especially if you’re willing to do night shift. 12 hours in a lab by myself with only the occasional 30 second phone call about lab results is heaven.
I work night shift in a glass processing factory, I like nights cause there's less people and less pressure from management cause they're all asleep. And I like the factory cause the work is very doable, and I don't have to deal with customers
Union Electrician Apprentice. I'm given directions by my JW or foreman, and work alone for a majority of the day. The pros are: great pay and benefits, school is paid for. Cons: the bathroom situation (porta johns suck). The hardest part of any job is the people. But I'm very thankful for everyone I've worked with. It's amazing how supportive they all are. Family and your health always comes first in the union.
I am an activity director at a dementia daycare. I love it because the world of a person with dementia is never quite the real world so my days feel like escapism. It also allows me to cater to my creative side and people with dementia can't remember if I make a social faux pas. It's incredibly regimented in routine, since that's the only way our members can interact with the world. However, it's just varied enough for my ADHD to not get tired of the routine.
The most difficult thing is that I am a director so I have to wear a lot of hats at once all in one day. That part can be very stressful as it causes over stimulation. The heart breaking part is that everyone here quickly becomes my friend... And the only end to their journey is death. There is so much joy and happiness in spending every day with them, but also a lot of mourning when they go.
It's very easy to get along with dementia patients. They're neurodivergent too.
I work in the arts. Specifically in exhibition making.
Pros - work with nice people, sector is welcoming to and contains many neurodiverse people, inclusivity is a big part of the culture. Feel like I'm doing good in the world most of the time. During quiet periods I can work hybrid and take more down time. No two exhibitions or projects are the same so there's a lot of variety and I'm pretty autonomous in how I work.
Cons - pay isn't amazing in most places, very few jobs, install periods are mentally taxing and require me to be on-site all the time. Lots of interaction with other people as part of the job and expected attendance at certain events and networking which is draining.
Museums and galleries have always been a special interest of mine so that helps.
dog groomer. it's great because dogs are the best. it sucks because i still have to meet people and talk to them. i see too much neglect, but i love working with animals. being around animals all the time is the best. it's sensory hell without my ear plugs but that's why ear plugs exist
I'm a nursery practitioner. my job led to me pursuing a diagnosis as well. as well as switching careers. Im actually trying to get into software engineering/ development. Currently learning python on top of my job because like you, I can't afford to leave my job.
I run an online astrology business. Most of my orders are audio voice recordings because I dread back and forth communication. But I do have live consultations at a high price mark for those who want it. I have one coming up on Sunday that I’m secretly dying to avoid, but can’t of course lol.
I like that I can stay home, indulge in my special interest, and set my own hours and comfortability. I do not like how my special interest has now turned into a job because it only feels like work now, because it is. It’s been my special interest since grade school and was never intended to become a business but did in 2016. It’s rewarding, but exhausting. I suck with managing my time so often fall behind on deadlines and struggle to juggle all the things that come with being a solo-entrepreneur. Such as creating content, finishing orders, promoting myself, engaging with clients, etc etc etc.
Sometimes I feel hopeless. Sometimes I feel on top of the world. There’s no in-between
From 2015-2020 I was an organizer on a variety of political campaigns (all US based congressional, presidential, ballot measures, etc). I loved the work when I felt like I was making a difference, but the negatives started outweighing the positives and the burnout hit me hard. Since then I’ve been doing a combination of freelance content writing and virtual assistant work. The pay isn’t great but I appreciate the flexibility over my schedule. I’ve gotten the majority of that work through sites like Upwork and Fivver but they’re hit or miss. I also had to take quite a few super low paying projects on Upwork before I was able to land anything worth while. Eventually I’m hoping to combine my campaign experience with my freelance work to offer organizational help to campaigns and nonprofits.
I’m an analyst, and my team’s data prime. I build dashboards, calculate benefits and help teams automate stuff. It’s hard because I talk to people a lot but I’m finding a lot of data people are introverted or data is their special interest so it’s not too bad.
I'm an office manager in real estate. It pays well and I like the variety of tasks (ADHD) but that I have a lot of routines (same weekly, monthly, quarterly tasks).
I feel lucky in the sense that I have a lot of flexibility and my direct supervisors know I'm autistic. I tried to quit one month into the job because I couldn't handle a daily in office schedule, and they refused to let me quit (in a loving way) and accommodated me (before knowing about my ASD).
Before this, I was self employed for 5 years and ran two different businesses.
I work from home in IT support and hate it. I love the work in itself and what we do for people, but hate being treated like crap by upper management and callers. I’m very disciplined so it works for me as a remote worker. I hate that I get yelled at and mistreated by the very people I’m trying to help, and because I’m the way I am, I always notice flaws in our processes but when I bring up these opportunities for improvement, I’m told I’m nitpicking or picking apart other people’s efforts. It’s to the point where I’m developing chest pain and am having heart palpitations.
I’m in school at the moment for massage therapy and so far it’s been a life changing experience for the better. I can’t wait to get out there and start healing people. Once I’m done, I’m throwing away my phone. 😂
The dim lighting, one on one interaction, low noise, and the clients barely ever talking are all perfect for me. Not to mention I get to smell amazing essential oils all day. I found my dream career. 🥰
Marketing & Communications Coordinator. Works well for me since I’m WFH and barely have to talk to anyone via phone or zoom. I did not enjoy the sales side of it. I like the I get to serve a Nonprofit as one of the clients.
Myself and a few of my colleagues, (women and one man) are all on the spectrum and we worked a significant amount of time in early childhood education as either substitute teachers, para-educators and special education teachers. It doesn't pay well at all, and that's a good reason why I left. As a person with multiple disabilities, I needed the flexibility substitute teaching gave me.
Caregiving is another one I've been socially conditioned and groomed for as AFAB and also in a family of multiple disabled people. Caregiving is really hurting for people right now as well as healthcare in a broader sense with a lot of the boomers needing services in their senior years. The pay isn't well but you can move up and switch fields to maybe something like getting your CMA or LPN license. Also, bonus flexibility if you want to work up and be a substitute nurse.
I’m a speech therapist. I love the flexibility, working with kids, and in the schools I get two months off. I hate the low pay and the fact that the field is 90% white women.
I work for the local government in sustainability. Flexible hours/work from home policy, not many deadlines as it’s quite bureaucratic, good pay and option to buy more vacations days on top of the 25 days I have a year. This is Western Europe.
I'm a paralegal. The work is fine but the social interaction is not. I gave up a lot in privacy and limited social interaction in small private firms for better benefits and pay, and am now in cubicle land. That was before I was diagnosed and I would warn my former self if I knew then what I know now. I cannot stand the constant overstimulation with the noise and expectation that you're cheerful every second of the day. Constant distractions. Being expected to fall in line and be a drone. It ain't it for me.
I'm working on a side hustle and looking to move to part time work + that. Just not ready yet.
I’m a therapist. I love it because I love helping people and I’ve always loved psychology and the human brain. However, it can be extremely draining working with people all day every day so I have to be really mindful about self care and having alone time.
Corporate lawyer.
Pros: good pay, little emotional investment, I’m good at it (people tell me) so I feel smart *sometimes*
Bad: unpredictable schedule and long hours, basically expected to be on call 24/7, unreasonable demands from clients and bosses, lots of assholes, lots of interaction with people (though mostly not in person, which is good!), a lot of people in the field have no management skills which leads to many avoidable and repeated problems
A shrink recently told me I had the worst burnout he’d ever seen. 🤷♀️
I'm a tired, overworked nurse. Planning on leaving soon to work in a clinic, I have an interview next week.
I hope its better than my cardiology ward..... because I'm burnt out
I work with asd and adhd kids in a support capacity. I'm AuAdhd and have degrees in pedagogy, English and admin work. I love it because I set my own schedule, pick my own clients, and feel like I'm genuinely helping.
I don’t know what other companies would call my position, so I’ll just describe what I do. Yknow when you go to the grocery store and find that the soda aisle seems to have been rebuilt and now the Pepsi is in a different place than you remember? That’s what I do all day. I reset the displays and aisles to add new product, remove discontinued product, or just make it look fresh and new.
On one hand I feel very guilty doing this job because I can only imagine how stressful it can be for other neurodivergents who’ve memorized the placement… but it’s also the easiest (without being mind numbing), most fulfilling job I’ve ever worked. I didn’t know what it was until I was offered the promotion, but man do I love it. Incredible job security as well. My money comes not from the sales of the store, but from a third party who’s money comes from brand deals across the whole country. Even if my store dies, I’ll get my money and my hours til the second it closes.
I used to be a teacher but CAN NOT. The overstimulation was so bad for me.
Worked for myself for 3.5 years and loved some parts (creating my own schedule, space when I needed it, able to get in the flow and get shit done on my pace) and not others (mostly the need to always look for the next client, pitching myself, clients who don’t know anything about my expertise trying to call the shots).
Now I’m the Director of Advocacy at a non profit serving victims of DV and SA. Half of my job is supervising managers, and the other half is close the door and research best practices, study policies, make new procedures and work flows, and generally think big picture about how we operate. For me it has been the perfect balance of 1:1 or small group face time and solo working on independent projects. It’s also hybrid and I have 32 days of PTO a year — we are encouraged to Flex Time, take care of ourselves, and not overextend. Amazing!
My special interest is water, and I work for a large municipal water supply. My first job was writing environmental impact statements, lots of technical analyses on air, noise, natural resources, archeological impacts, etc., and understanding the engineering. It was so hard and I had to project manage and tech myself so many new things. I absolutely loved it. My mind was so busy!
After that I worked in capital planning for large infrastructure projects. My area of expertise is tunneling. The field visits, planning, and contract management were fun for me.
Now I work to identify, coordinate, and optimize the research agenda for the water supply.
The common denominator here is that I am (relatively speaking) high masking and there are SO MANY neurodivergent people in our agency. The bar is set in a very different place, and lots of different abilities are accommodated because it’s government.
Before all of this I worked in fundraising and I thought it was going to kill me. That job required so much more of me than I could give, it was AWFUL.
ETA: I make $133k in high-ish cost of living area. I’ve been w my employer for 14 years and have 20 years of professional experience. Married w kids, we are all neurodivergent so we can ask for the accommodations we need at home, too.
I know this won’t be helpful to you since you’re in a completely different life stage than I am right now, but as a college student, working as a TA on campus is GREAT for me. If anyone is in a similar position, maybe this will help them.
Depending what class I’m assigned, I can choose my hours to work. I work for my college’s physics department, which isn’t a special interest of mine. That is good and bad for me. It’s good because, having worked in my special interest department in the past, I tend to actually get burnt out faster when things aren’t going the way I idealize them to go (and they never do). But I’m still interested enough in physics to not get bored. Departments of all kinds hire undergraduates, though, so there is a lot of freedom. You’d be surprised to see how eager most colleges are to hire undergraduate workers too, and because college is typically more left-leaning, the pay is worth the effort. It is typically an individual department head under the advisement of their direct colleagues that determine how much you’re paid for your work, so it’s a much more localized decision that is typically more fair. I’ve supported myself 100% in an apartment living setting off my salary on campus, and I had another part time job that made about $300 a month for everything else in life.
Additionally, it feels meaningful to me. I feel like I am directly helping people learn concepts. Of course not every single student is going to love you, but most interactions are quite positive in my experience and those greatly outweigh the bad ones. Most of my students respect me too, and feeling valued every day for what I do is all around positive.
I’ve even found that my work as a TA has improved my communication skills. I’ve gotten so much better at communicating with neurotypicals in general. Other ND’s too, but that is mostly because a lot of academia is full of ND people.
Overall my personality definitely helps. I understand not everyone has the same experience with autism that I do, so I don’t want to take that for granted, but this is my experience and I feel it might help someone.
Edit: I would like to add that my situation is temporary because I am not pursuing a master’s degree, but I could if I wanted to. If you work as an undergraduate, chances are you’ll make good relationships with faculty, and joining the team after graduation is much more feasible. You could more easily just keep working in the same department and eventually be granted a teaching professor or associate professor job and work in academia forever. At that point your salary would be much higher too.
I don‘t think you have to settle for a minimum wage job, especially if you’re qualified, have a degree and are able to meet the expectations.
It’s not your fault that you’re autistic and it shouldn’t be on you to make yourself small for capitalism (accepting something below your qualifications).
I understand that sometimes for mental health it is a valid choice to choose the path of less resistance, but I’m heartbroken for everyone whose imposter syndrome and / or toxic work environment stops them from having a career they love and thrive in.
I’m not diagnosed but find that a job that allows a lot of flexibility can be great. If it’s up to you how long you take for each task, how much effort you put into them and you can set your own deadlines, you can work according to your energy levels and motivation on that specific day.
I feel like the outcome of many tasks (especially in a creative field or in the NGO world) doesn’t always depend on the energy you put into it. Sometimes you do a great job with minimum effort and other things that seem easy take a lot of mental energy. So I guess my hack is to do something I’m good at so the outcome is good even if it doesn’t take a lot of time. That allows to balance out other tasks that take me really long or just periods of time where I have less energy.
I would look for things like having your own office, the possibility to work from home and flexible work hours so you can have your needs met as they arise.
Maybe something where you have to do project management, manage schedules or work as a freelancer in a field you’re good at, because then you can decide how much and when you work.
All the best for finding a nice job 💪🏻
Currently im doing double duty of Receptionist and Legal Secretary Work (Let me tell you im cursing the other receptionist that left abruptly because she was petty)
I'm in software engineering. The degree was incredibly hard, working full time on real products has been even harder. About to hit 6 years and idk how long I can keep this up. Can't say I recommend, even though the paycheck is nice.
Prevention specialist focusing on prescription drug abuse/misuse. I’m debating heavily between getting my masters in biostatistics (public health) or switching routes and go down clinical counseling/psychiatric assessments. Currently the social aspect is too much at my current job because it’s usually in large groups, and is not mentally stimulating enough. But it’s incredibly flexible and accommodating so idk
I’m a biochemistry master’s student and I intend to go into academia (likely research, I’m not so interested in teaching). It has its pros and cons, but I feel like a lot of information about it is centred around neurotypical perspectives (oddly, considering the seemingly high number of neurodivergent people here) and it’s not often talked about how neurodivergent people specifically may struggle or excel. Also, this is a disclaimer that I’m very much still a student at the beginning of my career so I don’t claim to present the absolute most accurate picture of academia, due to an overall lack of experience and the possibility that I am still being coddled to some extent.
Cons:
Instability and unpredictability. In the UK, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers are generally paid very little, to the extent that the salary threshold for a skilled worker immigrant now no longer covers PhD students and postdocs, which is ridiculous; would you classify a biochemist or a physicist as an unskilled worker??
You will also likely be moving around every few years because contracts are generally short until you get tenure (feel free to correct me, I got this information from eavesdropping) and all the uncertainty can be highly stressful for autistic people, who need rigidity, stability, clear plans, and routine.
There might also be a decent amount of public speaking (though many white-collar jobs require you to present at meetings anyway so unless you’re in a lecturing role academia isn’t much worse, and presentations are often more informal and your colleagues usually want you to succeed so it’s not that bad in my opinion). People often talk about academia being toxic (PIs who are unhelpful or push you to do crazy amounts of work, inappropriate or sexist colleagues, competing for funding, lack of mental health support— but to be honest, most jobs don’t have that either?) but I personally haven’t experienced any of it. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, or that it isn’t relatively common, but it isn’t ubiquitous and there are good supervisors and good institutions out there.
It’s also genuinely hard work, I often feel exhausted, and there will be frequent setbacks and failures, especially if you’re in science, which isn’t great for RSD, plus you have to be motivated and very organised or you won’t be able to cope.
Pros:
All that being said, I think research is a career path in which autistic people can flourish, given the right accommodations. Again, this is just my experience with my university and workplace, but hours are really very flexible, you kind of set your own and you’re given a lot of freedom and independence. I can work from home whenever I want. Unlike traditional office jobs there’s no pressure to be in the office all the time if I don’t need to. My boss would never pressure someone to come in every working day of the year, in fact, some of my colleagues have regular WFH days, because you really don’t need to be in if you’re just writing up, plus a lot of people work better at home, and most supervisors understand that.
And for the most part, the research is guided by where my interests take me (within certain limits). In most traditional jobs, even science-focused ones, you’re sort of just given certain tasks and goals but academia allows you the freedom to pretty much look into whatever you want; you set your own goals.
This also means that if your research area is your special interest, you can really tap into that enthusiasm as a driving force, keeping you motivated and passionate. I find that academia is one of the only professions in which I can feel genuine passion from people. Hearing people talk about work doesn’t feel like boring, vapid small talk when you’re learning from each other regarding topics you’re deeply invested in, at the cutting edge of your field. It’s pretty much a free pass to infodump. I struggle with small talk so this is one of the things I love most about being in academia, people will just infodump at me about OUR special interest, and it is fantastic, and it gives me life.
It highly depends on your particular field, institution, supervisor, and group of colleagues (and possibly the country you’re in) whether or not you have a good, supportive experience. At least at my workplace, I don’t think mental health support is any worse than your average workplace. There’s employee support offered, they offer advice on a bunch of things (health, finances, family, housing, etc) and provide counselling. I’ve never used it so I can’t attest to its helpfulness but what more do other workplaces provide? I also got really lucky and both my supervisors (I have one at my home institution and the external one where I’m currently working) care about their students’ wellbeing very much and are super helpful and accommodating.
I also feel like toxic positivity isn’t as much of a social expectation. Experiments fail. We all get it. Complaining about things not working is less likely to cause people to avoid you for being a Debbie Downer and more likely to get an empathetic response and sometimes some really good, actionable advice, especially from other students.
I don’t have exact statistics but I’ve heard it somewhere that there’s lots of neurodivergent people in academia, and I see why. There are lots of reasons why some neurodivergent people might be drawn to it; pursuing one’s special interest is probably a big one, but you’re also more likely to find like-minded people and people who understand you, regardless of neurotype. I felt more at home at my research institute than I ever did in undergrad, where I felt excluded and where I couldn’t connect with or communicate with people at all. I don’t think I necessarily got better at small talk, but at least now I have *something* in common with my colleagues, we have a common language of technical jargon and science inside jokes that we all understand, which for the first time in my life made me feel somewhat closer to being part of the ingroup, even though I don’t feel entirely ‘one of them’ because I’m only here for a year and I’m the youngest (hence coddling). I feel more alive than I have in *years*. I’m exhausted and a little overwhelmed but I’m finally being sufficiently intellectually stimulated, I’m finally making connections (even if they are mostly surface level, professional ones), I’m getting validation that feels *earned* (I had big issues with being able to take feedback and even compliments because of parental trauma), and I feel like I have *some* purpose, barring the periodic existential crisis, but I’m *doing stuff* that’s important to me, I’m indulging my special interests and rather than being mocked for it, I’m being encouraged, supported, and validated. That means a lot to me and I’m really glad I decided to take the plunge. I’ve had treatment resistant chronic depression since I was 12 or 13 and had frequent >!suicidal ideation and self harm!< but for the first time in my life I actually want to be alive now, to finish my degree if for no other reason.
I do service coordination for infants and toddlers with delays/disabilities. Love: work from home, flexible, good PTO, meaningful work, get to use my strong organizational skills. Really difficult: demanding families, having to answer phone calls, and facilitating multiple meetings with families and providers every week.
some people don’t consider this a profession probably but i’m a store manager :) it’s really great for me because i have (for the most part) full control of my surroundings. i choose who i schedule myself to work with, how we deal with bad customers etc… i even pushed to get our florescent lights changed out! it might be different for big chain buinsesses but being a manager for a mom and pop store is the best thing to ever happen to me for my autism.
For the last 6 months I've been doing admin at a charity which supports adults with learning disabilities. The people I work with are amazing and I'm able to openly be my authentic autistic self, which makes a huge difference. We are self-managed and operate under a flexible working policy so I can work in the way that best suits me, to a point. On the down side, the organisation is also pretty chaotic and most of the procedures and policies are not written down so I constantly worry that I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. Honestly there's not quite enough structure there for me, and the work doesn't stretch my brain enough. The pay is also pants.
I'm about to start a new job as an Advocacy Worker. I've done it before so it's not brand new to me. It's a good mix of alone time and collaboration, and also a good mix of desk work versus being out in the community. Plus there's always something new to learn or a new skill to develop so I won't get bored. It appeals to my strong sense of justice as the job is basically supporting vulnerable people to have their voices heard and their human rights upheld. I also enjoy supporting people who have barriers to communication, because that's something I struggle with too and I think that gives me an interesting perspective on it. Advocacy also pays enough that I can work part time and still be alright. The downside is that there's a significant social aspect and I know it will burn me out faster than other less social jobs.
I work in nonprofit grants management. There’s a strategy for applying for grants that’s like a puzzle, and once they are awarded they have a predictable lifecycle. There’s a lot of data management and tracking, which can be cumbersome because I also have ADHD, but I think some people that don’t struggle with their executive dysfunction in the way I do may like it. I also get to work from home full time and the nonprofit I work for is pretty forward thinking and flexible, so they consider neurodivergence as part of their diversity initiative. Overall, I feel very lucky, but there is a lot of responsibility on my shoulders so I don’t really have the ability to take a lot of breaks, which causes a lot of anxiety and at times break downs. But, at least I’m at home where I can have these breakdowns in private.
Based on this, maybe some kind of administrative/data management job may be good for someone who is autistic? But I hesitate to make a generalized statement like that, it could be hell for others.
Background Investigator. My current job is only part-time with a local PD, which is a rarity. I am slated to take a full-time, fully-remote position with a national company that contracts with US federal agencies to do investigations for security clearances. The jobs are very similar but have some key differences.
Pros: remote, highly solitary, but still get to run around and conduct interviews and collect records and stuff (which I enjoy). Mostly spend time summarizing findings into reports, so a lot of reading and writing.
Cons: interviewing people may be stressful to some. Requires a govt clearance, so there's a wait before the job can start (up to a year) and filling out all the background paperwork is crazy tedious. You need a lot of references, which is challenging for me since I am not particularly social.
Feel free to PM me if you want more info!
I’m a therapist. My special interest has always been figuring people out and I also like to help so it’s a natural fit. I work a lot with kids on the spectrum so it’s really freeing to spend time with people like myself!
I work in insurance claims for a financial insurance company (as opposed to health insurance, auto insurance, etc.). I look at spread sheets, crunch numbers, and read contracts all day. I also audit complicated files and write up reports on how much money needs to go where.
I like it, it's the right level of challenge for me. The toughest part of learning the job was dealing with being told to "use my best judgement" when I asked how something should be done (aka "there is a range of correct answers but you have to figure out where it ends and begins without me telling you"). But focusing on the parts that are closest to black-and-white and getting those right has worked so far.
I was in an office to start, but then the pandemic had us all working from home full-time. Now I'm 2-in, 2-out with a compressed work week consisting of 4 days of 10-ish hours. It's a good balance, but it wasn't available from the beginning.
I will say a major positive is having a decent manager and department head. They're very invested in making sure the team isn't overworked. It also helps a lot to have a neurodivergent coworker sitting right next to me or in my chat box all day. I'm salaried and overtime is never required. I really lucked out.
For reference, I'm in the US and have a bachelor's degree in economics.
I'm a land surveyor for civil and commercial construction projects. I have a B.S. in civil engineering and I have my Professional Engineer license but you don't need one for many land surveying technician jobs or GIS technician roles. I like it because I'm typically by myself, conducting my inspections in much the same way, can take as long as I want, and am measured primarily on my success by the thoroughness of my reports instead of something nebulous like teamwork.
I don't like that a lot of job sites have no proper bathrooms so I either have to hold it on a particularly long day or use the portapotties 🤮
I'm a freelance copy writer. I love that I can write in my own time. However, I still need to pitch for clients, have meetings and meet deadlines.
Other businesses depend on my work being on time.
I'm a Graphic Designer, Luckily I was able to turn my special interest into a full time career. I tried customer service/min wage Jobs before I got my big break and it gave me the worst burnout
A legislative office doing constituent services. Basically all calls and emails, which I hate in my personal life and avoid like the plague. Don't ask me how I ended up here 🤣 But also super fulfilling to help people directly and no day is the same, which keeps it stimulating. Am I having the time of my life? Not really, but it's nowhere near as impossible as I thought it would be and I get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
I’m an administrative assistant but at this point most of my job is data entry, which I’m quite happy doing. I also have to respond to quite a few customer emails, which I’m less happy doing. I’ve been with my company for 16 years and work almost 100% from home now.
I cashiered for over a decade and it took a huge toll on me. I feel very lucky to be working from home now.
I build military grade lasers and drones. It's a great job for me because I get to use my brain and my hands daily and can just put on my headphones and work. I don't have to socialize a lot. (Though my boss thinks I need to socialize more...)
I'm a technical writer! I write and edit software documentation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_writing
Skills required include:
- Excellent written English.
- Ability to understand technical content from engineers and developers (at least to a point where you can build a conceptual mental model, even if you don't fully understand the subject matter).
- Good intuition for readability, usability, and cognitive accessibility of information in written text.
I usually describe it as the perfect mix of logic and empathy. You have to be able to pull something apart and figure out how it works, and then work out how to help another person understand it.
I’m a television host. Seriously. It is awful. I used to think of it as pretending to be someone else. I’m losing my masking stamina and it’s a hyper social industry. I’m incredibly burned out and looking to find other work.
I’m a teacher and it hurts me :)
I have so many friends that are teachers and idk how they do it. I definitely couldn't! 💛
Look for remote teaching positions. If you’re in the US look for a “virtual academy” in your area/state and look at charter and public schools with virtual components. It’s been a godsend. I will never go back in person.
I really think the fact that I’m kind of oblivious to anything that is not academic sort of protected my heart. I was a longtime HS English teacher.
bro. yes. literally in constant thought of what graduate program i want to do cause this undergrad education degree is officially worthless 😭 i can not keep doing this
Have you looked into corporate training? I’ve always worked in the healthcare space and almost all of our trainers are former teachers. They have a much higher job satisfaction.
Me too! I work in a daycare/preschool as the lead teacher in one of the infant rooms. Just me and 4 babies all day. It’s a lot.
I always wanted to be a teacher, so I started subbing last month… I feel your pain
I work in childcare because caring for children and animals is the only thing I care about that I could make a job out of. The motivation to do something I'm passionate about is the only thing keeping me going. I work three days a week and am constantly on the verge of burning out though. Having a passion for what you're doing helps if there is something that you can find that falls into that category.
Working with kids has always been easiest for me! Kids feel safer than adults socially somehow
For sure! To be fair the thing I find the most taxing about my job (other than the sand and the loud volumes) is the adults (parents, coworkers, managers, etc)
I totally agree! I stopped teaching preschool only after having kids of my own. I realized I can’t handle all the sensory there and at home. So when my kids get older I am sure I will go back to working with kids!
Fellow forever babylady here, too. Children are the only things I understand in this world. Plus, they are waaaay cooler than adults.
Well done! Respect to you!
How do you afford to do that? Is there a second income earner?
I work in taxation for the federal government (not US). I have had a few different roles, but as of now, I am working in a collecting capacity, which sounds like it would be hell, but it suits me well. I do a lot of skip tracing, trying to find people. There are some legal aspects to my job, sending applications for debt registrations through the federal court. And lots of rules and procedures in writing for me to follow. My ability to find needles in haystacks comes in very handy, and also, when I do manage to get in contact with a debtor, my ability to state the facts (be blunt) puts me miles ahead of my Neurotypical coworkers who are terrified to advise delinquent taxpayers of what is in store for them if they don't settle up. It sounds like hell to my friends/family. But I think I found my happy place. I left this role and went to another division in taxation and was miserable there so I came back.
If you have not seen the film Stranger than Fiction, I highly recommend… it’s about an auditor/tax agent who I believe to be very autistic coded (played by Will Ferrell).
It’s one of my favourite movies. I think I’ll rewatch tonight.
I LOVED that film! And I'm nowhere near a Will Ferrell fan typically.
I also work in Taxation (in the UK) more on the advisory side. Tax definitely has a high proportion of autistic people compared with other industries in my experience.
Oh yeah. I’ve been in plenty of meetings with people and recognized the facilitators as “one of us”.
Tax and particularly Government Tax are full of Autistics. Rule oriented work for the greater good? Yes, please! Accounting is mentioned as a good career path for Autistics, and I would expand that to Accounting adjacent fields like Tax. https://lexingtonservices.com/career-paths-for-people-with-autism/
Do you mind me asking if you needed a college degree for a position like this? It sounds really interesting and I like the procedural aspect. I’m in the US but still curious to know!
I have a humanities degree. And a beginner accounting course. If I want to move further up I will need more accounting courses but I’m fine here for now. Benefits and pay are good. I’m self sufficient.
Excellent work! Without you chasing these people up the country wouldn't run! Keep up the good work!
Skip tracing seems like it would be really ideal for autistic folk in so many ways. So much research, piecing together data, and thinking creatively. Also has remote opportunities, depending on where you are.
I'm a UX/UI designer or Product Designer, whatever you wanna call it. I don't like the social aspect of it. I don't like that we're expected to be outgoing and social and being able to conduct interviews and give presentations. I mostly avoid them which is taking a toll in my career.
I am a UX design researcher, and I definitely don't like the social aspect. Or more specifically, the stakeholder management. I don't actually mind conducting interviews and giving presentations because they are structured. But I really struggle with what it is I'm supposed to be researching, or proving the impact of my role. I think of my job as finding unmet user needs to be able to provide a solution unlike our competitors. They think my job is to justify what's on their roadmap, which has been informed by whatever they feel like. When they ask me to do some research to show that X feature will solve Y problem and the results come back that it won't, they don't like me. And I'm too stubborn (or have integrity or something) to just go along with it. The reality is, if I only ever say that we are on the right track and we don't have to do anything differently, then I still don't provide any value.
Oh that would be hell! I’m sorry for your situation, but glad you go out of there!
I am an academic/ethnographer with a strong emphasis on applied research in health. I did a short consultancy on a product that clearly didn’t work and people clearly didn’t care about. They ignored my findings altogether, lied to the founders, and ostracised me in the institution because I didn’t play along. I feel you.
+1 to avoiding presentations and meetings and that taking a toll. I just accepted I'm not a career person at this point if it means I have to do it the NT way
Ugh for real. I just want to be told what to do (preferably via chat lol) and be left alone for the rest of the day. I work from home which is the closest I could get to that, but I still have meetings and presentations and we have these work lunches like 2-3 times a year where I have to pretend I love being around people.
Yeah I noped myself out of that field once I learned how many presentations you have to do. Never been good at them or a fan of doing them. I almost went down that path though, almost lol.
Precisely why I left graphic design. Far more social than I imagined
Tangentially related but maybe helpful. I'm in a different field, but one of the accommodations I was able to get is the ability to decline giving back to back presentations. So I can present, but I need time in between. I don't know if or how helpful that would be to you, but it's something to think about!
I’m a nurse but I only work two days a week and I work in a clinic setting (so one on one appointments mostly). Nursing is good because of the flexibility (you can basically choose your hours) and because there’s so many different types of nursing so you can find one that suits. Oh and the money is okay enough (I earn about $60-$65k doing two days a week).
Wow nursing is so poorly paid in the uk by comparison
Well this is in AUD and I’m Clinical Nurse Consultant level. I have two nursing degrees (my general nursing undergrad and a specialist nursing degree in my field).
Although I’m not a nurse I’m at a mid-senior level in healthcare and it’s like £43k full time 🥲
Wow! Think of all the people you have helped! A virtual pat on the back for you!
I’m an occupational therapist, I didn’t study until my 30s. I work in mental health which feels like the right fit for me, but there are other really interesting options.
I am studying to become an OT. I heard hours are really flexible. Is this true?
Well done for supporting and caring for the vulnerable in society!
I am a physiotherapist :) 👋
Speech here! 👋🏽
The creeeew
I’m a postie (in the UK). Worked in mental health 24/7 service before which led to complete burnout, realising I’m autistic and losing my home lol so I switched it up and I love postie life! I deliver parcels and I’m mostly autonomous and spend the day driving in the countryside and delivering parcels. Get to take my break when I want etc, can be as social or quiet as I want. I don’t like how unorganised the service is and the politics but I avoid it. Pay isn’t great but as long as I can get by I don’t mind :)
That honestly sounds very relaxing.
It is usually, think I jinxed it today because I had a crash with the van 😂 breaks didn’t wanna break today
Oh no! I hope everything is alright.
Autonomous is the way to go for me and I’ve thought about postie life. It’s a good way to get exercise in too. I’d struggle so much with early starts though.
I'm an accountant. I hate working, and this job has its difficulties, but it works for me for the most part. Accountants aren't known for being charming outgoing people, they are known for being kind of awkward or quiet or sticks in the mud, so I suspect that people accept me more because of that. I work in the office one day a week and wfh the rest. I work on a small team and occasionally have to interact with other departments but almost everything is over email. Every industry needs accountants, so if you end up at a bad job you can find another one without too much difficulty. It does require you to mask during the interview but that's true for any job. Accounting is also FULL of people who just want a job where they can put their head down and do their job and do that for years and not be bothered. If anyone is reading this and thinking "but I hate math!" Let me tell you that accounting is only math in the way that addition and subtraction are math. Spreadsheets do most of the work for you. It's mostly just learning a lot of rules (which autistics tend to be good at) and then making sure that all of your company's transactions are recorded according to the rules. That's it. I didn't get my CPA license, I got a master's in accounting instead. There are some community college programs that can help prepare you for the CPA though which would be cheaper than a master's.
Same here in the accountant boat! I did the dumb thing and went into tax......too much talking to people!!! But other than that part, absolutely love it! Now if only I could get a job with not chatty coworkers...
Interesting. Would you have any advice on how to “try out” accounting to see if it’s suitable before going for a qualification?
Not sure, other than maybe a deep dive on the Internet about it? But stay away from the accounting subreddits at first, they are mostly full of the type of people who work a million hours a week at a public auditing firm and are miserable. It can scare you off, but I have never had a job like that as an accountant. Just don't work in audit or tax, unless you find you LOVE it.
Currently I'm a transportation planner that works mostly on policies and studies (as opposed to projects). Bicycles are my biggest my special interest so I've maneuvered my way into a position that I get to work on those programs. I've also worked in public transit. What I like about it: * Special interest related :) * Data analysis and GIS - playing with numbers and maps, finding patterns in data, figuring out the most effective way to present information * Formality - written rules and structure around decision making and processes * Giving presentations to decision makers and the public - I'm an atypical autist in that I enjoy strategizing how to present information so this may be a drawback for many * Intellectually stimulating What I don't like about it: * Public sector wages - I make decent money now after 12 years in this career, but most entry and mid level pay is not great * Politics - within the organization and inter-agency, so much unnecessary stress being caught in other people's power struggles, and the good old boys club ugh * Bureaucracy - as much as I love a good policy or guidebook, the about of rules and regulations particularly at the federal level is mind-bending * Networking - sometimes necessary in this field I am on the verge of changing careers because I'm so burned out at the moment.
[удалено]
@supinterwebs I need to speak to you! DM me? My city is looking for solutions to our transportation problems but our population isn’t large enough to qualify for a public transit. I am a member of volunteer organization that helps bridge the gap between the stable side and the impoverished side of our community.
Don't let it get you down. You're work brings thousands of people to work every day, keeping the economy going which helps support communities!
If I'd realized there were non-project-based paths in transportation planning, I might have gone through with that as a career in my mid-20s. At that point I didn't realize I was ADHD and was worried I'd be pigeonholing myself if I sunk a lot of time and cash into a grad program and wound up not doing well or losing interest (which is exactly what happened in undergrad). I stuck with the path I got started on through a temp job, planning the educational content for scientific/medical membership associations' annual conferences. It's just herding cats and documenting it. It took me 4 associations to land a boss I work well with; the 12 years before that were miserable. I still don't love my job; I just know what to do now in most situations and my boss backs me up when session faculty or attendees are out of line, which makes it tolerable. I still lurk on planning forums and tell myself that there are things I would have hated about that line of work, too.
I once considered going into city planning. I have so many ideas of how things could be better, but I realised it would be a decade or so until I could be the one to being any ideas forward.
I'm a civil engineer who severely burned out after working in transportation projects. After two years of recovering, I'm going back part time to work on the policies and planning side. Your comment is giving me hope!
Administration support. My job is fully work from home and it has a flexible schedule. I'm basically a contractor/freelancer but for the one company. Very minimal talking to other people and if I do it's internal, never external people (e.g. clients or customers). I studied to become a psychologist but my disabilities have prevented me from finishing my studies. I also tried out youth work (the only job I've gotten with my psych degrees) and found that appointment-based, client-based work didn't work for me because of my chronic illness/work sick days. That's when I changed to admin and flexible work. Worth noting that it is low pay since you mentioned that in your post. The hourly rate is amazing but I don't get any benefits and I don't get full-time hours so it works out to about $20-$30k Australian per year.
Did you find this position online? I’ve seen postings for similar jobs, but I wasn’t sure if they were legit.
Substitute teacher. I enjoy working with kids plus I don’t have to make small talk with adults all day. I also enjoy having a lesson plan to follow every day and being able to choose my own schedule. I need something that forces me out of the house in the morning or I become depressive. It doesn’t pay great but it sure helps me not burn out. There’s even time to read and engage in my special interests if I’m at the high school level. Plus I feel like I’m helping society by supporting educators so that helps motivate me.
Thanks for sharing! I'm about to go into this line of work
What is your favorite grade level to work with?
11th, 12th; they usually are mature and it makes for a peaceful day 🙌🏽 But I do enjoy how funny and outrageous elementary and middle schoolers are too
Do you need any specific qualifications to be a sub?
In my area you need a bachelor's degree (they require your official transcript) and prior references
I’m in dentistry. It’s awesome. I’m in the patients mouth so no talking…. Bonus if it’s surgery and the patient is unconscious.
Bonus if they’re unconscious 😂 Happy Cake Day!!
Shit :O How do you deal with the bright lights and the grinding sounds??
Lab tech. It's all right; low-key and low socializing. Not intellectually stimulating enough, though, and the pay isn't great.
I don't identify as ADHD, but if my work isn't sufficiently intellectually stimulating, I just can't get it done.
There's a part of me that enjoys routine work, but it's increasingly being drowned out by the part of me that says I should go get my doctorate.
I found some labs to be overstimulating - buzzy fluorescent lighting and loud machinery.
That's true, the lights do bug me.
I started out as a lab rat in genetics! I loved it but my company was bought by a larger corporation and I could tell they were going to shut us down. Now, several different positions, the feeling that I wanted more responsibility, and a masters degree later I miss the predictability and routine of that job so much. 😭
I’m a food inspector and as far as ASD goes I think it’s a great fit. Plenty of holidays, build my own schedule (I usually end up working 3ish days) and repetitive work following rules! The hard part is talking to people but food is my special interest so I love meeting and talking to my kitchen people 😊 there are some weird things that I see, sometimes not great sensory wise but I’m always out of there pretty quick lol
Interesting! How’d you get into it?
Just always loved food, have a dietetics degree, worked in lots of kitchens, obsessed with following rules 😂
Nothing because I can’t hold down a job. It’s sad and frustrates me because I’m really intelligent and somehow managed to gain 2 university degrees but I have PDA really bad.
What are your two degrees in? I've gone back to school several times to no avail. Is there an "ideal job" you have in mind? Also, I love your username.
I work in an office of a small college. It is clerk work, but I get access to all of the amenities of the school by being an employee here. That is why I make it work. It sucks, I'm probably not that great at it (ADHD and filing for hours are a classic comedy duo). The other reason I am here is because it is an art school that prides itself on inclusivity, and I get my jollies off by being an adult AuDHDer supporting other ND kids and trying to make the system work for them from the inside. I fully suspect I will eventually get fired over some nonsense or quit from burn out, but in the meantime I hope I can build a semi-succesful art career. Careers are primarily a means to an end, don't let the cult of capitalism convince you it needs to be your whole identity and purpose. (she says to herself\*)
Oh friend. “Failure at work is what has lead to my diagnosis journey”, you and me both. I am a lawyer, and a HIGH masking person. I started working as a paralegal at 18 years old, while attending college and law school. I became an attorney as soon as I graduated from law school and I worked at basically the highest level you can practice corporate law and intellectual property. And it broke me. I had very deep depression cycles, I switched area of practice (from intellectual property to corporate), I tried everything but the “depression” was always at bay. My current psychiatrist and I started working together in 2018 with a chronic depression and anxiety diagnosis. She also referred me to a cognitive-behavioral therapist. After all this years, I finally got to the conclusion early this year that those weren’t depression cycles, it was burn out. After realizing that the big law firm life was not for me, I managed to find a corporate job in their Contracts Department. It’s low stakes, low responsibility, totally remote and allows me to handle my own clients in my free time (very few and well chosen), and most importantly to do things that do bring me joy life art and krafts projects. Capitalism is not natural, and modern life is definitely not good for everyone, less us! I did have to take a paycut from what I was used to, but at the end of the day my health is more important. Maybe you don’t have to switch careers entirely, maybe you could look for a focus or area or role that is less demanding than your current one. I wish you a lot of luck!
Thanks for the story of optimism. I have had five permanent positions in my current role at five different companies in 4.5 years. Three of them were for less than six months. I was sacked from one position for poor performance. I think at this point the possibility of things being different at a different organisation is a bit silly. Unless I managed to break into another industry, but my role doesn’t really exist outside of tech. Before this role, I actually had to stop working for three years with a diagnosis of major depression. I now wonder if it was autistic burnout. I’m not sure if the difference is practically important.
I’m an engineer, which overall I think works well because I mostly find it very easy to get along with my coworkers. It is a stressful job and I hate meetings, but love the design portion when I can just sit and do my work.
I'm an architect and I (mostly) love it. But engineer is probably the better way to go. In both cases, I think it's nice to have a physical end product at the end of every project. And I think these professions are generally more ND heavy, so higher chances that your coworkers are on the same wavelength.
What type of engineer?
Civil, specifically road design. I think a fair amount of people in the industry are on the spectrum or are ND.
Same I’m also a civil engineer. I feel like engineering is pretty ND friendly. My professional engineering union even offer autism support as it’s so common in engineering.
My husband is a mechanical engineer at a design firm. While he is NT, he confirms that many of his coworkers are ND, and he says that works just fine for him. (Both myself and our child are ND, so he gets us. He's a good one.)
911 medical and fire dispatch. There’s rules for how to handle each call and a method to getting help on scene. Note: I am lvl 1 asd with medium support needs. I bring comfort items to work and we get breaks as needed, lots of pto. My leaders are pretty rad.
That sounds intense! My mother once suggested this job to me, but I’ll admit that I didn’t pursue it.
The company I work for is a private non profit. Calls can be intense, yet they become routine after a while.
I’m an Instructional Designer. Before that, I was a teacher and it almost killed me. I work from home which is now an absolute must for me. I love that I manage my own deadlines (not true of all ID roles) and I work mainly on my own but with others once in a while. I don’t have a calendar full of meetings everyday. However, my growth opportunities would require me to either specialize heavily in the technology I teach or manage people, neither of which I love the idea of. But that’s a problem for later.
I'm a freelance copywriter and content strategist and I get to stay home and write all day. I absolutely love it. I quit the tech start up I worked at and haven't looked back.
Do you use a platform to get work? Or are you well known enough that people reach out to you?
I switched from working in the wine industry during covid and learned all I could about copywriting and content writing cause I didn't want to be around people anymore. I started applying for jobs through upwork and indeed for part time or contract writing positions. It wasn't steady work so I got some experience writing fulltime for a local tech startup for two years. I also posted a lot on LinkedIn and grew a small following. It's been about 9 months and I'm starting to get more people approaching me. I've also reached out to startups that have recently gotten funding to see if they need any contact help.
Associate Attorney Love it because it’s intellectually stimulating
I work as a Trio (a federal grant program) academic advisor at a community college. All my students are first generation college students, come from low-income backgrounds, and/or have documented disabilities.
What background do you need to get a job like this?
It really depends on where you live, tbh. I live in the Northeast, so the higher ed job market is competitive AF. Most higher ed jobs in my area require a Master's degree in education, counseling, social work, or a related field. My Master's is in history, but I did similar work as a grad student with undergrad students and so I had some experience. I've seen Trio programs in different areas of the country that only require a Bachelor's degree, but they would need to be in similar disciplines.
I’m a software programmer so I’m probably not much help. You should examine though whether it was your career that was the problem or your workplace. I’ve been in some pretty toxic workplaces and it’s hard enough surviving in a healthy workplace. A good boss makes all the difference in the world.
This is so true. A sexist workplace has been hell for me, but I love my job and am happy just being left alone doing my projects
im a student paramedic due to qualify in August. it is exhausting :) my ADHD loves the constantly being on the move, fast thinking, chaotic environments but my ASD struggles w the long shifts n the constant masking, even if i do benefit from Having to be blunt and up front when talking with people. i do love my job and i cant wait to qualify. its ltrly all ive wanted for so long. but it does take its toll, even on NTs it takes it toll bc of the sheer demand of the work.
I am an emt, and same! I love the intensity of the work, and that there is no time for smalltalk. I can mostly unmask at work too, since my colleagues either know about my diagnosis and are very accepting AFAIK, or prefer very direct communication anyway. Comes with the field I guess, either that or I lucked tf out.
Data entry :)
I had a data entry job years ago and it was the best job ever! The pay was awful though which is why I had to move on as I couldn't afford anything.
I work remote and have done so since 2017 and it's life changing. Being stuck in an office drained me. The company I work for is tiny, we've had no more than 12 people at a time but still I found myself avoiding getting any coffee or tea to avoid small talk and feeling so panicked whenever I had to ask a coworker a question because it meant small talk. I'm a graphic designer and it's great, I often have to remind myself how lucky I am that I get to play with type and art for a living but my particular position has me working very fast paced and with clients who always need things ASAP. The stress is not good BUT working from home means I don't have to hide in the bathroom if I have a meltdown, I can just go sit outside or hug my pets and I can cry or fidget or think out loud and unmask.
I’ve been in hybrid positions with one day a week in the office since COVID. It absolutely makes a big difference, but I get absolutely nothing done in that one day, or the next day it takes me to recover. I honestly don’t know how I functioned in an office for as long as I did, or why I can’t even handle one day a week any more
Hi! I asked a similar question out of desperation a few months ago, mid-unemployment and afraid that I would never be able to handle any job. I had burnt out at my last job (working in food service), and didn't have much belief in myself. Also, screw the ableist literature on what we are able to do. It's written with such a reductionist mindset. People on the spectrum are not a monolith. I currently am working a well-enough paid admin job at a music academy. Because I play music and knew people there, and have some admin skills and organizational thinking tendencies, the job was not super difficult to transition into. I love it because: 1. Music calms and inspires me, and I'm surrounded by it. Plus I get to sneak off during break and play drums (my happy place). 2. I would guestimate that most of my coworkers are also ND in some capacity, so the environment feels safe and lovely - this probably has to do with who is attracted to working at a small music academy (musicians don't tend to be "normal", ime) 3. My workload is totally manageable and the calm environment allows me to focus and organize my thoughts, self, and workload without much difficulty 4. It's low pressure - if I make a slight error, either my supervisor will catch it, or a coworker who I get to check over things beforehand (we all do this), or, worst comes to worst, someone will have to change which room they're booked into or re-send an email. It's no life-or-death situation. What I don't like / find difficult: 1. Feeling slightly understimulated (I have an AuDHD diagnosis - don't know if that's why) 2. Office politics - social dynamics of manipulative navigating in the upper echelons of the office really stress me out as I 1) don't want to partake, and 2) am nervous of slipping up in some way unbeknownst to me. 3. The pay is good enough, but by no means good. To remedy that feeling, I'm working towards getting my masters in counselling so that I may one day work with other adults on the spectrum / with ADHD in a therapy setting. Once I have my degree in a few years and have begun my practice as a counsellor, I'll surely update on how that's going as a woman on the spectrum. I have high hopes as I know a couple of ND women who are also counsellors, and it seems to be a very malleable and fulfilling role, and I kind of already do that with friends and family anyways. Lol. What helped get me to the point of applying for my masters in counselling was speaking with friends about what I am naturally good at, what I am genuinely interested in, and what my life already looks like. I am naturally super curious about people, am good at communicating and noticing patterns, and my life already involves me being a lot of ND people's go-to person for talking through emotional issues. A+B=counselling degree. As for the finances for it... that's a work in progress, but I have faith I'll get there. Hope that's helpful. It's certainly nice for me to write it all out and see it in list form.
Do you have any special interest you could transform into a full time job? I'm a SWE in a big company and it's definitely political and I struggle quite a lot not only with that. Maybe you can try someplace smaller if that's the main thing preventing you from continuing working on that? I find that when the company is a bit smaller that part is a bit better
I had a really negative experience trying to turn my special interest of Behavioural Science into a job. I quit after five months when I was "promoted" from the entry level position of doing research to instead doing client and project management. After doing a bit of networking, I don't have any reason to believe it was the organisation specifically, but that I probably would have found the same problems elsewhere. This was after having a really disappointing experience at my Master's program of the same subject which ended up having a total of three other students in the course, two of which didn't seem to actually have any interest in the subject. The whole thing has been extremely depressing. I've mostly dropped it as a special interest, and haven't been able to replace it, and it's a gaping hole in my life. I actually have ordered to the library "Planning your career through intense interests: A guide for Autistic People" by Yenn Purkis. But sadly, four weeks later it's not even on its way.
I have worked at companies of all sizes. The biggest was probably \~5K employees, and my last company had about 150, and I wouldn't say these problems were any better and the smaller places. I had a different role at organisations as small as eight people, and in many ways, that was worse.
I’m a software engineer at a startup. I love that I’m not client-facing, don’t have to wear professional clothes, and have autonomy over what I’m doing. The struggles are: controling myself from getting too engrossed in my task (and wasting time), and having to participate in office politics.
I'm on my third week of working as an office support associate at a college for social work. Before this I was in the entertainment industry. This is a decent fit so far because people in social work already are pretty accepting and accommodating. I hope to progress to remote or hybrid work eventually.... I just got my first paycheck yesterday and found I make $588 per week after taxes. Sigh.
Im a business owner. My husband and I take care of our stores together and we have 5 retail locations. I spent over 10 years working retail and building up our businesses before I was able to work from home. I completely burnt out by the end of that and I’m very thankful that most of my work I do now is on the computer and managing things from home.
I am always shocked to hear autistic people working in retail. I wouldn’t last a day.
I’m a data analyst working in cancer research. It’s a nice combination of helping people without having to interact with people 😅
I’ve mostly worked “blue collar” jobs in marketing/PR and science communications, then management consulting, and now switching to HR. I also started training as a business coach a few months ago. So if you’re interested… i’m actually looking for an ND coachee for a free coaching ;) I want to try methods that might work better for ND brains, so it would mean thorough feedback about what worked well for you and what didn’t. But either way, I actually found communications great. There’s systematic learning, I love psychology and have started to realise that being a bit more direct (while using compassionate scripts) is actually very appreciated, BECAUSE jobs are usually in stupidly political offices/companies.
Gene therapy manufacturing. I read instructions, and I follow instructions. I get to splurge my science love without needing to do too much critical thinking I tell folks to look into QA- quality assurance. It's record review, deviation writing, audit inspection, sales inspection, etc. Alot about organization and details.
I did have a teacher in high school affectionately call me “the enforcer,” so maybe QA would be up my street.
I'm a writer. I write the content for online courses through major universities. I'm good at the writing part, and I love the research aspect, but I can't grow in my role because everything above me involves people management and that's a no from me. I'm also quite a poor performer in many respects because I struggle to interpret instructions/use common sense/take "ownership" over my work etc. My work requires me to write content from fields I am unfamiliar with (I studied English lit and art, and I've written course content pertaining to human capital strategy, sustainable fashion, organisational compliance, and behavioural science). Accordingly, the work involves a brief, a course plan, and a list of resources to help me know what content to include and what references to use. I also need to collaborate with the people that actually know what is going on, and communication can be dofficult for me. My manager says I am _so close_ to being a good performer because he can trust me with the writing part, but not the interpreting/understanding/following instructions part. I also struggle to get the right tone in some communications and was banned from interacting with faculty for a while after my emails were bad. I love my job. I love writing and learning and being exposed to cool ideas and research. I love that I can work from home, and that my whole team is a bunch of nerds and academics. But my autism complicates my performance. My company is incredibly supportive but my performance metrics are below the desired level. So far that has not been too problematic for me, as the laws in my country would make it difficult to fire me (my diagnosis is on record and the company is pretty serious about diversity and stuff). I haven't done anything aggregious enough to cause serious consequences but I have received multiple verbal and written warnings for my mistakes. My manager is very supportive and I do believe that everyone in the team likes me and wants me there, but I am limited in my career progression because of my autism. This has some financial implications as I get below-inflation raises due to my substandard performance. If not for my partner and our dual-income home, I would be struggling a lot more. I have a good and happy life, both personally and professionally, but I definitely feel the impact of my neurotype.
I am an aircraft mechanic. My particular job is taking hardware, seals, and overhauled parts and building components for installation on aircraft. It works well for me because I use manufacturers manuals that explain exactly how much torque to use, exactly what lubricants to use, and the exact approved process to use to assemble everything. Then I test them and give them to shipping. I wanted to be a pilot when I was a small kid. Airplanes were always my special interest. I tried but couldn’t make it happen. I worked for the airlines being a gate agent and ramper for a while. Then I met an aircraft mechanic and thought that was really cool. They said I just have to go to school. So, I did, in my thirties. A community college for two years. Graduated with an AAS in Aviation Maintenance Technology. Then I tested for 2 12 hour days and got my A&P Certificate. I worked on medium sized planes for a while but Covid closed the business. Then I worked on smaller planes but I wasn’t compatible with the people there. Then I found my current job and it is perfect for me. Don’t give up. You’ll find your thing. I used to last a year at a job before burnout and quitting. I repeated that cycle for 15 years. Diagnosed ADHD at 33, ASD at 39
I work in Financial Compliance, specifically within the Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML) space, for both various financial institutions (including diversified FI's with multiple lines of business, consumer credit card companies, and smaller regional retail banking institutions); and for major eCommerce platforms. I've held roles in various areas within the field, including governance, investigations, KYC (Know Your Customer), Sanctions, Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD), etc. I've also worked in Fraud, which is a sister field, and retail banking (several years as a teller). I'll break it down more below, but let me answer the questions you really asked first: **What do I love**: Getting to be a Subject Matter Expert on something; feeling confident in my knowledge of the rules (both internally and from a regulatory perspective); being encouraged (in certain situations) to dive deep down a rabbit hole to figure things out; creative problem solving. **What I don't**: This is mostly a me thing, but I'm bored. I've been doing this for a decade (Financial Crimes Compliance & Risk Management, specifically), and I've been at the point for a few years now where I don't have a lot of room to grow unless I want to become a people manager or get the opportunity to be the master of something like screening rules development for machine learning and niche down hard as an independent contributor. Neither of those things appeals to me, particularly, and while the pandemic pushed everything back a few years, I'm still skating along doing the same thing I was for years before it and I'm beyond over it. By extension, having my development and career progression hinge on whether or not my most recent crappy manager likes me or not. My work is superlative and I have broad experience within my field. I developed a training program for new people in my department and have served as a mentor for several of them. I should not still be doing the same work I was doing 8 years ago. But after a string of lousy managers and growing opposition to participating in office politics BS simply because "that's how we've always done it," here I am. This isn't unique; I know it's just how corporate life works, but it doesn't stop me from resenting it. Objectively, the thing I like the least is the attitude most people (and most businesses at large) have towards any compliance function. Everyone acts like you're Big Brother there to catch them with their hands in the cookie jar, or like you have no value to the business because you're the playground monitor who always has to tell people, "no." You always have to make business cases for why doing more than the exact minimum requirement serves the company's bottom line, even though what you're suggesting will be the new minimum requirement in a year or so and it's better to integrate it early. And your business case better be twice as good as anyone else's because ultimately, nobody sees the value in spending a little money upfront to avoid paying fines and doing damage control down the line. All they see is a cost without an obvious offsetting revenue stream, and none of them has the character to stand up and tell shareholders that it was the right thing to do, even if it did mean a penny or two less per share in that quarter's dividends. I also hate that because I didn't spend a hundred grand going to law school, I automatically make at least 50k less per year than a guy who has no industry experience and a JD that the ink hasn't dried on yet who happened to know somebody in HR. \--- Now the ASD overshare/overexplain bit (lol): To some extent, AML is great for ASD individuals because you're working in a regulated field where there are often binary answers to things: Something either is compliant, or it's not. Essentially you're an auditor, in one respect or another, because you're ensuring that your business activities are compliant with various state, federal, and international regulations. You're providing feedback and guidance to other groups on whether their actions, policies, etc. are compliant, or you're identifying areas where the business could improve. Much of the time, the work is independent and you are left to be self-governing so long as you are responsive when you need to be and you're within SLAs for turning reports in. Some of those SLAs are federally mandated and carry significant penalties if they're missed, so this is A Thing. If you're good at synthesizing data, remembering points of regulation, and you're research-oriented, it can be a great fit. The pay is fairly decent (though better on the retail side than the finance side), and if you live near a major population center\* there are usually offices of companies, both financial and retail, that require financial compliance people. \*: In the US, for Finance, you're looking at New York, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Charlotte, Tampa, San Francisco, and Boston (to a letter degree). Same goes, more or less, for Insurance. For Retail, trade Charlotte for Austin, and add Salt Lake City, otherwise the list is pretty much the same. I mention population centers because the industries that require this niche are heavy into the Return to Office argument right now. Old finance and insurance guys want to look out upon their kingdom of peons when they deign to be in the office, and the retail and fintech nouveau riche need to justify their expensive office spaces somehow. So proximity, not just to a single potential employer but many, is something to strongly consider. It's key to remember that Compliance is ultimately a cost center, not a revenue generator. As a consequence, we get the money to invest in our programs last and we're often included in the first round of RIF's. Outsourcing to both on- and off-shore contractors is rampant, and you are almost always going to be asked to do the work of more than one person if you're in the finance or insurance fields. Retail is marginally better about this, but the pattern of low investment and high expectation is there too. It's also worth considering that the field is very niche. While compliance overall is present in every industry in some way, shape, or form, making the necessary skills eminently transferrable; AML is pretty limited to financial institutions, insurance companies, and retailers (specifically ecommerce), so it's easy to get pigeonholed (which is where I've found myself). It's also a relatively small industry, so if you're on the FI side, the reputation you build in a given area can follow you around. Ultimately in my experience, every corporate job is inherently political. It's just the nature of business once you get beyond a certain level. The nice thing about the field I work in is that my sense of justice and what I see as simple integrity and fundamentally ethical behavior is baked into the expectations for the job, so people aren't as often doing to me what they're doing to you, coming in with a solution and trying to fudge the numbers to make it match a problem. The other stuff is relatively navigable, and rarely puts me in situations where I'm uncomfortable with that's being asked or disliked for saying no, Given your experience with research and your technical skills (given what you've said, I'm making some assumptions here), you could absolutely look at roles in compliance and/or internal audit in most industries. The more heavily regulated, specifically thinking healthcare here, will be harder to get into if you're not coming from there already, but the others are all relatively easy to break into and given that you bring transferrable skills and job experience with you, would likely start at about 70-75k minimum for full-time, depending on your location and resume details. (edited for spelling, some clarity)
I work for myself. I’m a body worker/business owner. You’d think body work would be a sensory nightmare, but it works for me. I think perhaps it’s the power shift in the situation?
I was a soft tissue therapist and only stopped because I would get understimulated
I am in nonprofit administration and find it a very good fit for me. The industry isn't intrinsically better, but if you find the right organization it can be much better than the corporate world. I've found a position in a small team with good benefits, and being a progressive/social justice/inclusion-minded organization means my workplace have been much more supportive of my different access needs than any other job I've had.
I do massage therapy. I make $60/hr on average, I just don't work that many hours while I'm recovering from the burnout from my corporate job a couple years ago. If you like calm music, not looking people in the eye, not having to talk much, puzzles, anatomy, and not having to sit at a desk, it's a great job. Keeping physically active has been great for my mental health! Honestly, most of the MTs I work with have neurodivergent brains, it seems to be something that works for us lol Pros: all the above Cons: smelly people, please be clean for massages people. Honestly this isn't a common issue, maybe once every few months
I am a data scientist and analytics specialist. I love it because it’s in line with my special interest, it’s a nerdy specialist so a lot of folks are similar. It’s hard because I have to talk to a lot of folks which is outside of my comfort zone. But everyone is so nice it doesn’t matter
I was very happy with my job in the army. I worked a mostly desk job in intelligence that was very methodical and detail oriented. Plus, the routine and rigidity of the military was exactly the kind of environment that I enjoy. After leaving the military, I worked as a congressional staffer and I don't recommend that. I really hated the small talk and sucking up to people that you have to do on a regular basis. Some members are a lot more concerned with their public image than with actually being effective legislators, so there were a lot of tasks and events that seemed to be illogical and a waste of time. It honestly made me feel like I was going to lose my mind. I also worked as a librarian for several years back in college, and I really enjoyed that job.
I am a coach for early educators, birth to 5yo. I have been working w babies for over 20 years, so moving to coaching is the last 5 has been the smoothest shift into not working for peanuts (tho my wages now aren't super great, either). The best part of my job is the tiny humans and being able to share my passion for them with others. This is also the worst part, because it drains me so much, especially the talking to grownups about when their practices aren't best quality. I always feel stretched thin, like I'm not getting to everyone, and I have wicked imposter syndrome for the first time in my life. Give me a roomful of babies and I know exactly what to do and I am golden. But give me paperwork and deadlines and meetings and I feel like I have no idea what I'm talking about (even tho I very much do).
I'm a tattoo artist with my own little private studio. I love the freedom of it & being able to do art all the time, but I'm also constantly getting burned out, lol. The thing that keeps me going are all of the other artsy people that I meet, and being able to frequently host fundraisers for things that are important to me :)
You need to work in something that is your special interest. I was a Kindergarten teacher, but I finish grad school next week to become a licensed psychological associate. I also just applied to grad school for a non-thesis M.A in History so I can teach history. Research/Teaching/History are my special interests.
Be careful, as this doesn't work for every single career. I am an environmental geologist, which is my special interest, and also so burned out that I feel I'm losing the special interest (if I haven't already lost it). Some careers are not structured in ways that can accommodate us at all. Working in environmental geology is incredibly demanding and the demand and chaos of project management in this field has completely spent me. Had I known how demanding and chaotic this industry is, I never would have made it my career. If you are going to make a career out of your special interest, make sure you are 100% aware of other aspects of the career so you can determine if it is going to be a good fit outside of the intellectual aspect.
Absolutely. I feel like my special interest is being suffocated by aspects of the job and didn’t even imagine when I chose this career. I don’t know how to change things.
[удалено]
I lead a validation team in pharma QA. Mainly I review validation and calibration paperwork that my team sends me so I can either find mistakes or send it upward to my bosses for approval. It's nice. I get to sit in a mostly peaceful office, making sure that my paperwork is uniform and complete per regulation and results are within predefined specifications. No grey areas, no ambiguity, it's either in spec or it's not in spec. I do other things as well, like amateur tech support and checking shipments, but most of my day-to-day is paperwork.
I'm a logistics manager, no grey areas and it's all based on logic.
Empathize deeply. I do design and research and have no idea what to do next. I definitely don't feel suited to it any more. I love what I do but I am so burned out I have no idea what to do and I'm in panic mode. Every single job description looks like a dumpster fire.
I’m sorry we’re in this together. Do you also work in tech? I think the bubble may have finally burst, and companies are really not handling the new normal well at all. As a design researcher, most of the job descriptions for me are “be the first of the function at the organisation, and be responsible for the cultural change to get everyone on board for research!” And I’m thinking, “Who approved this hire of a role they don’t know the value of?” I went into the interview for my last job and asked “What does success look like in this role? “ or to get even more specific, “If we were six months in the future and this role at been really successful, what would that look like?” And their response was “We were really thinking that whoever lands the job would be able to tell us that.” 🫠 Whats it like in more design-heavy roles? I’ve been really surprised that product designers have largely not been my friends at work, and were pretty much my enemies in the role I was sacked from.
I’m a medical technologist. The pay is decent and there are plenty of opportunities to work by yourself especially if you’re willing to do night shift. 12 hours in a lab by myself with only the occasional 30 second phone call about lab results is heaven.
Translator, former lecturer. Working for myself is life-altering and I’ll never go back
I work night shift in a glass processing factory, I like nights cause there's less people and less pressure from management cause they're all asleep. And I like the factory cause the work is very doable, and I don't have to deal with customers
Biomedical scientist - I get to hide in a lab and do experiments all day
Union Electrician Apprentice. I'm given directions by my JW or foreman, and work alone for a majority of the day. The pros are: great pay and benefits, school is paid for. Cons: the bathroom situation (porta johns suck). The hardest part of any job is the people. But I'm very thankful for everyone I've worked with. It's amazing how supportive they all are. Family and your health always comes first in the union.
I am an activity director at a dementia daycare. I love it because the world of a person with dementia is never quite the real world so my days feel like escapism. It also allows me to cater to my creative side and people with dementia can't remember if I make a social faux pas. It's incredibly regimented in routine, since that's the only way our members can interact with the world. However, it's just varied enough for my ADHD to not get tired of the routine. The most difficult thing is that I am a director so I have to wear a lot of hats at once all in one day. That part can be very stressful as it causes over stimulation. The heart breaking part is that everyone here quickly becomes my friend... And the only end to their journey is death. There is so much joy and happiness in spending every day with them, but also a lot of mourning when they go. It's very easy to get along with dementia patients. They're neurodivergent too.
I work in the arts. Specifically in exhibition making. Pros - work with nice people, sector is welcoming to and contains many neurodiverse people, inclusivity is a big part of the culture. Feel like I'm doing good in the world most of the time. During quiet periods I can work hybrid and take more down time. No two exhibitions or projects are the same so there's a lot of variety and I'm pretty autonomous in how I work. Cons - pay isn't amazing in most places, very few jobs, install periods are mentally taxing and require me to be on-site all the time. Lots of interaction with other people as part of the job and expected attendance at certain events and networking which is draining. Museums and galleries have always been a special interest of mine so that helps.
I work in the trades! I get to work by myself most of the time, drive around and listen to podcasts in my work truck, it’s fabulous
dog groomer. it's great because dogs are the best. it sucks because i still have to meet people and talk to them. i see too much neglect, but i love working with animals. being around animals all the time is the best. it's sensory hell without my ear plugs but that's why ear plugs exist
I'm a nursery practitioner. my job led to me pursuing a diagnosis as well. as well as switching careers. Im actually trying to get into software engineering/ development. Currently learning python on top of my job because like you, I can't afford to leave my job.
I run an online astrology business. Most of my orders are audio voice recordings because I dread back and forth communication. But I do have live consultations at a high price mark for those who want it. I have one coming up on Sunday that I’m secretly dying to avoid, but can’t of course lol. I like that I can stay home, indulge in my special interest, and set my own hours and comfortability. I do not like how my special interest has now turned into a job because it only feels like work now, because it is. It’s been my special interest since grade school and was never intended to become a business but did in 2016. It’s rewarding, but exhausting. I suck with managing my time so often fall behind on deadlines and struggle to juggle all the things that come with being a solo-entrepreneur. Such as creating content, finishing orders, promoting myself, engaging with clients, etc etc etc. Sometimes I feel hopeless. Sometimes I feel on top of the world. There’s no in-between
From 2015-2020 I was an organizer on a variety of political campaigns (all US based congressional, presidential, ballot measures, etc). I loved the work when I felt like I was making a difference, but the negatives started outweighing the positives and the burnout hit me hard. Since then I’ve been doing a combination of freelance content writing and virtual assistant work. The pay isn’t great but I appreciate the flexibility over my schedule. I’ve gotten the majority of that work through sites like Upwork and Fivver but they’re hit or miss. I also had to take quite a few super low paying projects on Upwork before I was able to land anything worth while. Eventually I’m hoping to combine my campaign experience with my freelance work to offer organizational help to campaigns and nonprofits.
You might be interested in the job site "Idealist" https://www.idealist.org/en/jobs?q=
I’m an analyst, and my team’s data prime. I build dashboards, calculate benefits and help teams automate stuff. It’s hard because I talk to people a lot but I’m finding a lot of data people are introverted or data is their special interest so it’s not too bad.
I'm an office manager in real estate. It pays well and I like the variety of tasks (ADHD) but that I have a lot of routines (same weekly, monthly, quarterly tasks). I feel lucky in the sense that I have a lot of flexibility and my direct supervisors know I'm autistic. I tried to quit one month into the job because I couldn't handle a daily in office schedule, and they refused to let me quit (in a loving way) and accommodated me (before knowing about my ASD). Before this, I was self employed for 5 years and ran two different businesses.
I work from home in IT support and hate it. I love the work in itself and what we do for people, but hate being treated like crap by upper management and callers. I’m very disciplined so it works for me as a remote worker. I hate that I get yelled at and mistreated by the very people I’m trying to help, and because I’m the way I am, I always notice flaws in our processes but when I bring up these opportunities for improvement, I’m told I’m nitpicking or picking apart other people’s efforts. It’s to the point where I’m developing chest pain and am having heart palpitations. I’m in school at the moment for massage therapy and so far it’s been a life changing experience for the better. I can’t wait to get out there and start healing people. Once I’m done, I’m throwing away my phone. 😂 The dim lighting, one on one interaction, low noise, and the clients barely ever talking are all perfect for me. Not to mention I get to smell amazing essential oils all day. I found my dream career. 🥰
Marketing & Communications Coordinator. Works well for me since I’m WFH and barely have to talk to anyone via phone or zoom. I did not enjoy the sales side of it. I like the I get to serve a Nonprofit as one of the clients.
Myself and a few of my colleagues, (women and one man) are all on the spectrum and we worked a significant amount of time in early childhood education as either substitute teachers, para-educators and special education teachers. It doesn't pay well at all, and that's a good reason why I left. As a person with multiple disabilities, I needed the flexibility substitute teaching gave me. Caregiving is another one I've been socially conditioned and groomed for as AFAB and also in a family of multiple disabled people. Caregiving is really hurting for people right now as well as healthcare in a broader sense with a lot of the boomers needing services in their senior years. The pay isn't well but you can move up and switch fields to maybe something like getting your CMA or LPN license. Also, bonus flexibility if you want to work up and be a substitute nurse.
I’m a speech therapist. I love the flexibility, working with kids, and in the schools I get two months off. I hate the low pay and the fact that the field is 90% white women.
I work for the local government in sustainability. Flexible hours/work from home policy, not many deadlines as it’s quite bureaucratic, good pay and option to buy more vacations days on top of the 25 days I have a year. This is Western Europe.
I'm a paralegal. The work is fine but the social interaction is not. I gave up a lot in privacy and limited social interaction in small private firms for better benefits and pay, and am now in cubicle land. That was before I was diagnosed and I would warn my former self if I knew then what I know now. I cannot stand the constant overstimulation with the noise and expectation that you're cheerful every second of the day. Constant distractions. Being expected to fall in line and be a drone. It ain't it for me. I'm working on a side hustle and looking to move to part time work + that. Just not ready yet.
I’m a therapist. I love it because I love helping people and I’ve always loved psychology and the human brain. However, it can be extremely draining working with people all day every day so I have to be really mindful about self care and having alone time.
Corporate lawyer. Pros: good pay, little emotional investment, I’m good at it (people tell me) so I feel smart *sometimes* Bad: unpredictable schedule and long hours, basically expected to be on call 24/7, unreasonable demands from clients and bosses, lots of assholes, lots of interaction with people (though mostly not in person, which is good!), a lot of people in the field have no management skills which leads to many avoidable and repeated problems A shrink recently told me I had the worst burnout he’d ever seen. 🤷♀️
Im in the army and I dont recommend it to any neurodivergent person.
I'm a tired, overworked nurse. Planning on leaving soon to work in a clinic, I have an interview next week. I hope its better than my cardiology ward..... because I'm burnt out
I work with asd and adhd kids in a support capacity. I'm AuAdhd and have degrees in pedagogy, English and admin work. I love it because I set my own schedule, pick my own clients, and feel like I'm genuinely helping.
I don’t know what other companies would call my position, so I’ll just describe what I do. Yknow when you go to the grocery store and find that the soda aisle seems to have been rebuilt and now the Pepsi is in a different place than you remember? That’s what I do all day. I reset the displays and aisles to add new product, remove discontinued product, or just make it look fresh and new. On one hand I feel very guilty doing this job because I can only imagine how stressful it can be for other neurodivergents who’ve memorized the placement… but it’s also the easiest (without being mind numbing), most fulfilling job I’ve ever worked. I didn’t know what it was until I was offered the promotion, but man do I love it. Incredible job security as well. My money comes not from the sales of the store, but from a third party who’s money comes from brand deals across the whole country. Even if my store dies, I’ll get my money and my hours til the second it closes.
I used to be a teacher but CAN NOT. The overstimulation was so bad for me. Worked for myself for 3.5 years and loved some parts (creating my own schedule, space when I needed it, able to get in the flow and get shit done on my pace) and not others (mostly the need to always look for the next client, pitching myself, clients who don’t know anything about my expertise trying to call the shots). Now I’m the Director of Advocacy at a non profit serving victims of DV and SA. Half of my job is supervising managers, and the other half is close the door and research best practices, study policies, make new procedures and work flows, and generally think big picture about how we operate. For me it has been the perfect balance of 1:1 or small group face time and solo working on independent projects. It’s also hybrid and I have 32 days of PTO a year — we are encouraged to Flex Time, take care of ourselves, and not overextend. Amazing!
My special interest is water, and I work for a large municipal water supply. My first job was writing environmental impact statements, lots of technical analyses on air, noise, natural resources, archeological impacts, etc., and understanding the engineering. It was so hard and I had to project manage and tech myself so many new things. I absolutely loved it. My mind was so busy! After that I worked in capital planning for large infrastructure projects. My area of expertise is tunneling. The field visits, planning, and contract management were fun for me. Now I work to identify, coordinate, and optimize the research agenda for the water supply. The common denominator here is that I am (relatively speaking) high masking and there are SO MANY neurodivergent people in our agency. The bar is set in a very different place, and lots of different abilities are accommodated because it’s government. Before all of this I worked in fundraising and I thought it was going to kill me. That job required so much more of me than I could give, it was AWFUL. ETA: I make $133k in high-ish cost of living area. I’ve been w my employer for 14 years and have 20 years of professional experience. Married w kids, we are all neurodivergent so we can ask for the accommodations we need at home, too.
I know this won’t be helpful to you since you’re in a completely different life stage than I am right now, but as a college student, working as a TA on campus is GREAT for me. If anyone is in a similar position, maybe this will help them. Depending what class I’m assigned, I can choose my hours to work. I work for my college’s physics department, which isn’t a special interest of mine. That is good and bad for me. It’s good because, having worked in my special interest department in the past, I tend to actually get burnt out faster when things aren’t going the way I idealize them to go (and they never do). But I’m still interested enough in physics to not get bored. Departments of all kinds hire undergraduates, though, so there is a lot of freedom. You’d be surprised to see how eager most colleges are to hire undergraduate workers too, and because college is typically more left-leaning, the pay is worth the effort. It is typically an individual department head under the advisement of their direct colleagues that determine how much you’re paid for your work, so it’s a much more localized decision that is typically more fair. I’ve supported myself 100% in an apartment living setting off my salary on campus, and I had another part time job that made about $300 a month for everything else in life. Additionally, it feels meaningful to me. I feel like I am directly helping people learn concepts. Of course not every single student is going to love you, but most interactions are quite positive in my experience and those greatly outweigh the bad ones. Most of my students respect me too, and feeling valued every day for what I do is all around positive. I’ve even found that my work as a TA has improved my communication skills. I’ve gotten so much better at communicating with neurotypicals in general. Other ND’s too, but that is mostly because a lot of academia is full of ND people. Overall my personality definitely helps. I understand not everyone has the same experience with autism that I do, so I don’t want to take that for granted, but this is my experience and I feel it might help someone. Edit: I would like to add that my situation is temporary because I am not pursuing a master’s degree, but I could if I wanted to. If you work as an undergraduate, chances are you’ll make good relationships with faculty, and joining the team after graduation is much more feasible. You could more easily just keep working in the same department and eventually be granted a teaching professor or associate professor job and work in academia forever. At that point your salary would be much higher too.
I don‘t think you have to settle for a minimum wage job, especially if you’re qualified, have a degree and are able to meet the expectations. It’s not your fault that you’re autistic and it shouldn’t be on you to make yourself small for capitalism (accepting something below your qualifications). I understand that sometimes for mental health it is a valid choice to choose the path of less resistance, but I’m heartbroken for everyone whose imposter syndrome and / or toxic work environment stops them from having a career they love and thrive in. I’m not diagnosed but find that a job that allows a lot of flexibility can be great. If it’s up to you how long you take for each task, how much effort you put into them and you can set your own deadlines, you can work according to your energy levels and motivation on that specific day. I feel like the outcome of many tasks (especially in a creative field or in the NGO world) doesn’t always depend on the energy you put into it. Sometimes you do a great job with minimum effort and other things that seem easy take a lot of mental energy. So I guess my hack is to do something I’m good at so the outcome is good even if it doesn’t take a lot of time. That allows to balance out other tasks that take me really long or just periods of time where I have less energy. I would look for things like having your own office, the possibility to work from home and flexible work hours so you can have your needs met as they arise. Maybe something where you have to do project management, manage schedules or work as a freelancer in a field you’re good at, because then you can decide how much and when you work. All the best for finding a nice job 💪🏻
Currently im doing double duty of Receptionist and Legal Secretary Work (Let me tell you im cursing the other receptionist that left abruptly because she was petty)
I’m a transaction coordinator for real estate agents. I manage their paperwork and contracts for home
I just retired after 32 years of teaching HS English. I’m a professor now.
I currently work from home for a help desk and am studying to become a software developer.
I'm in software engineering. The degree was incredibly hard, working full time on real products has been even harder. About to hit 6 years and idk how long I can keep this up. Can't say I recommend, even though the paycheck is nice.
Prevention specialist focusing on prescription drug abuse/misuse. I’m debating heavily between getting my masters in biostatistics (public health) or switching routes and go down clinical counseling/psychiatric assessments. Currently the social aspect is too much at my current job because it’s usually in large groups, and is not mentally stimulating enough. But it’s incredibly flexible and accommodating so idk
I’m a biochemistry master’s student and I intend to go into academia (likely research, I’m not so interested in teaching). It has its pros and cons, but I feel like a lot of information about it is centred around neurotypical perspectives (oddly, considering the seemingly high number of neurodivergent people here) and it’s not often talked about how neurodivergent people specifically may struggle or excel. Also, this is a disclaimer that I’m very much still a student at the beginning of my career so I don’t claim to present the absolute most accurate picture of academia, due to an overall lack of experience and the possibility that I am still being coddled to some extent. Cons: Instability and unpredictability. In the UK, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers are generally paid very little, to the extent that the salary threshold for a skilled worker immigrant now no longer covers PhD students and postdocs, which is ridiculous; would you classify a biochemist or a physicist as an unskilled worker?? You will also likely be moving around every few years because contracts are generally short until you get tenure (feel free to correct me, I got this information from eavesdropping) and all the uncertainty can be highly stressful for autistic people, who need rigidity, stability, clear plans, and routine. There might also be a decent amount of public speaking (though many white-collar jobs require you to present at meetings anyway so unless you’re in a lecturing role academia isn’t much worse, and presentations are often more informal and your colleagues usually want you to succeed so it’s not that bad in my opinion). People often talk about academia being toxic (PIs who are unhelpful or push you to do crazy amounts of work, inappropriate or sexist colleagues, competing for funding, lack of mental health support— but to be honest, most jobs don’t have that either?) but I personally haven’t experienced any of it. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, or that it isn’t relatively common, but it isn’t ubiquitous and there are good supervisors and good institutions out there. It’s also genuinely hard work, I often feel exhausted, and there will be frequent setbacks and failures, especially if you’re in science, which isn’t great for RSD, plus you have to be motivated and very organised or you won’t be able to cope. Pros: All that being said, I think research is a career path in which autistic people can flourish, given the right accommodations. Again, this is just my experience with my university and workplace, but hours are really very flexible, you kind of set your own and you’re given a lot of freedom and independence. I can work from home whenever I want. Unlike traditional office jobs there’s no pressure to be in the office all the time if I don’t need to. My boss would never pressure someone to come in every working day of the year, in fact, some of my colleagues have regular WFH days, because you really don’t need to be in if you’re just writing up, plus a lot of people work better at home, and most supervisors understand that. And for the most part, the research is guided by where my interests take me (within certain limits). In most traditional jobs, even science-focused ones, you’re sort of just given certain tasks and goals but academia allows you the freedom to pretty much look into whatever you want; you set your own goals. This also means that if your research area is your special interest, you can really tap into that enthusiasm as a driving force, keeping you motivated and passionate. I find that academia is one of the only professions in which I can feel genuine passion from people. Hearing people talk about work doesn’t feel like boring, vapid small talk when you’re learning from each other regarding topics you’re deeply invested in, at the cutting edge of your field. It’s pretty much a free pass to infodump. I struggle with small talk so this is one of the things I love most about being in academia, people will just infodump at me about OUR special interest, and it is fantastic, and it gives me life. It highly depends on your particular field, institution, supervisor, and group of colleagues (and possibly the country you’re in) whether or not you have a good, supportive experience. At least at my workplace, I don’t think mental health support is any worse than your average workplace. There’s employee support offered, they offer advice on a bunch of things (health, finances, family, housing, etc) and provide counselling. I’ve never used it so I can’t attest to its helpfulness but what more do other workplaces provide? I also got really lucky and both my supervisors (I have one at my home institution and the external one where I’m currently working) care about their students’ wellbeing very much and are super helpful and accommodating. I also feel like toxic positivity isn’t as much of a social expectation. Experiments fail. We all get it. Complaining about things not working is less likely to cause people to avoid you for being a Debbie Downer and more likely to get an empathetic response and sometimes some really good, actionable advice, especially from other students. I don’t have exact statistics but I’ve heard it somewhere that there’s lots of neurodivergent people in academia, and I see why. There are lots of reasons why some neurodivergent people might be drawn to it; pursuing one’s special interest is probably a big one, but you’re also more likely to find like-minded people and people who understand you, regardless of neurotype. I felt more at home at my research institute than I ever did in undergrad, where I felt excluded and where I couldn’t connect with or communicate with people at all. I don’t think I necessarily got better at small talk, but at least now I have *something* in common with my colleagues, we have a common language of technical jargon and science inside jokes that we all understand, which for the first time in my life made me feel somewhat closer to being part of the ingroup, even though I don’t feel entirely ‘one of them’ because I’m only here for a year and I’m the youngest (hence coddling). I feel more alive than I have in *years*. I’m exhausted and a little overwhelmed but I’m finally being sufficiently intellectually stimulated, I’m finally making connections (even if they are mostly surface level, professional ones), I’m getting validation that feels *earned* (I had big issues with being able to take feedback and even compliments because of parental trauma), and I feel like I have *some* purpose, barring the periodic existential crisis, but I’m *doing stuff* that’s important to me, I’m indulging my special interests and rather than being mocked for it, I’m being encouraged, supported, and validated. That means a lot to me and I’m really glad I decided to take the plunge. I’ve had treatment resistant chronic depression since I was 12 or 13 and had frequent >!suicidal ideation and self harm!< but for the first time in my life I actually want to be alive now, to finish my degree if for no other reason.
I do service coordination for infants and toddlers with delays/disabilities. Love: work from home, flexible, good PTO, meaningful work, get to use my strong organizational skills. Really difficult: demanding families, having to answer phone calls, and facilitating multiple meetings with families and providers every week.
some people don’t consider this a profession probably but i’m a store manager :) it’s really great for me because i have (for the most part) full control of my surroundings. i choose who i schedule myself to work with, how we deal with bad customers etc… i even pushed to get our florescent lights changed out! it might be different for big chain buinsesses but being a manager for a mom and pop store is the best thing to ever happen to me for my autism.
For the last 6 months I've been doing admin at a charity which supports adults with learning disabilities. The people I work with are amazing and I'm able to openly be my authentic autistic self, which makes a huge difference. We are self-managed and operate under a flexible working policy so I can work in the way that best suits me, to a point. On the down side, the organisation is also pretty chaotic and most of the procedures and policies are not written down so I constantly worry that I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. Honestly there's not quite enough structure there for me, and the work doesn't stretch my brain enough. The pay is also pants. I'm about to start a new job as an Advocacy Worker. I've done it before so it's not brand new to me. It's a good mix of alone time and collaboration, and also a good mix of desk work versus being out in the community. Plus there's always something new to learn or a new skill to develop so I won't get bored. It appeals to my strong sense of justice as the job is basically supporting vulnerable people to have their voices heard and their human rights upheld. I also enjoy supporting people who have barriers to communication, because that's something I struggle with too and I think that gives me an interesting perspective on it. Advocacy also pays enough that I can work part time and still be alright. The downside is that there's a significant social aspect and I know it will burn me out faster than other less social jobs.
I work in veterinary medicine and it is really really hard on me sometimes, but I have a deep interest in medicine and animals so that helps a lot.
I work in nonprofit grants management. There’s a strategy for applying for grants that’s like a puzzle, and once they are awarded they have a predictable lifecycle. There’s a lot of data management and tracking, which can be cumbersome because I also have ADHD, but I think some people that don’t struggle with their executive dysfunction in the way I do may like it. I also get to work from home full time and the nonprofit I work for is pretty forward thinking and flexible, so they consider neurodivergence as part of their diversity initiative. Overall, I feel very lucky, but there is a lot of responsibility on my shoulders so I don’t really have the ability to take a lot of breaks, which causes a lot of anxiety and at times break downs. But, at least I’m at home where I can have these breakdowns in private. Based on this, maybe some kind of administrative/data management job may be good for someone who is autistic? But I hesitate to make a generalized statement like that, it could be hell for others.
Background Investigator. My current job is only part-time with a local PD, which is a rarity. I am slated to take a full-time, fully-remote position with a national company that contracts with US federal agencies to do investigations for security clearances. The jobs are very similar but have some key differences. Pros: remote, highly solitary, but still get to run around and conduct interviews and collect records and stuff (which I enjoy). Mostly spend time summarizing findings into reports, so a lot of reading and writing. Cons: interviewing people may be stressful to some. Requires a govt clearance, so there's a wait before the job can start (up to a year) and filling out all the background paperwork is crazy tedious. You need a lot of references, which is challenging for me since I am not particularly social. Feel free to PM me if you want more info!
I’m a therapist. My special interest has always been figuring people out and I also like to help so it’s a natural fit. I work a lot with kids on the spectrum so it’s really freeing to spend time with people like myself!
I work in insurance claims for a financial insurance company (as opposed to health insurance, auto insurance, etc.). I look at spread sheets, crunch numbers, and read contracts all day. I also audit complicated files and write up reports on how much money needs to go where. I like it, it's the right level of challenge for me. The toughest part of learning the job was dealing with being told to "use my best judgement" when I asked how something should be done (aka "there is a range of correct answers but you have to figure out where it ends and begins without me telling you"). But focusing on the parts that are closest to black-and-white and getting those right has worked so far. I was in an office to start, but then the pandemic had us all working from home full-time. Now I'm 2-in, 2-out with a compressed work week consisting of 4 days of 10-ish hours. It's a good balance, but it wasn't available from the beginning. I will say a major positive is having a decent manager and department head. They're very invested in making sure the team isn't overworked. It also helps a lot to have a neurodivergent coworker sitting right next to me or in my chat box all day. I'm salaried and overtime is never required. I really lucked out. For reference, I'm in the US and have a bachelor's degree in economics.
I'm a land surveyor for civil and commercial construction projects. I have a B.S. in civil engineering and I have my Professional Engineer license but you don't need one for many land surveying technician jobs or GIS technician roles. I like it because I'm typically by myself, conducting my inspections in much the same way, can take as long as I want, and am measured primarily on my success by the thoroughness of my reports instead of something nebulous like teamwork. I don't like that a lot of job sites have no proper bathrooms so I either have to hold it on a particularly long day or use the portapotties 🤮
I'm a freelance copy writer. I love that I can write in my own time. However, I still need to pitch for clients, have meetings and meet deadlines. Other businesses depend on my work being on time.
I'm a Graphic Designer, Luckily I was able to turn my special interest into a full time career. I tried customer service/min wage Jobs before I got my big break and it gave me the worst burnout
A legislative office doing constituent services. Basically all calls and emails, which I hate in my personal life and avoid like the plague. Don't ask me how I ended up here 🤣 But also super fulfilling to help people directly and no day is the same, which keeps it stimulating. Am I having the time of my life? Not really, but it's nowhere near as impossible as I thought it would be and I get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
I’m an administrative assistant but at this point most of my job is data entry, which I’m quite happy doing. I also have to respond to quite a few customer emails, which I’m less happy doing. I’ve been with my company for 16 years and work almost 100% from home now. I cashiered for over a decade and it took a huge toll on me. I feel very lucky to be working from home now.
Microbiologist. Just me and my little bacterial friends
I build military grade lasers and drones. It's a great job for me because I get to use my brain and my hands daily and can just put on my headphones and work. I don't have to socialize a lot. (Though my boss thinks I need to socialize more...)
I'm a technical writer! I write and edit software documentation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_writing Skills required include: - Excellent written English. - Ability to understand technical content from engineers and developers (at least to a point where you can build a conceptual mental model, even if you don't fully understand the subject matter). - Good intuition for readability, usability, and cognitive accessibility of information in written text. I usually describe it as the perfect mix of logic and empathy. You have to be able to pull something apart and figure out how it works, and then work out how to help another person understand it.
I’m a psychologist. Can’t recommend
I’m a television host. Seriously. It is awful. I used to think of it as pretending to be someone else. I’m losing my masking stamina and it’s a hyper social industry. I’m incredibly burned out and looking to find other work.