Smock Blogs

I once had seven interview rounds over four months for an integrator job. For those of you not familiar with startup speak, an integrator is an admin on HGH, someone who in theory has some authority, but in reality is just there to make sure the Visionary (I swear to God that’s what they call themselves) doesn’t fuck it all up.

Not quite a Chief of Staff, not quite a secretary, and not on steroids because again, not much by way of authority.

Hard to swing your weight around when they haven’t given you much weight in the first place.

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So, no, not the kind of role that one would associate with multiple rounds of interviews, and ultimately I didn’t get the job because I was told that the length of my answers meant that some of the interviewers didn’t get to all of their questions.

Which I knew was bullshit, because if there’s one thing I’m good at masking, it’s the impression that I can be concise.

Even when it comes to my special interests, because after decades of seeing people’s eyes glaze over, I know how to stay on point.

Because they couldn’t tell me what most neurotypicals really mean when they come up with non-actionable feedback: something about us neurodivergents just doesn’t add up, and because legally they can’t say that, well, then, let’s go with answer length.

Here’s the thing, NTs: some of us on the spectrum know when we went off the rails.

We can tell you the precise moment you decided on us, and still kept putting us through the rest of the hiring charade, because that’s the only way you know how to operate.

You have a script, and you stick to it, which is one of the things that drives those of us on the spectrum so nuts, that you continue with the silliness well past the point at which it made any sense to do so.

They didn’t hire me because my answers were too long, they didn’t hire me because somewhere in interview three or four I was asked about areas I could improve, and I mentioned emails.

Because I’d once gotten the feedback that my emails were too abrupt.

Which I heard as, “You strip out all the unnecessary greetings and other nonsense and get right to the point.”

In other words, I didn’t hear it as criticism, but my Real Boy module kicked in and realized that’s how I should take it, so thinking I could continue to operate somewhere with the rest of the NTs, I took that to heart and modified my email communication accordingly.

I told my interviewer this, that I now made it a point to ask how their day was going, to mention something we’d talked about, because I realized that was critical to maintaining good relations with my peers, somehow.

The interviewer then asked, “But you don’t really care about how their weekend went, right?”

I laughed, thinking we were on the same page, went, “No, I really don’t, but somehow other people need to hear that, so I’ve made that adjustment.”

Yeah, heard it as soon as I said it, and in his rapid writing in response to that question on the Zoom call.

Here’s what makes that so infuriating: even the normies know that email communications are bullshit.

That the accessorizing of the message is more often than not just some passive aggressive way to make it look like you give a fuck about how Connor’s tee-ball game went, or whether Kari was any good at her ballet recital, and then we’ll layer something on top of that to make us seem more polite and engaged, and hit send.

Being neurodivergent means a lot of things are harder to do, but this is one of the toughest: because I know that the NTs know in their lizard brain that email greetings and their ilk are a waste of time, and they’re like headrests in a car: you don’t notice that they’re not in the movie until someone points it out.

But there’s something tickling your skull that tells you this isn’t “right” somehow, that this email that just gets to the damn point isn’t how this is supposed to work, that’s not how the song goes, and so when you come across an email like that, you know its author isn’t playing from the same set of rules, and we can’t have that, can we?

So you come up with something more quantifiable, something more tangible, hopefully, that you can put down on the form as a reason why you’re not picking me this time around.

And in the end, it’s like all the other times, from kickball through that work promotion to now, another in a growing pile of non-actionable feedback.

If I’m learning anything on this journey of self-discovery that comes with a midlife autism diagnosis it is this: despite my inherent privilege, there will always be something that holds me back, and that’s this big dumb brain.

And maybe it’s time to stop trying to make that brain work in a way that’s going to be acceptable in a neurotypical world.

I already know that I’m not for everyone.

Still trying to figure out if I’m for anyone.

Stay tuned for my upcoming course: How To Email Like A Normie.