Thank you for reading. Of course, this is a highly edited hypothetical situation, and not what happened. I try very hard to understand how I can phrase differently so that we can answer these questions and work together. I think in other comments it became clear that the intent of the questions are not the problem. In fact, I am asking them because I trust the manager to have good answers.
Now, if I come across as patronizing and this leads to a negative outcome (as in, no progress is made in advancing the company’s goals), two things can happen:
- I can work at getting better at communication. The last 2 years, better writing has been my main focus, and this article is part of that. Writing good documents has been tremendously effective. It also only goes so far if someone doesn’t want to engage. In this particular situation, I spent the next week studying React (it wasn’t React in the actual situation) reading 3 books on the chapter and building a toy React prototype, and then wrote up what I thought was a concise report on what was good about it, and what was not so good. I don’t think this document was read.
- The manager can actually put some effort into hearing me out, and understand that I am trying my best here. Maybe I don’t know intuitively what words they want me to use for the questions, but it is also not rocket science to take words literally and not look for subtext.
If anything, it is easy because I really don’t care about subtext, or patronizing people. Where is the fun in that, compared to the fun of solving problems.
> it is also not rocket science to take words literally and not look for subtext
Has it occurred to you that just as it is difficult for you to adapt to the communication styles and thought patterns of allistic people, your manager experiences the same difficulty adapting to those of autistic people?
While I believe organizations and managers should try to accommodate neurodiversity and help all types of people be successful in the workplace, it's not unreasonable to expect you to expend some effort adapting as well.
In all your follow-up comments you seem to have some excuse or clarification for why you don't need to adjust your behavior and the problem is obviously that your manager isn't trying hard enough.
When your manager asks a casual question, he is not asking for a formal document describing pros, cons. He's looking for you to make a judgment call, express an opinion, or for you to say "hmmm, I might spend some time this week looking in to that."
Reacting to a two-sentence exchange by spending a week working on a doc is a communication anti-pattern.
Now, if I come across as patronizing and this leads to a negative outcome (as in, no progress is made in advancing the company’s goals), two things can happen:
- I can work at getting better at communication. The last 2 years, better writing has been my main focus, and this article is part of that. Writing good documents has been tremendously effective. It also only goes so far if someone doesn’t want to engage. In this particular situation, I spent the next week studying React (it wasn’t React in the actual situation) reading 3 books on the chapter and building a toy React prototype, and then wrote up what I thought was a concise report on what was good about it, and what was not so good. I don’t think this document was read.
- The manager can actually put some effort into hearing me out, and understand that I am trying my best here. Maybe I don’t know intuitively what words they want me to use for the questions, but it is also not rocket science to take words literally and not look for subtext.
If anything, it is easy because I really don’t care about subtext, or patronizing people. Where is the fun in that, compared to the fun of solving problems.