There is no right or wrong here. Asking the engineer to "think logically" in terms of how what they're saying might be interpreted is stupid. They are autistic, and you cannot reasonably expect them to do the exact thing autism prevents them from doing.
Asking the manager to try to understand is probably more efficient, but the manager might be geared to think the engineer is adversarial already, possibly because of demeanor, or past experiences getting similarly confused. In this case the manager is probably more able to reason logically that their counterpart is autistic and is probably genuinely asking, but that is not a default, and probably requires some diversity training.
Isn't that exactly what the author did, at least in the React discussion? They tried to establish what potential benefits the manager hoped to get from the React rewrite. It was the manager who immediately gave up on the discussion, not the author.
There are different ways of asking the same question, with different subtext. He could had started, for example, by saying "We should analyze how our checkout page's performance could improve if we switch to React". This way he would be able to ask essentially the same questions he intended to, but without accidentally implying that the switch is undesirable and unnecessary.
Now, someone working with someone with autism should understand they have trouble with this kind of subtext, and give them more leeway. But most people don't know how to do this, as they're not used to such interactions.
If anything, and I probably glossed over it too quickly, I do spend a lot of effort being very candid and open and agreeable when having these discussions, because it is so hard to make sure our intents and definitions are aligned. We can be talking about checkout and react and then after 2 h realize that we actually both care about better conversion of mobile users, and now we are talking and can put the react decision into context.
I wrote this article about these situations: when my approach breaks down and I get blamed for not accepting being wrong, yet I’m actually trying my best to avoid exactly that.
For someone having autism, this may be impossible. If they are open about their autism, one could argue that the manager should be the one trying to see the topic from two sides.
One may also need to come up with a shared understanding where the manager has a way to inform the autistic person more explicitly what to do than they would another person (who would get the subtle hints).
This can be pitched as a way for the company to accommodate for having an autistic person on the team (as opposed to firing or not hiring them), in other words that the manager would do this as a way to support the employee, not to be abusive.
But in this case an obvious solution might be to do what your manager suggests simply because he is your manager.
As a non-autistic person I don’t find it difficult to voice my concerns about a particular course of action and then do it anyway if that’s what the boss wants. (I realize the sticking point is “voice my concerns” — doing that in a manner that doesn’t come off as confrontational or undermining can be hard.)
That is career suicide (unless you make sure to get it in writing every single time).
As a knowledge worker you are paid to not just be a yes man automaton, you are paid to evaluate and push back as needed.
Why would you ever expect your managers to trust us if you don't trust them?
Like changing a framework for an already fully working product, just to have done it.
You don't want to end up holding the bag for that choice when they claim you said it would work when it invariably overruns.
But in an interaction between an engineer and a manager, anything less than voicing your concerns is an abdication of responsibility. If the manager switches off at the first expression of concern from an engineer, then I imagine that's a team that's bound to failure.
Jump ship.
I hope more Autistic and non-Autistic people don't put up with this kind of argument. I'm sure most people have an example of a manager making a technical decision (many times due to ego) and being wrong and then the engineering team has to clean up the mess. There should at least be room for discussion which in the example given, the manager does not seem to be interested in.
I'm sure most people have an example of making a technical decision (many times due to ego) and being wrong
And then, there is a lot of difficulty for the non-neurotypical to see anything beyond their "literal place on the totem pole", or their title. They lean on their experience to say what is right or wrong, even though they have far less context and the IC is trying not to ruffle feathers or hurt people's feelings.
If someone is hired into a manager position they cannot perform well for such reasons, a healthy organization should either modify their role or let them find another job.
People with such conditions MAY also be able to learn about their own limitations, and avoid seeing such positions in the first place.
Then there are those who can be quite successful as managers, despite such challenges, either due to side-effects of their systems-oriented thinking or for unrelated reasons. Such people may be difficult to be around, and may require some quite robust people as direct reports, but if the value they generate is sufficient, it may still be good for the company.
The whole point of the article is to provide the perspective of the Autistic. Why are you assuming "There is no attempt to see the other person's perspective"? Why are you demanding the subject of the article be about what you want it to be or for it to cover the other side of the interaction? There are certainly interactions where there is a misunderstanding on the side of the non-autistic and that is what this article is attempting to provide insight into.
I can totally understand why his manager got frustrated by this.
I didn't read them as "gotcha" questions. They looked like straightforward and sensible questions. I wonder if the manager was expecting some kind of kickback, and was braced to be adversarial. Perhaps there's some history here, between author and his manager.
Again, I fully acknowledge that a React rewrite could very well be a complete waste of time and effort in this scenario. But his manager obviously thought it could be worthwhile, or he wouldn't have asked about it.
"A manager came to me asking if we should rewrite the checkout of our E-Commerce platform using React... in order to make an informed decision, I needed to understand a few things: ... Why do they think a technology change is a solution? Do they understand the implications of such a switch?"
What problems such a switch might solve and what the implications are is what the manager is asking you. Why would you direct exactly those questions back to them?
The author only got to ask one question before he was shut-down: why do you want to do this?
That's not a criticism, it's a completely reasonable question, given that rewriting something using React is going to be expensive, and might introduce major new risks. Maybe author asked the wrong way, or in the wrong tone of voice.
If it were my manager, and he was proposing that I rewrite something that works fine in a new language, and I had real work to do, then I think my question "Why do you want to do that?" might come across as angry - because I'd be angry.
I am curious how these are gotcha questions? To me they are the proper questions to ask, as a manager, they probably don’t care about react or vue or any other framework, they care about conversions and revenue and other metrics. That’s exactly what I want to understand, so that I can contextualize and see if React might or might not make sense.
Reasons why React might actually make sense, to show I didn’t just cherry-pick this as a “well duh obviously it’s stupid”:
- we use shopify as a backend, and they published a nifty new react checkout widget that we could replace our convoluted checkout with - all our web developers are actually coming from react, and hate the current jquery mess, and really want to change. It would be time-intensive, but team morale would skyrocket, - another department is planning to move to react as well
After a long time in tech, I really have learnt to not really care about technology that much (as you might see in my article about PHP and JS :).
Obviously there are also drawbacks, but you immediately started off from an adversarial position as if it was just a completely off the wall idea. Clearly that's not the case.
The more I read through OP's comments the more I see this as a compensation for the inherent inferiority complex he/she struggles with. Trying to pin this on autism spectrum is just another method of deflecting blame or removing any real or perceived risk.
I suspect some type of trauma where OP felt inferior to others in some way, usually intelligence, especially if they've been brought up in a highly academia focused family environment and were often held in comparison to others.
Ever since that popular Korean drama took off "Weird Attorney Woo Yong Woo" everyone is self diagnosing or trying to use superficial tidbits they picked up to deflect social mishaps.
"It cant be my fault because im on the spectrum" is a trend I am seeing more and more online and this article did a good job of demonstrating but far too many words and irrelevant points.
The problem I think is that you think me asking a question is adversarial, while I'm just... asking a question in good faith. I'm not considering it a completely off the wall idea at all, I want to know why they think it's a good idea, because I don't understand. This is where the autism comes in, I think. You think I'm being adversarial and dismissive, I think I am open and engaged.
I put a tremendous amount of effort into being socially pleasant, but there still are situations where I think I am doing my best to fully engage with the other person, yet there is a whole game of subtext I am not getting. This is very different from me not accepting I am wrong.
I would love to get the subtext, trust me, and I work hard at it. But it's playing a game that I don't have the rules to. Hopefully what I'm writing will help someone just maybe pause, and think, "did they actually ask this question to be dismissive? or do they just ask because they want to help you solve your problem?." Social grace and empathy goes both ways.