Thus you can often find communities of people with disabilities who understand the problems and the people from the outside who offer insulting and simple solutions to the problems.
As soon as someone falls from group B into group A the problems stop becoming simple and easily soluble though.
In reality, it's something like "they don't understand the problem space", which includes not just not understanding the problem itself, but also understanding the history, context, and realistic daily details of the problem, and the real or imagined blocks that are created by personal philosophy, mindset, and psychology, plus the impact of relationships, biases, etc...
May I suggest the book "The Innovators Dilemma". Sometimes people who don't understand the problem manage to solve it in a much better way.
https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies-Manag...
This.
And not just for personal problems. I have a rule when I start working in a new place to not offer any real criticisms or unsolicited advice for the first year. This is because it's very likely that my advice is too naive and is coming from a place of being ignorant of some aspect of the work that is the reason why people are doing something "wrong" in the first place. Being there for a year is enough to clue me in to those hidden variables so that I can make recommendations that have a chance of being useful.
Even if there are good reasons why things are how they are, you'll find out much faster why. Contrary to when interacting with people where advice is often simply not wanted, you are pretty much paid to treat an organization's problem as your own. Sometimes problems persist because people simply have stopped caring about them.
I think the most common reason might be toxic or ineffective management, fighting their own problems, real or imagined. Newcomers should read the room whether that's the case as fast as possible since in that case offering "solutions" could indeed be counterproductive or outright dangerous to one's career.
This. I am currently facing such a problem having very recently joined a new company. They recently had a very expensive incident and would like to not repeat it. I was handed an analysis task for the system that caused the incident with the expectation for me to make recommendations to improve the reliability. And, so far, my recommendation would be to refactor/rewrite large chunks of it (reduce cyclomatic complexity, greater test coverage and from the perspective of use cases, strict exception handling, fully documented state chart with all transitions validated, etc). When I gave a status update on my analysis that isn't finished yet, my manager was concerned that I would recommend exactly what I am going to recommend.
So now I am kinda stuck. Do I openly say exactly what they don't want to hear even if I was tasked to do exactly that? Luckily, I don't really give a shit about "career" nonsense, I am too old for that. But at the same time, I do want to build credibility and social capital in this org. My experience in building highly scalable, resilient systems says that the current implementation is sub par, and it shows with amount of break-fix work the team is constantly doing. I don't really want to be Cassandra and say "If you don't do this, the risk of another catastrophic error is really high". And I don't have enough data or time in the org to know what kind of persuasive arguments tend to find sympathetic ears.
So I have to gamble a bit, follow my principles, and honestly explain why their system is shit, in palatable terms, and hope they don't give me the boot.
It is stressful and I hate it.
They absolutely can, and I make note of my thoughts during my early employment so I can revisit them once I'm more familiar with the context that things are done in.
I wait, though, because it's more effective to bring these things up once you're no longer so green. If my criticisms are legitimate, I can refine them to better match the circumstances in the workplace and so be of greater usefulness. Also, nobody likes or listens to the new guy telling everyone how they're doing everything wrong. The (legitimate) defense is "you don't understand the big picture". So I like to get the big picture.
None of this is to say that I keep completely silent. I'll totally question my colleagues about things that look off to me. I just won't press about them or push for change until I am standing on more equal ground.
But this changes depending on the nature of the employment. I've been talking about being a permanent employee. If I'm a temp or contractor, I am much more vocal about this stuff because very often, that sort of thing is what the company hiring the contractor is wanting.
I find it odd to immediately distill this down to "group A with disabilities" and "group B without". Both groups have problems, maybe just different ones. I also don't see what is insulting about making a sincere attempt to help, whether it ends up being helpful or not.
It's often the grown-up equivalent of a child learning about a longstanding religious conflict and offering "why don't they just all be friends instead" as a solution.
It's the equivalent of people wanting to escort you across a road without getting run over. They don't think you're capable of understanding the risks of crossing a road.
Or giving someone in a wheelchair tips on how to walk normally.
Or your completely tech illiterate grandparent telling you how to write code. (Yes, this has happened to me.)
A lot of people I've dealt with have no interest understanding the problem. They just want to do the easy thing that feels good to them. When what they expect doesn't happen, they feel bad and expect me to make them feel better.
Similarly, this pattern always happens around food. It's not uncommon I can't eat any of the food at a social event. I'm used to that and I'm not bothered by it. But everyone else feels bad for me and decides to tell me so. No matter how much I say I'm fine, they keep apologizing because they feel guilty. Of course, I can't tell them to stop making their feelings my problem.
Being vegetarian seems to generate this problem.
I guess there is also a distinction to be made between problems to be solved, and currently acceptable, non-problematic situations where you receive unsolicited advice on how to improve it.
1. I didn't ask for it.
2. They didn't bother to understand the problem.
3. Now I am socially obligated to talk to them.
4. I have stop everything I'm thinking about to figure out how to respond to them in a way that doesn't make them feel bad.
This seems grossly unfair to me. Social norms that don't come naturally to me. They are allowed say anything they want and I'm not allowed to reject it.
Frown, and walk away while they’re talking.
Or
Deeply analyze why they’re wrong and they know it. In front of them, where they can hear you do it.
You’ll get hate, but what else is new?
You could also just lie, say ‘oh that’s good advice’ and then ignore it like most normal people.
Or, figure out what painful personal failure they are trying to warn you about from their side, with no real solution they’ve been able to figure out. And see if there is some lesson you can learn from it.
Wait, am I giving unsolicited advice now?
I understand what neurotypical people feel but I am unable to predict it without logical analysis.
Thus,
I fully understand social norms but I am not capable of following them in realtime.
Absolutely none of your unsolicited advice is even remotely useful to me because my current strategy of building logic trees and memorizing appropriate responses is far superior to anything you suggest. :P
You're not happy, because you're here complaining about it. So perhaps it isn't as superior as you want to believe? QED.
(As someone who does the same sometimes, like apparently right now. Sorry.)
I am not happy I have to play by social norms. However, playing by those norms is the optimal solution in maintaining important relationships with people I care about.
Why do you care about relationships at all except for your short/long term emotional needs, safety, etc?
Because #2 then is not actually optimal or perfect then for that stated goal, correct? It isn’t playing to social norms.
#3 and #4 tend to produce better outcomes in that sense. And #4 also can provide useful contextual information on a person, which is necessary for having a real relationship with them.
So isn’t hating these kinds of interactions, actually hating the difficulty you have in meeting emotional/relationship needs naturally? Instead of having of do exhausting rational work all the time while emotionally disliking (or even hating) it for reasons that are nearly impossible to see?
And this discussion is me demonstrating that. Because now you hate me, eh? But not because I’m wrong. But because it’s a truth you don’t know how to change or make better, and for which knowing makes it more painful - as it strips away the comforting self image.
Interestingly, despite what folks say, this also appears to be why a lot of people get so angry when someone offers unsolicited advice.
Because it’s often a solution that could work, if it wasn’t for the problem they had that they can’t seem to fix - because it hurts too much even seeing it.
Because I care about people as people. They have their own lives. Their existence isn't defined by their utility to me.
I just can't instinctively navigate verbal communication and social norms. I had to learn everything through logical analysis, which is very slow and difficult to apply in real time.
It's no different than if I had a significant speech impediment. My dislike of social norms is solely due to the barriers it creates to communication.
And no, I don't hate you. I'm just frustrated with the assumptions you're making.
Personally, I’ve found EMDR to be helpful to reconnect, but it’s not an easy road. And it may not be applicable here either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_road_to_hell_is_paved_with...
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To take the emotions out, I had witnessed an interesting exchange a while back.
A startup dealing with removing plastic from the oceans posted on LinkedIn about their work, and highlighted the difficulty of sorting the different types of plastic (so they could be subsequently dealt with appropriately). Their current method was simply humans sorting the plastic manually, by sight.
An LinkedIn acqaintance thought he had a solution for them, and tried to get in touch with the startup. He was gently but firmly rebuffed, and was very upset that the organisation didn't "give him anyone senior" to deal with. His ego was bruised. The funny thing was, the startup was totally correct. This guy is a marketing consultant with (I know) zero domain knowledge of anything related to plastics, recycling, computer vision, robotics, etc. He was just an arrogant guy who absolutely didn't understand anything relevant in the problem space.. and yet still thought he needed to get involved and offer his opinions and ideas.
Was his approach insulting? Not in this case, but potentially so, in more sensitive areas. More than anything, it was a powerful example of the Dunning-Kreuger effect in action. :)
Whether something is insulting depends on the particular interaction and how the recipient of the 'help' feels about and perceives the attempt to help.
I've been learning the importance of consent in any intervention. Without consent, my attempts to help a person may be perceived as an act of taking control, overriding the other person's will.
> Both groups have problems, maybe just different ones.
So my problem might be a lack of perspective that is characteristic of privilege, and their problem might be me; sincerely, innocently & naively making their situation worse.
There's an old H. L. Mencken quote:
"There’s always an easy solution to every human problem; Neat, plausible and wrong."
And another one of my faves:
"The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake."
This is called [The Dunning–Kruger effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect).