Is there a position available anywhere in the world where I can simply take an assessment to identify my skills and capabilities, receive assignments accordingly, complete them remotely, and submit them without the need for ongoing communication or visits? I prefer a role that allows for flexible, independent work hours.
I have ten years of experience as a paralegal but am seeking a different type of work that doesn’t require returning to school, interaction with others, or leaving my home. I am highly capable but uncertain about my next career steps and am looking for a more autonomous work arrangement.
Will put a vote in for blue collar work. Since the work tends to have obvious checkboxes that indicate “done”, once your boss thinks you are competent you can pretty much just work on your own. Especially if you work in something like new commercial construction - literally just show up, get a quick run down of tasks for the day, and then you are heads down doing whatever it is you are doing. Maybe you tell someone to move because they are in your way.
Another benefit is that no one expects you to be polite when working blue collar. Of course, this means sometimes the racist shitheads get a pass. But it also means your social foibles will tend to be overlooked. Status in blue collar work tends to be assigned less on social acuity, and more on one’s ability to get the job done quickly so everyone can go home.
Is there a position available anywhere in the world where I can simply take an assessment to identify my skills and capabilities
I’ve never seen a job do this in my entire life. Usually when you do see a job that offers this, they’re doing it just to make sure you’re intelligent enough to read so you can work in a stockroom or do call-center work. The military kind of works this way, but I have a feeling that’s not what you’re looking for.
am seeking a different type of work that doesn’t require returning to school, interaction with others, or leaving my home.
ngl, after many years in the corporate world, this is going to be very challenging to find, after the covid remote-work trend cooled down, these jobs became highly sought after and there is competition for this work.
I don’t mean to be too discouraging here, I just know how rough it is and the reality of trying to work with neurodivergence that makes certain kinds of work really unpleasant and the false promises of the corporate world. You may have to practice some level of radical adaptation to less-than-ideal conditions. Before that though, look for work in logistics, data analysis and auditing, they often have outsourced teams that do pretty quiet, tedious work from home and usually provide training since it’s their own company and custom software.
You could consider getting certified for things that don’t require schooling, tech certs and things like Salesforce specialization allow for a lot of personal freedom, but you will still have to talk to people a lot to get work and design systems to spec. A lot of these jobs might have limited futures though with AI.
In the end, getting the job you want is like getting a loan for a car or something. Just like you have to prove to your lender that you don’t need the loan, you have to prove to your hiring manager that you are in fact social and comfortable in any environment, the very last thing most managers of small remote teams want to deal with is the worry about someone with a health condition who may be unreliable.
Mask up, make calls, pad your resume out the wazoo and start dropping applications everywhere you can. Be aware there are a lot of scams going on where they offer you insane wages for working a few days from home and other too-good-to-be-true offers that are designed to suck in neurodivergent people, be very careful and if anyone, no matter how real and professional they seem, asks you to put up your own money for anything to start, drop everything and run.
Heads up if you wanna work in corporate, its not designed for us and nothing is as straight forward as you might think.
Depends where you are in the spectrum.
Lots of us exist doing data science, writing technical documentation, and programming.
On-going communication is a must though. If not the person, it’ll be your teammates who you trust who can help translate and take notes. No company is going to just give work with zero communication and expect a perfect end result. There’s always communication.
Typically we work in IT or theatre.
Hah. I’ve been involved in more than 60 theatrical productions in my life, and most of my jobs were in some form of IT. I feel seen <3
Lemmy presents, IT the musical. Including such memorable songs such as “PC load letter, what the fuck does that mean?” and…
“All your base are belong to us” and the monologue about the Magic / More Magic toggle.
Who can forget the hit song “I cast magic missile at the darkness”.
or that earworm “manager is an askhole, went with oracle anyway”
Or engineering or nursing
Can’t recommend nursing for neurodivergence. Not in a “you’re not good enough” kinda way. I very much proved that I can. I had to learn a buuunch of new social and communication skills, and I did have to “prove” I could to my instructors and for about the first six months at any new job.
You can absolutely be a nurse with neurodivergence. But whether it’s right or wrong, you’re going to have to put in some extra effort in areas you’re probably not used to. You should first consider whether or not that’s actually worth it to you. That part matters more than people admit.
It also helps that I work psych. I’m doing a lot of communication with people more like me. But that also comes with the downside of a lot of that communication being them yelling at me and trying to hit me. They’re specifically the subset of neurodivergents with more trauma, or in a particularly bad place in their life, and often were never taught the emotional regulatory skills needed to solve problems without doing that (my sister certainly never learned them while we were growing up and I’ve got a permanent back injury to prove it).
Again right or wrong matters very little there. Should someone have gone to the extra effort to teach them not to hit people in ways that they were able to fully engage with? Definitely. Do neurotypicals also sometimes miss learning that skillset? Sure, but it happens less often because more childcare services are designed to teach them those skills than neurodivergent children. Still leaves me dodging punches from auDHD peeps at the end of the day.
That’s fair, I’ve just noticed that a lot of the ADHD women I know are nurses
Masking is the main way sadly. 😕
Masking is the absolute bane of my existence. I can’t bring myself to do it anymore. Burned myself out so much doing it for decades I lost myself. Had to mask at work then had to mask at home around the family. Basically never had even a moment where I could safely be myself without being chastised for doing so.
So now I just don’t. If I’m gonna be uncomfortable either way then I’m not going to waste my fucking energy catering to the sensibilities of assholes who would never do the same for me.
Fuck at home. At home is your castle. But I work with ASD people all the time. I consider myself very patient.
Most people aren’t.
You have to do what you have to do to survive. Unless you’re going to start your own business, you’ve got to adapt to the outside, sad to say.
Guess I’ll just die then. I’ve tried adapting to it and it is literally killing mentally to do so. I’m done adapting to a sick society.
Fuck at home.
Sure. Or maybe at a nice hotel.
;-)
Communication sucks, but no matter what job you do you will need to have some form of communication to someone. We’re a freelance artist and wanting to go into IT or start a record business since we really love retro stuff/physical media. Being the boss of your own stuff makes it easier for us, though we’ve worked in customer service and management for about 10 years (it was horrible) maybe bring your own boss could help you too?
No one is going to pay you a salary for that kind of work. So youre going to have to work job to job or a clock in clock out kind of job. This is going to be more of a freelance kind of position. I dont know how much paralegal work there is by contract. Seems like there would be lots of restrictions around that kind if work that wouldnt lend itself to the gig economy.
I made my interest my job.
Went into IT.In my experience, they work as engineers, engineers or engineers.
“I solve practical problems!”
wouldn’t it be great if our society would help you find a job. I would love some evaluation of skills and given something until you could find something else.
There is vocational rehab which is supposed to help but good fucking luck being approved for access to the service.
most of what we have, at least here in the us, is the equivalent of security theater for employment help.
Can’t disagree, as someone who suffers in the US South.
Getting any sort of help is a pipedream. Once our support systems inevitably fail us, we are basically fucked.
Pretty easily; it’s keeping the job that’s the trick. I haven’t really figured that one out yet.
My brother lost 24 jobs until he found one with a boss who knew how to deal with him. It didn’t help that my mother didn’t raise him properly “because he was special” and basically the boss had to teach him things like dressing properly, personal hygiene, and not buggering off on vacation without giving notice.
Same same. My SO gravitated to a position (producer) that actually allows them to utilize the ADHD traits in their job. Appatently quite a few of the producers in the company have ADHD.
Me, well I come with autistic features among others and the longest I’ve worked in the same place was like 4 years - and that’s because it was related to my special interest and the others working there were spicy as well. Oh and I had a 4-day work week, which seems like the maximum for me from which I can still recover (if the work is otherwise sustainable). Apart from that my work history is just random shit I’ve done for a few months before burning out or part time/gig courier work. I’m hoping to be a part-time researcher part-time mechanic or something like that in the future, I’d like to think that would balance things out nicely.
Oh hey, don’t worry, there aren’t jobs to get anymore. Solved problem!
Look towards working in government in your jurisdiction. In ours, government still permits at least partial work from home arrangements, and has staff support networks, reasonable adjustments and management training for neurodivergence in the workforce. It doesn’t pay private sector salaries but risks are lower.
Depends on the flavor and intensity of ND.
Plenty of ND’s find and keep jobs. Just other varieties have different wiring and tolerances that don’t fit well with what most people do in normal jobs.
A lot of work has shifted to remote, even if some do have office days still, so maybe you can find one that suits your skills that allows that? Even school can be done remote and online, though I do expect that there would be mandatory class meetings.
I don’t know of any jobs off the top of my head that allow someone to be a complete hermit, but maybe someone else can chime in with one.
