Neurodivergent work
Neurodivergence in knowledge work and software.
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Different minds in the age of average
AI is a regression-to-the-mean engine: the more it mediates production, the more output converges on the modal. That makes genuine cognitive difference rarer and more visible — and neurodivergent minds are a large reservoir of it. A descriptive look at what that means, without the superpowers trope.
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Monotropism, flow, and the real cost of context-switching
Autistic attention is a narrow-but-deep funnel (monotropism), not a deficit of focus. The cost of context-switching is structural, and workplace design that ignores it taxes the people it claims to accommodate.
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Autistic adulthood as infrastructure: employment, housing, and supported autonomy
Past the transition cliff, autistic adults fall out of the pediatric system into sparse, fragmented adult infrastructure. Autistic adulthood is an infrastructure problem — employment (IPS place-then-train), housing (community integration with funded supports), and supported decision-making vs guardianship — with autonomy as the design goal.
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The double-empathy problem lands in your pull requests
Autistic communication friction isn't a last-mile social-skills gap. Milton's double empathy problem reframes it as bidirectional — both neurotypes fail to read each other — and the fix is protocol design, not coaching the autistic person to mask.
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What "neurodiversity at work" programs get wrong: assimilation sold as inclusion
Corporate neurodiversity programs recruit autistic people for narrow roles, measure success by whether they learn to mask, and call it inclusion. Real inclusion redesigns the workplace around autistic cognition, not the autistic employee around the workplace.
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Autistic burnout and the cost of masking, for knowledge workers (not the HR version)
Autistic burnout is a predictable output of sustained masking under a neurotypical-coded work rhythm, not a personal coping failure — and the standard corporate interventions make it worse. What actually helps, drawn from AASPIRE and the masking-cost literature.
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Disclosure in software workplaces, beyond the negativity bias
The biggest study yet of neurodivergent developers (n=493) finds disclosure outcomes are mostly positive — yet the forums that advise them run on negativity bias. Why social motivations beat accommodations, and what that changes for builders and managers.