Q&A: (if interested) Autistic in PE
Hi guys:
I've been using this forum a lot and happy to give back. I'm austistic (diagnosed as an adult as "moderate") and have been working in finance / PE thus far. Happy to share any experience and answer any questions, especially for those who've wondered whether they are autistic/ are also diagnosed.
What are the best things a manager can do to help create a better working environment for someone with autism to thrive?
Thanks for the interest, here are some of my answers
During my younger years (teen + first few years of working), I had trouble with politics and getting around certain difficult senior people. While this is probably a very common challenge, it was harder for me to navigate esp. around the hidden rules of hierachy. Ironically, it has gotten better as I got older as I now just analyze it like a scientific environment and navigate it that way, instead of the more organic and intuitive way my peers use.
Yes, I think it ironically allows me to be a better investor but it makes it harder for me to advance (see points on politics) untill I actively managed it. Investing is filled with people who have no ability to hold their own thought and are just there to execute / repeat what important people say. To be good at investing in terms of how you think is not the same as being able to advance though, given how mature the industry is today.
Manage your situation actively. Accept what you are. Left unmanaged, your challenges will occur over and over again, but if you approach it proactively, you can turn it intto an advantage
I think it depends. I enjoy it less than my peers who are naturally very good at politics (blood thirsty about it even), as it's hard for people who can't see emotions clearly to navigate these waters. I enjoy it more than my peers who are naive - at least for me I never think of people as good or bad, just how they are incentivized, so I have less issue with negative people than some of my peers who react strongly to assholes
I wanted to put it out there, see if there are others in similar situation, as I think people with autism (esp. after they realize they have it) often question whether they can "make it" in relationship-driven jobs such as PE. I'm not at a place where I know the answer myself, but I think if managed proactively, and after you start to analyze people/relationship like science, it will get better at least for your own experience
it's interesting you bring this up, it actually doesn't bore me out but I find it painful, as I don't see emotions as well as most people do (in the normal range). However, I think of people like complex machines with this thing called emotion that kind of operates in logical ways, although the logic is often invisible and there are no books that document how they actually work. So I actually use a combination of reading, observation + data gathering, thesis formation to get my own understanding of how people may react to things (since I can't do so naturally) and use what happens later as my "experiments" to verify my thesis. in that way, it's difficult, painful, but also interesting. hope that helps!