nonfiction

“Unmasking Autism” by Devon Price, PhD

January 10, 2023 by Sonia Connolly 2 Comments

Recommended to me by: Sam Livingston-Gray

Devon Price, PhD, is a social psychologist, professor, author, trans person, and proud Autistic person.

The book starts out stiff and academic and a little defensive, citing a lot of facts and figures about being autistic. Gradually it warms up as it describes different people’s experiences with unmasking. The last chapter is a joyful exploration of how we can move toward an inclusive and accessible world for all neurodiverse people, including queer and trans folks and people of color. The book itself is a demonstration of unmasking.

Autism is a developmental disability that runs in families and appears to be largely genetically determined. Autistic brains have more interconnections in some areas than allistic (non-autistic) brains, and fewer in others. Autistic people tend to focus on small details rather than the big picture. Rather than adapting to ongoing stimuli (like an annoying sound), autistic brains find it more and more annoying.

Devon Price discusses other diagnoses that overlap with autism, such as ADHD, PTSD, and being “highly sensitive.” Autism is a cognitive and sensory difference that affects every area of life. People can have sub-clinical autism, not severe enough to be diagnosed, but still benefiting from unmasking and accommodations. Self-diagnosis is an option when formal diagnosis is financially or logistically out of reach.

Formal diagnosis of autism is slanted toward the characteristics of well-to-do white boys, because that was the population under study when the diagnostic criteria were developed. Autistic girls learn more social and masking skills because of the ways girls are given less leeway to be disruptive than boys. Black and brown autistic people have even less leeway and are likely to be seen as criminal rather than disabled at a very young age.

The distinction between “high functioning” and “low functioning” autism is called out as an artifact of Hans Aspergers’ eugenicist and fascist beliefs.

Substance use can be self-medication for sensory overwhelm and despair, and an attempt to facilitate social interactions. When there is less need for masking, there is less need for substance overuse.

The book includes exercises to discover disowned behaviors and the masks that compensate for them. Once autism is fully acknowledged, it becomes possible to choose activities and accommodations that fit better.

Recommended to learn more about autism and the ways autistic people struggle to meet neurotypical expectations. Also recommended for the encouragement to listen to our own needs and build a life that works for us. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if societal resources were put toward making everyone successful by offering the support and accommodations each person needs.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Ask for Horses” by Tina Tau

December 24, 2022 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Memoir of a Dream-Guided Life

Recommended to me by: The author is a friend

This book is both honest and kind. It looks directly at hard times and painful emotions, and maintains enough buoyancy and narrative flow to carry the reader forward without getting mired in pain. It holds the tension between personal autonomy and spiritual direction inclusively, without needing to choose one or the other. It looks tenderly at mistakes and stuck places, holding compassion for younger selves that were doing the best they could.

The included dreams are brief, powerful, mysterious. They are interpreted with gentle curiosity, an eye toward word play, and a willingness to explore new paths. “Dreams tell you something you don’t already know.” There are no fixed interpretations of dream symbols, and the dreamer is always in charge. Other people helping with a dream say, “If this were my dream,” offering rather than imposing interpretations.

The book pulled me through it, and I felt accompanied in some of my own life struggles. Recommended!

Available at Kelson Books and bookshop.org.

“Refactoring” by Martin Fowler

December 10, 2022 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: Sam Livingston-Gray

Refactoring is the art of improving software through a series of small steps without changing how it functions, specifically without introducing new bugs. In an attempt to make it closer to a science, Martin Fowler defines a series of recipes to make safe changes, a series of “code smells” that indicate that change is needed, and adds examples and stories along the way.

I bought the book through my job because I was responsible for a whole menagerie of semi-abandoned applications in varying states of disarray, and I wanted ideas and support for how to improve them. The main benefit I got directly from the book is the idea to take very small steps, and to keep checking whether the application still works correctly at each step.

Indirectly, I got a lot of other benefits. I started a weekly study group where we went over 5 pages or so of the book each time, sharing things we agreed and disagreed with and examples from the code we were working on. In theory people were reading ahead, but everyone is busy and I made it welcoming whether people had read the week’s section or not.

It was hands-down the best part of my job, connecting with coworkers outside of my small group, learning together, and hearing how people were improving their code using the techniques we discussed.

The book’s examples are in Javascript, which made them harder to read for those of us working in Python and Ruby. Those of us who had been programming for years had an easier time with the book than the people who were just starting out. In particular, one person pointed out that it was difficult to tell the difference between unfamiliar programmer lingo and “funny” asides about methods gathering at the water cooler to share gossip.

Recommended for more experienced programmers who want a deeper understanding of refactoring. Read it with a group if you can!

Available at bookshop.org.

“Thanks for the Feedback” by Douglas Stone & Sheila Heen

October 17, 2022 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Even When it is Off Base, Unfair, Poorly Delivered, and, Frankly, You’re Not in the Mood.)

This book is surprisingly clear and helpful. It talks about how to listen for and clarify the underlying message, how to sit with whether some or all of the message is useful, and how to discern when the feedback dynamic itself is a problem.

As Kate Heddleston wrote in Criticism and Ineffective Feedback, women and other underrepresented groups in tech jobs get subjected to a lot of unwarranted and biased “feedback” about being too abrasive and not assertive enough, too friendly and not nice enough, too pushy and not contributing enough. Homa Mojtabai covered the can’t-win expectations succinctly in the McSweeney’s article Reasons You Were Not Promoted That Are Totally Unrelated to Gender.

I was expecting this book to pile on even more unmeetable expectations, but it is balanced and thoughtful instead.

There are three kinds of feedback, appreciation (“that’s great!”), coaching (“here’s how to do it better”), and evaluation (“here’s how you measure up”). Pay attention to which kind you’re getting, and which kind you need more or less of.

First seek to understand. Rather than arguing with everything that’s obviously wrong about the feedback, seek to understand better what the speaker means, needs, and wants. When given generic labels, ask for specific examples and requests. Be open and curious, and also share reactions like, “That’s upsetting to hear.” “That’s not how I see myself.”

Feedback can illuminate our blind spots. None of us can see how we look and come across to others. Feedback can give us information about how others see us, which is not necessarily how we are or intend to be, but is still useful information even when heavily mixed with others’ biases.

“Switchtracking” is starting a second conversation about a relationship (“how dare you bring that up when you…”) in the middle of a feedback conversation. Name that there is a second topic, and keep it separate from the first. The feedback might be a cover for a relationship issue too.

Identify the relationship system – take 3 steps back. 1) Look at the intersection between the two people, rather than trying to make one person or the other “the problem.” 2) Look at clashes in roles. Are roles clear and agreed to by both people? 3) Look at the bigger picture – other people, structures, policies, the whole environment. Looking at systems reduces judgment, enhances accountability (how our choices interact with the system), and uncovers root causes.

Wiring and temperament and past trauma affect our responses to feedback. Some people are more resilient in the face of negative feedback, and require less positive feedback.

Boundaries around feedback are crucial. We get to discern and choose what is healthy for us. Three boundaries: “I may not take your advice.” “I don’t want feedback about that subject right now.” “Stop, or I will leave the relationship.” Some signs that boundaries are needed: feedback attacks character, not behavior. It is unrelenting. There is always a new feedback topic. We can turn away feedback with grace and honesty. When appropriate, problem-solve with the other person around the decision not to change (or inability to change).

In response to feedback, add what’s left out, ask what matters to them, take a step back to reframe when needed.

Cultivate a growth mindset, and make choices about when and how to change. Don’t pretend to change, or make a superficial change when the request is about underlying attitudes. In the face of a flurry of feedback, choose one thing to focus on whenever possible.

Recommended!

Available at bookshop.org.

“Crucial Conversations Third Edition” by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan

September 4, 2022 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Tools For Talking When Stakes Are High

Recommended to me by: my boss

I read this book back in 2013 and decided to reread it when my boss mentioned it.

In addition to my summary in 2013, I noticed more about questioning inner stories. When we assign roles like Villain, Victim, and Helpless One, we close off avenues to potential solutions. When we can see everyone in a situation as a complex human with a mix of skills, past experiences, and motivations, we can see openings for solutions more clearly.

I wrote about a similar approach in 2018 in Offer a Collaborative Story.

Crucial Conversations has an oversimplified approach to emotions. The claim is that emotions are caused by our stories, and we have to change stories to change or quiet our emotions. While it is true that a negative story can escalate negative emotions, overall our emotions are signals about our inner truth. It is a mark of privilege to expect everyone to be calm in a difficult situation. Telling people they are causing a problem by having the “wrong story” can quickly shade into gaslighting.

The book has an extended example where a woman is silenced and talked over by a man in a business context. The message of the example is that we have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and ask them for what we need without regard to privilege, sexism, and institutional power. We all exist in a sexist, racist, capitalist system, and people who act out those biases are not inherently evil. At the same time, putting responsibility on a less privileged individual to manage the situation without mentioning the systemic issues in play is oversimplified and imbalanced. The authors could have mentioned that the situation is stacked against the less privileged person, and that if their techniques don’t work, it doesn’t mean she did them wrong or didn’t try hard enough.

The book contains a lot of ableist and judgmental language. “Dumb” and other slurs are used liberally. Some behaviors are ascribed to “the worst at dialogue” (italics theirs) without noticing that they are failing at their own command to be generous and ascribe positive motives.

This is a recently published third edition. While it contains some useful ideas, I cannot recommend it wholeheartedly because of the shortcomings that have not been addressed.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Manager’s Path” by Camille Fournier

May 28, 2022 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth & Change

I expected this book to be boring, but it’s engagingly written and connects with my experience of working in tech. Camille Fournier writes from her own experience as a CTO (Chief Technical Officer) at several companies and includes quotes from other tech leaders, both men and women.

She starts with mentoring, which almost every technical person is expected to do eventually, and works up through tech lead, manager, director, up to CTO and VP of Engineering. She advises anyone who wants to be a manager of software engineers to spend enough time learning to code (5-7 years) to have those skills solidly available going forward.

I’m a software engineer who has mentored people and led projects, but will not be climbing the corporate ladder any higher. It was interesting to hear about the concerns that arise at higher levels. The need to figure out who is unhappy, why teams are not working well together, who is managing badly, and who might leave suddenly. The need to make good decisions about future directions on insufficient data. The need to develop intuition and keep taking in information to guide those decisions.

As she talks about mentoring interns and managing individual contributors, she includes all technical roles. Her primary advice is that relationships and communication are crucial even though programming might appear to be a solitary technical occupation. Not only do successful projects require communication with other engineers and the manager, they require communication with the stakeholders who say what to build, and the sales and marketing people who help it go out into the world.

She talks a lot about the importance of one-on-one meetings between managers and the people they manage to build trust and address problems early. She recommends skip-level meetings, where a director who manages managers also meets with individual contributors.

In addition, positive relationships are crucial to success in the working world. Not only do they make work more pleasant, they help people collaborate and share information. People who like working together help each other get jobs in the future.

I can clearly see this is true over the 30 years of my career. I built positive working relationships naturally, and I’m still not sure the advice makes sense until one experiences it. It’s not about fake, forced networking with people one doesn’t like – it’s about staying connected and friendly with people one does like to support one another going forward. In school, success artificially depends only on individual actions (although I think kids do more group work nowadays), but most accomplishments out in the world depend on interconnected people building things together.

The pronouns in this book bothered me. Rather than using she/he or they, Camille Fournier switched between using he for some examples and she for others. An intern was he while being described in general, and then she when performance problems came up. After that the pronouns were more even-handed, but I was very aware of them all the way through, braced for women to be portrayed negatively. As far as I remember, they/them pronouns were not used for anyone.

Recommended to anyone who works in a technical field, and especially anyone who wants to become a manager.

Links from the book:
The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman aka Joreen, a classic essay on why managers are necessary.

On Being A Senior Engineer which includes the suggestion to use senior influence to sponsor (rather than mentor) underrepresented people in engineering. Recommend them for positions. Highlight their accomplishments. Praise them publicly. Also refers to What Does Sponsorship Look Like by Lara Hogan.

Available at bookshop.org.