Not sure it's flag-worthy. Someone can probably offer a bounty for that if they really want, or if it's the incorrect reason, that's probably not the end of the world either.
@GrayCygnus If the user has been to the chat room in the past one week, then you can @mention them in the chat room, and they would be notified. Otherwise it will just be plain text, and they won't get notified. Moderators can ping any user in a chat room. This is colloquially known as mod-ping or super-ping.
Could some please point me to the right forum or network for general software practice questions? Starting with a new project; no idea how to begin; enterprise packaged software and asked to understand and make development changes.
@vbNewbie Difficult one, and you'd probably need to break any questions down with fairly specific aims. I'd try Project Management and StackOverflow for some pointers.
Technically, it's for the Workplace stack, but there's a fairly broad and informal brush in terms of topics discussed (mostly informal in nature). Most regulars here are in the USA, so things are very quiet at this time of day.
I am a cart pusher at a retail store and only worked there for a year now. I have this lady coworker, lets call her "Linsey", who likes to make my life a living hell. All she do is boss me around constantly which it really pisses me off because she has no authority over me. We barely know each ot...
I'm so deeply immersed in the Gentlemen Bastards books at the minute that I'd probably suggest something along the lines that my unrestrained snark would probably cross into "I hope a shark tries to suck your c**k" territory
it took me about ten minutes to make my comments sufficiently in offensive to post on SE
@jserv ugh.. if only "Jane" was an outlier, her attitude towards autistic people is perhaps a big more aggressive than most but the core opinions are depressingly common
<sigh /> I understand why the "animal" part of a human's brain finds autistic people unsettling but humans supposedly have the intelligence to overcome those sorts of reactions
My nephew is autistic, seven years old. I am concerned about how he's going to cope, having to go through the usual meat grinders of secondary school and work.
I have a feeling it's going to be a lifetime of bumping heads with people like Jane.
@jserv it'd be so much easier if education facilities understood that you can't treat every kid exactly the same and expect it to work to the same degree on all of them
@jserv I wish I could tell it that's not going to be the case :( Your nephew at least has the advantage of having people like yourself in his life who can help support him
@motosubatsu Thanks, you're right. I'm going to do absolutely everything I can to put him in an advantageous position.
@RhysW It's shocking how harshly any deviation at all is punished. You can't even be a little bit different without suffering some consequences. There's a very narrow scope of people that schools are designed to churn out. But hey, that's a big topic.
@jserv your attitude about it genuinely warms my heart :) I don't want to presume what you have or havent looked into yet but there's lots of good books out there to help NT family and friends understand the challenges facing a NAT child that might be well worth a read
@motosubatsu That's perfect. The teens may be the roughest period, reading that now would be really valuable. I've ordered the hardback and will listen to the audiobook at work.
Imagine living half of your life alone on an island somewhere, and then suddenly finding yourself in Times Square on a busy evening. Autism is like that.
I'm not sure if that's wholly accurate, but that's what I figured it's like.
@Nofel it is worth understanding that it's not even a case of 'autistic' and 'not autistic'. As there are so many varying levels of being on the autism spectrum
@RhysW exactly! I struggle to explain what it's like because I can't really understand how NT people see the world just like they can't understand how I experience it
@RhysW this too.. it's not really a binary thing, rather an analogue sliding scale
and not all autistic people experience the same symptoms
As far as I understand it, you're born with the condition and there's recognizable symptoms that can be captured pretty early on. Diagnosis is a lot better now than it used to be in the past.
Some of the more common ones: Lack of social understanding. Being completely blind to the existence of the social dimension. Need for sensory stimulation & external order. See: Stimming, yelling, many varieties of OCD-like-behaviours. Obsessions with various topics. A more "extreme" distribution of cognitive functioning. Both on the low end and the high end.
for myself I struggle massively in social circumstances - all the nuances of body language, facial expressions and inflections that (as I understand it) NT people process subconsciously I.. don't.. I have to actively analyse all of those things, and that's very, very hard (not to mention exhausting) to do in "real time"
@SnarkShark Aspergers is one of the Autism Spectrum Disorders, as Kaz says it's not an official diagnostic term any more, but many of us still use it colloquially
I find it useful. Because the difference between low-functioning and high-functioning Autism is very different, and it's really useful to be able to indicate which one you're talking about.
@motosubatsu Yup i know exactly what you mean, me and my boss lost a few hours discussing this and we found so many differences in the way we thought, was really interesting
@motosubatsu they are amazing, leaving school (not being able to wear headphones) and getting a job (where they allow constant headphone use) has literally changed my life
@RhysW right now I actually don't have mine on and I'm in a relatively quiet open-plan office with about 25 people. I can hear at least 4 distinct conversations, various keyboards, chairs creaking, my own keys, the aircon faintly humming, the rustle of a disposable coffee cup, someone scratching their leg through their jeans, the click of mouse buttons
and to me none of that is background noise. It's all stimuli that arrive with equal weighting
@SnarkShark lol.. i think it was from the outside, not going to go look and check :)
because of the equal weighting I need to consciously sort through it and that is very tiring
luckily I managed about five hours sleep last night so I'm not especially tired.. otherwise everyone of those sounds would be like someone holding a chalkboard up to my ear and constantly raking their fingernails down it.
@motosubatsu Thankfully, I am mostly fine on the sensory stimuli point (a little more sensitive to noise than the average person, but not to a point that's debilitating). The huge difference for me is "Social-Context-Awareness-Mode" On vs Off.
@Kaz the syndrome formally known as Apserger's is commonly referred to as High Functioning Autism these days or HFA
@Kaz My sensory issues aren't as a extreme as some thankfully, but they are still something I have to work around. It's mainly noise for me although strong lights and colours can be a problem sometimes, and I've got a few weirdnesses with textures. My feet are insanely sensitive.. I pretty much have to wear socks 24/7 and even then I can only really cope with a couple of different types of sock fabric!
I'm with you on the social-mode thing - I've been "caught on the hop" a few times where I wasn't on-the-ball, let me guard down or was too tired to cope and I don't exaggerate when I say that I've ruined relationships and friendships through mishandling social context
ugh.. sorry people, I appear to have gone into scattergun verbal diarrhea mode again!
@motosubatsu I went through about 3 "Destroyed all friendships and alienated my entire school" incidents from the age of 11 through 18 before I finally got something of a basic handle of the rules of the social dimension. Didn't realise I was autistic until 19. It would have saved so much pain and suffering if I'd just known what it was, and where to look to for guidance, a decade before.
But C'est La Vie. At least I got a handle on it before I started my professional career.
@SnarkShark There was some assHat that comment about "Can she invite a gender fluid, or trans person" I replied, she can invite whomever she wants, preferably someone who doesn't creep her out.
@Kaz yeah definitely the earlier the better.. I didn't realise what I was until I was in my thirties! By which point I'd aged out of most of the (already scant) support services available in the UK
@SnarkShark it was a good answer, the only thing I would say I'm not sure "play" was the right word to use exactly, Lily's behavior isn't indicative of that to me
Sorry, I've now edited to include longer/more appropriate wording. I'm not sure I like the comment that Lily is a "problem", but I'll not get into that argument.
I'm not sure how you would best describe it - essentially she is trying to be social and make friends, it's just that an inability to read social context combined with one of the other common autistic traits of taking special interests to an extreme level is just so far outside of typical office-norms that it just comes across as bizzare
@SnarkShark yep I noted that.. and appreciated it :) I was also glad to see the "troll" answer get hammered into the ground in about 3 minutes, helps bolster my faith in humanity a bit
@SnarkShark sometimes that is the best thing to do. People trained specifically for that don't just know what to do, but also know what not to do, to avoid longer lasting damage
@motosubatsu Yeah. The key insight to impart to someone who has no experience here, is that to Lily, this is perfectly normal behaviour for people to engage in. Talking about your interests, interacting with other people, doing activities together.
@motosubatsu To be fair, you have more experience of this than I do. Feel free to take any aspect of my answer as your own though. More than happy for you to do that.
I have a co worker I work pretty closely with, we have some overlapping job functions but it has some of the same base qualifications that we cover for the business.
About two years ago, a job opened up, we both applied and he got it. I was promoted a month later to something similar, but nothin...
The problem is that there's no right answer here. If you want the job, take it and let him find it for himself (if at all). If you don't want the job, tell him about it. If you tell him and go for it yourself, you're competing against eachother, and that might not be good for your friendship.
@RichardU and why is it that director level people seem to think it's like supporting you or something when you're trying to work on a difficult problem.
All I want to do is taze them into unconciousness!
@RichardU seemingly so.. we had a bit of chat about it in here after jserv linked an old question, then I spouted Lots of Random Text(TM) and then a question came up on the stack about it
@motosubatsu It's funny, but I get so embarrassed by social missteps that I obsessed over them, picking up book after book so that I wouldn't embarrass myself again. Now, people say I'm articulate.
@Magisch it is.. as I said in my answer the CEO might have the best of intentions but she is actually going to be harming her daughter not helping her. And that's even before you consider the awful possibility of her interest in underwear being misunderstood or (god forbid) being taken advantage of <shudder />
@Magisch The thing is what the CEO has done to the OP on it's own is truly awful from a workplace perspective. being told "no you're job is not that now it's this totally unrelated thing" is crap, and I don't mean to trivialise it in the slightest, but the worst that can happen to her is that she has to find another job. Lily stands a good chance of being scarred for life!
@RichardU I actually did sales myself for a while (I was desperate <sigh />), I'm told that I wasn't that bad actually, other than the fact that I can't "close" to save my life.
@SnarkShark Thanks for the reply, so I should probably just delete it then? I don't really think it can be clarified. I think the answers are good, they were what I was looking for but if it's not in the community guidelines then it is what it is.
@motosubatsu We autistics can obsess over things, sadly, for the girl, this seems to have been bras. Who knows, she could end up being a fashion designer specializing in undergarments.
As already alluded. I'm not sure a mother who is this out of touch would shy away from using something like that to retaliate against an employee who doesn't want to be her personal caretaker
@motosubatsu Yeah, it's like it disabled some of my inhibitions/fears. What's left is far more assertive and genial. If you met me in person, I might remind you of Elim Garak from Star Trek Deep Space 9, or at least that's what I've been told.
@jserv When the series first came out I found Bashier to be a bit whiny and annoying, on subsequent viewings later I think I did him a disservice, he's actually got some depth to him
ahh.. feeling better with my nicotine levels topped off, I think the "Lily" question may have unsettled me somehwat
@jserv yeah it was kind of like seeing someone step from the highly idealized vision of the future that Gene envisioned into the grittier world of reality and how they would handle that
@SnarkShark thanks for your comment on the answer.. I couldn't think how to word it that you had given permission elsewhere for me to quote you. Also if I had said that you had deleted because you thought mine was better I'd have just looked like a d**khead :)
just started a new position and need to work on enterprise software package. I have some experience but still feel inadequate and now with 10 + years experienced engineers around me, I feel pressured. Is this typical at most companies or do some at least provide a good learning period?
At our workplace, the boss has hired a new employee (let's just call her Sarah as a placeholder). Sarah has been here for a month now.
She's 25, and moved here from California, to here in Illinois.
Sarah is ostensibly on our team as a new member, but a senior manager has told me that Sarah is i...
@MisterSortofPositive thats the most absurd thing i've heard so far. But something that i can see happening. There are a lot of strange people and scenarios out there
At our workplace, the boss has hired a new employee (let's just call her Sarah as a placeholder). Sarah has been here for a month now.
She's 25, and moved here from California, to here in Illinois.
Sarah is ostensibly on our team as a new member, but a senior manager has told me that Sarah is i...
The Water Cooler
The Water Cooler