Temple Is Wrong About Selling Your Work

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There's this Temple Grandin advice about employment for autistic folks that goes something like "Sell your work, not yourself". The real world suggests that such advice is not relevant to most of us.

Myself as an example. Being bullied two years ago has consequences I live with today. Because of it, I have no professional references. My professional reputation as a software developer was effectively trashed. To rebuild from that, Grandin's advice seemed to make sense. Student loan debt doesn't just pay itself off if I walk away from my field.

The gist of the advice is to have a portfolio. Be willing to show it. Be willing to discuss it. Be willing to defend it. Check, check, check, and check.

Job Hunt Reality Check Number 1:
Only one person has ever asked for examples of code I've posted online.

Job Hunt Reality Check Number 2:
The last tech recruiter I dealt with. Supposedly, one of the biggest and best in that business. Lot's of work done to set up for this. Working software running through my smart phone. Database handy of the things I've been teaching myself over the past 1 1/2 years. Printed pie charts showing showing a 97% competency level in all different levels of a full stack of web technologies. Past commits on a major open source project. Hundreds of commits on my Github history. A blog I maintain and post tech articles to.

Two things cancelled all of that out.
1.) Their web-based assessment software won't run on Linux. (Yes, it is possible to write web apps that do that)
2.) No professional references.


In legend and myth, computer tech jobs might have once been a safe haven for aspies and ASD folks. That's not so true now. "Sell your work, not yourself" is rarely relevant. Just a reality check from boots-on-the-ground experience. Likability and BS trump demonstrated technical knowledge by a country mile, even for programmers.

HOWEVER........
In the face of that futility, unemployed autistic programmers should take Temple's advice anyways. Why? Well.... it does help you become a better programmer. Being a better programmer makes it easier to make good software. And it's fun! Isn't that reason enough?

What you say about selling yourself makes sense.
Building up skills and having a portfolio are still good advice from Temple.

Those are irrelevant at the start of the hiring process, they only factor in if you pass the first and most important test: do you fit with company culture? Yep, that's right, the first gate to pass in any job is social-- the company wants to make sure it doesn't hire wierdos (like autistics), so that's why the initial test is almost always an interview. Now, if you can pass the animal buttsniff test called an interview then the HR person will be interested in your skill set, but not until they conclude that you can assimilate with the borg as they do.

I agree with Grandin. However not everyone has the opportunity to sell their work. I don't know, but I'm suspecting she grew up in an affluent family. She was diagnosed young and encouraged to explore her interests. She was lucky.

Myself, not so lucky. I'm still trying to find the work to sell. And rewarding jobs are few and far between. But I think it is important to find something that you don't hate.

Actually, the first test is how you treat the receptionist. When announcing your presence, he or she may use code-phrases that sound innocent, but that carry a pre-arranged meaning.

"A gentleman is here to see you" may mean "This person is polite, but condescending".

"Your two-o'clock appointment is here", may mean "This person seems grumpy".

"Mr. Aristophanes is waiting for you in the lobby", may mean "Come down right away; I think we have a winner!"

A few random thoughts.

- Be respectful to everyone, be it a receptionist or the guy your trying to navigate around at the local supermarket.

- Places that actively try to "avoid hiring autistics" are garbage employers who are not worthy of your services.

- Give the Borg some credit! When was the last time you heard of a Borg vessel pass over assimilation of a species for being "too weird"?

- "Code words" is an indirection game. That's a warning signal. If you landed the job, you'd be more likely subjected to subtexts, passive aggression, and other kinds of nastiness. Trust me on this. You WANT to fail that kind of interview.

Out of bullet point mode now. As stated before, Temple is wrong to suggest a good portfolio is a good means to an end to getting a job. It puts the competition focus on being better than the other candidates. WRONG. The purpose of a good portfolio is a way to make you today better than you yesterday. That's the end. Any decent job you land in response to the thing is merely a side effect.

Personally, I believe Temple's advice is spot on. I don't know how to sell myself. But I can talk about my work. I can discuss it. I can describe how I approached it. I can defend it. It is much easier for me to talk about that, than attempt to talk about myself (or how I feel).

I have read a number of Temple's books. I have also seen a number of her videos (e.g. on YouTube). Much of what she writes or says really resonates with me. Probably because -- over the course of my life -- many of the coping skills she talks about were things I had to learn the hard way. Previously, I just never understood why I had to rely on such coping skills when others did not.

As a person involved in the hiring process, I can say with confidence that a strong portfolio of education and/or experience is at least as important as good social skills. A grumpy college graduate is simply more valuable in the long run than a happy high-school drop-out. The grumpy person can be persuaded to be less grumpy while they contribute to the company's bottom line by voluntarily taking on the harder tasks. The drop-out contributes less to the bottom line, rarely takes any form of persuasion seriously, and rarely takes on the harder tasks voluntarily.

Trust me, I see about a dozen people each week whenever there is an open position, and the people with healthy portfolios always make it down to the last three candidates. The rest are told that their applications will be kept on file in case a position opens up that meets their qualifications.

I 100% agree with what you wrote. Which makes me want to amend my original posting. That, while I agree with Temple in principle (regarding "Sell your work, not yourself"). It is not enough. What I have found is, that once it gets down to the "last three candidates", people will hire based upon something else. My reading/research suggests that people eventually hire who they like and who they feel most comfortable with. And, unfortunately, you cannot accomplish that by simply "selling your work".

During my lifetime, I have made it down to the "last three candidates" many, many times. My ability to turn that "accomplishment" into actually getting an offer is very low (I would guess easily < 5%). I absolutely consider myself fortunate that I have been able to find employment during ~ 27 of my almost 30 years of adult life.

I think of skill set being important for already having certain skills required for certain opportunities, sometimes unexpected. Can also be important for getting interview, as sometimes people without certain skills are screened out immediately.

A lot of interesting feedback. I like that a lot. It's awesome when people disagree with me, challenge me, and give me ways to reexamine my own opinions. That's kind of awesome.

It's great that there are people like Fnord out there who handle the hiring process the way they do. It was never my intention to suggest that people like that didn't exist at all. It's merely that people like that are in a small minority. The odds of your portfolio coming across the desk of such a person are low therefore.

This is arguably a good thing. The worst thing you could do for your portfolio is try to have the one that is designed with competition in mind. Building a good portfolio is about competing with yourself, not with the other two people on Fnord's desk.

Here's something a vocational assessor once wrote about me....

"At this time the consumer appears to require significant therapeutic support before he would be a candidate for competitive employment."

My assessor was partially right. I'm not a candidate for competitive employment. Competing directly against neurotypicals is like a startup competing directly against a Microsoft or Google. Don't do that.

Instead, pursue your interests, share it with others, learn from the feedback. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Build the portfolio from that. That process is the win condition, not "getting the job".

Actually, any corporation looking to maximize its profits will want people who can perform to the maximum potential that their skills will allow. That's why people with the best degrees from the best schools tend to get the best positions. Many also tend to "job-hop" from company to company, each time getting better pay and more responsibility.

Every agency I've worked with tries to get its applicants to focus on building on their experiences and accomplishments at least as much as coaching them on how to take an interview. I've participated in many dozens of practice interviews.

The people with the great personalities tended to have few achievements to list. They spent the most amount of time underemployed or unemployed, unless they were going into sales.

The people with the greatest qualifications may have needed to work on their social skills, but they spent the least amount of time unemployed, unless they also had a criminal record.

My decades of experience have taught me that all of the smiles and handshakes in the world won't do you a damned bit of good if you can't do the job.

Interesting. So what your portfolio consists of is not important per se. You have to build your portfolio from accomplishments that you do while a member of a group. A school or an Employment Club chapter for example, preferably from one of the best ones.

It appears I really am wrong in a way that's kind of disturbing to me. Portfolios made up as individual submissions put out online don't count as portfolios at all. Stuff thrown out on the Internet is just stuff I threw out on the Internet. That's fine if you want to share your hobbies online but that's all it is. It doesn't thrill me but, then again, nobody ever said that the truth had to be personally comfortable.

Welcome to the real world. I'm sorry you've had a rough trip.

I once tried to spin DM-ing an AD&D gaming group into a pitch on organization, setting agendas, presenting concepts, and leading groups to their goals. The company didn't buy it.

The company was TSR. They wanted writers and illustrators, not more players. I moved away from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin soon after that.

I have a few pieces of my own out on the Internet. Most relate to little-known electronics principles and discussions of statistical analysis - nothing that most corporations are interested in. My diplomas, military service, awards, and visible accomplishments (physical things I can point to and say, "I made that!") are what get me hired and keep me in demand.

No, more than a physical artifact. Tried that. Ran on my phone right in front of the tech recruiters. Nobody cared. Same deal with accepted open source contributions.

So, I'll rescind the word "portfolio" in favor of "online profile". Maybe by "portfolio building", Grandin was advising that people on the spectrum get themselves into one of the good colleges. She does do work in the university system so it would make sense. In which case, she was advising something that's out-of-reach for most of us.

So.... if you are professionally doomed to never even have the most basic of jobs, what do you do? In that sense, what I advocate remains unchanged. Build that online profile of stuff and make it the best it can be.

Think about it. There are no downsides. If the stuff you put out is good, then you get the satisfaction of making the world a better place. If the stuff you put out turns out to be crap, then maybe that's what the world deserves.

For me, the portfolio consists of things I have produced in the past which are relevant to the position I am interviewing for. Yes, I realize I should not end a sentence with a preposition .

As an example, if I am interviewing for a business analyst position (within a software development group), my portfolio would include a set of sample documents (e.g. an example software specification, a training plan, etc.) which I have created in a prior position that would demonstrate that I have competence in this area.

If this were my first job out of college, my portfolio would include documents I created during one of my courses.