I just lost my last job, but all of my jobs have been supported tech hardware and systems.
I was a computer repair tech for the Air Force. For the most part that was a good place for me. Promotions were based on objective standards, on my technical skills and success on promotion exams. Since I almost always worked in a 24/7 shop it was easy to get the graveyard shift, often working alone. Aspergers finally did get in the way when I was up for an assignment that require the next level up of Top Secret clearance. Frank opinions I had expressed in the 6th grade stopped me from getting the higher clearance and resulted in my temporarily losing the one I had and I was forced out of my comfortable environment.
After leaving the Air Force, Igot a job as a remote field engineer for a high end prepress equipment manufacturer when I got out. I found that one in a classified ad. That was a sweet job since the office was over 400 miles away and I had virtually full control over all aspects of the job. No office politics and my job performance was solely rated on how happy my customers were, getting my expense and service reports turned in on time and keeping repair costs down. It didn't hurt at all that my "supervisors" were all former field engineers. Promotions and awards came right and left. That company was bought out by DuPont and I got promoted out of my comfort zone. Layoffs finally caught up to me in the mid 90's shortly after being hospitalized for severe depression after burning out on the job. I was diagnosed with OCD at that time.
I spent the next four years as a full time college student. I had learned during the layoffs that I had been promoted well beyond my education and that I would need a degree to have a chance at any job paying close to what I had been making. Initially I was in a pre-vet program, but changed that after doing the numbers and determining that I'd be in my 60's before recouping the costs of becoming a Veterinarian. Thus my lifelong dream of being a Vet died again. Luckily, I was able to find a degree program in Engineering Technology that gave me an interesting program without losing any credits. While in college I talked my way into maintaining the computer lab for the business college which helped cover expenses.
After graduating from college with a 4.0, I interviewed for a number of jobs related to my new degree (I had been trained to be a facilities manager), but fell back on IT when it was clear that the only jobs in my degree field available to me were entry level. I decided that I had no interest in returning to the private sector, I focused on colleges and universities, but found out that higher ed institutions are cheapskates when it comes to IT staff. I finally got a good paying job with a tiny state agency after answering a classified ad. Surprisingly they were paying what I had been making at DuPont. I got the job solely based on my interview answers where I was the only candidate who the nailed all of the questions. This was another sweet job. There were, at most, 7 people in the office. I was the first person to hold the position, which had a extremely broad job description. I spent the first few months just working out what to do. My boss had no technical knowledge, was really hands off and very good about funding any tools I needed to do my job. I spent most of my time out of the office supporting technology in the public schools in the state. It was the ultimate ubergeek position. Unfortunately, the state hates tiny agencies and we were sunsetted. The tech staff was absorbed by the state agency that oversees all IT for the state. This was very bad for me as I was now working with for the agency that I often fought with on behalf of the school districts and there were people that had taken that personally. I jumped when one of the school districts I had been supporting offered me a position that they had virtually designed for me.
That was my last job. In the pre-interview, with the business manager who eventually hired me, I only had two questions for her. The first was how long it would be before she would be retiring, the second was to ask if they could cover my salary, since I really couldn't afford a pay cut. This job put me in charge of all IT operations of the district. I was the leader of team of four including myself and things were pretty sweet until the district hired a Director of Technology. This upset the dynamics radically and introduced office politics that never existed before. He regularly undermined my authority, tipped the balance of power in the district in ways that led to my old boss leaving for friendlier skies and I found myself with no champion in top management and working for an individual who was all about personal relationships and seem to value what you could do to make him look good over anything else. He consistently vague and provided no clear direction on what he needed me to do, as though he expected me to read his mind. Almost overnight a great job turned into a living hell. After little more than a year of this, I was back in the hospital. As usual, I'd burned my self out overworking again. This was an outpatient program this time, so characteristically, I came into work after the program was done for the day to try and keep things going. Needless to say I had trouble getting my doctor to sign off on this. After the antidepressants kicked in I got back to work and things went OK until the doctor I was seeing changed my diagnosis to Bipolar Disorder and screwed up my meds. The first drug (Seroquel) had manic state every afternoon, which wasn't all that bad, but it had some dangerous side effects and I wasn't that crazy about feeling like I was on speed. She switched me to Abilify which slowly and insidiously pushed me back into the death spiral of depression and after less than 6 months I found myself back in the hospital far worse than I'd been when I arrived the first time. I've already run off at the mouth too much, so I'll just cut to the end. After various actions by my boss and the HR director that included a demotion, a salary freeze, filing an ADA discrimination claim and harassment charges against the HR director I was recently terminated with extreme prejudice over an isolated incident where I misspoke and didn't recognize how up a coworker was over what I said.
It was my analysis of what happened at this last job that led me down the path that resulted in the discovery of my having high functioning Aspergers.
20 Sep 2008, 11:14 am
