What is your experience with neurodiversity in the engineering sector, and do you feel there is enough support available to help neurodiverse engineers thrive in their life and career?

Well this has been interesting. As a result of this thread being posted I've been looking into what "neurodiversity" actually means, which has led to a very interesting discovery: I have developmental co-ordination disorder (also sometimes known as dyspraxia). This will be no great surprise to anyone who knows me well, it's a common condition that affects co-ordination, balance and movement and can also affect, for example, the ability to handwrite comfortably. I've lived with it for 62 years now (just without knowing it was a particular known condition rather than just me being me!), and cope with it fine, but coming back to the questions that were asked here I've been reflecting on the impact it had on my career.

As far as most managers I've had over the years were concerned, it's never created any problem. In whatever role I've been in I've been employed to solve problems, and that I seem to be quite good at. My untidyness has been a source of frustration to some, but in the end they've learned to live with it!

My feedback from colleagues, including particularly senior colleagues in my early career, has sometimes been quite different however. Typical statements were "a sign of a good engineer is a good solder joint", "engineers produce tidy diagrams", "engineers have neat handwriting". Probably for the first 10 years of my career statements like these were real kicks in the teeth - in early career you are going to take feedback from senior staff at face value. I was lucky, I found managers who realised I wasn't lazy or careless, it was just that there were things I was good at and things I wasn't, and luckily the things I was good at were worth my salary.

I do wonder if I hadn't been fortunate enough to get a particular job in my mid 20s whether I would have left engineering altogether, having been convinced by these types of comments in previous companies that only a particular type of person was "an engineer", which definitely wasn't me.

So that was around 40 years ago, do I think there is sufficient support today? I suspect there still is not, in particular I still hear comments from senior engineers and engineering managers that engineers "should" have particular skills or problem solve in particular ways. Perhaps through always being somewhat diverse from a number of my colleagues (whether through these type of issues, or politics, or outside interests etc), I've always been very aware in the teams I've run that having a diverse spectrum of mental approaches and skills makes for an excellent engineering team - in fact personally I'd say it's essential. So I'd suggest key advice for Foothold to pass on to engineers is that criticism of their individual neuro-approach (to suggest a phrase) as "not good engineering" should be seen more as reflecting badly on the person who made that criticism. If you can solve technical problems there will be a place for you on a team, it may just be a matter of finding the right team.

I should just emphasise that in my experience this problem works across all shades of the spectrum, engineers with autism, ADHD, DCD etc can be as cutting and dismissive about neurotypical engineers (and each other) as vice versa. It's a normal coping mechanism for all humans to believe that "their way is the right way". But not very helpful for solving engineering challenges. Again, my experience is that different approaches and skills, and respect for those different approaches and skills, is what's needed.

I think an interesting challenge for Foothold would be to find those engineers, again across the whole neuro spectrum, who've left the profession because they felt they "didn't fit in", and see what that meant in practise. This could lead to finding helpful warning signs to spot in those that are still here to make sure we can keep them. Because we really need them.

Thanks,

Andy

Andy Millar said:

I have developmental co-ordination disorder (also sometimes known as dyspraxia).

This isn't at all personal, but why do we have to have these labels? Why can one not be simply clumsy or dexterous?

I don't think that professional engineers have to be able to make things, but they need to have an understanding of how. I don't think that you will find many clumsy cabinet-makers or tool-makers: either they would not start in the first place, or they would realise their limitations at an early stage.

There is a danger in labelling people. You might be regarded as a bit eccentric and blunt: pencils all the same way up, shorts in winter, and blunt in conversation; but when you attach a label things change.

So really we should take each other as we come and accept that other peoples' thoughts and behaviour may not be the same as our own and leave it at that.

Andy Millar said:

I have developmental co-ordination disorder (also sometimes known as dyspraxia).

This isn't at all personal, but why do we have to have these labels? Why can one not be simply clumsy or dexterous?

I don't think that professional engineers have to be able to make things, but they need to have an understanding of how. I don't think that you will find many clumsy cabinet-makers or tool-makers: either they would not start in the first place, or they would realise their limitations at an early stage.

There is a danger in labelling people. You might be regarded as a bit eccentric and blunt: pencils all the same way up, shorts in winter, and blunt in conversation; but when you attach a label things change.

So really we should take each other as we come and accept that other peoples' thoughts and behaviour may not be the same as our own and leave it at that.

Hi Chris,

The reason for "labelling", or rather diagnosing, medical conditions is to allow those conditions to be managed. Undiagnosed autism is perhaps the most well known example of this, but exactly the same applies to ADHD, DCD etc. 

I am also extremely short sighted. Putting a name on this is very useful at the opticians. It's exactly the same, if you know what it is you've more chance of managing it.

Whether there is any value in your colleagues or managers being aware you have a particular condition maybe will come out of Foothold's research, I wouldn't like to pre-judge that. It's a very difficult subject.

Back to my post - I totally agree the label is actually not the point. The point was constantly receiving the message in my early career that "you can't be a clumsy engineer". Well, yes as I've very definitely shown, you can. And my experience has been that the same goes for all the other traits covered by neurodiversity.

Thanks,

Andy

Quick overnight thought: What diagnosis and awareness, or "labelling" if you like to call it that (I don't), does do is stop people trying to force round pegs into square holes. But awareness is also needed that engineering doesn't just have square holes, it also has round holes, and triangular holes, and...etc etc