This week on the CodeNewbie Podcast, we had on Frankie Nicoletti to talk about the ins and outs of neurodivergence and accommodations in the workplace.
A little about Frankie— Francesca Kerberos Nicoletti (she/they) is an engineer, leader, educator, and polymath, and currently VP of Engineering at SoLo Funds. Previously they were AI Engineering Lead at a martech unicorn, Head of Engineering at a seed stage grocery startup, interim CTO at a big data startup, and an IC at several early-stage startups ranging from ecommerce to social media. They have been a career coach for 7 years and also hold several state records in powerlifting!
If you didn't get a chance to listen already, find that episode below or wherever you get your podcasts:
Let's jump into it (with a quick introduction)
When discussing accommodations in the workplace, (using the wisdom of Frankie) we can operate under a couple of different understandings to help understand why accommodations are important.
1. At your job your hardest task should be the actual work you are doing, not trying to navigate things like different social norms, overstimulation, and burnout.
2. Rest is not something that you need to earn, whatever your body needs, you are entitled to!
3. Making accommodations to allow people to do their best work is good for everyone.
You may be wondering, how can my workplace start helping folks feel better supported by our systems?
The answer to this one is very much dependent on your workplace, but here are some things we talked about with Frankie:
1. An easy way for folks to feel more supported is to listen and what someone needs the most.
2. It is easy to assume that someone is lazy if they are not getting their work done. But, the truth of the matter is, most folks fundamentally want to do a good job. If you don’t want to do a good job anymore or your staff doesn’t, that could be a sign that there is an underlying problem. This could mean you have not been given enough information to complete a task, you have been given a task that isn’t appropriate for your skill/experience level, or something is going on outside of work impeding your progress.
3. Integrating different options of ways that people can interact with systems is an easy fix to help make your workplace more accessible. This could mean there are different times of the day when you are active, recording Looms for demos, turning your camera on or off when you need to in meetings, choosing the way that you send a message, or generally being mindful of communication patterns.
4. As much as you can, build into your system automatic notifications and prioritization rather than expecting folks to remember things or find manual workarounds.
Above all, we hope you ask questions when you are confused about something, when something is new to you, or when you see yourself or your coworkers having a hard time.
Also— let us know down below how your systems support your unique needs!
Happy coding y'all, have a great day.
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