Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Working With Others, As a Schizophrenic Developer?
An anonymous reader writes: "I hope there are a few open source developers on Slashdot who understand this. As a developer who works alone and remotely (while living with my own family) — and is schizophrenic — there would be times I would feel very high (a surge of uncontrollable thoughts), or low because of the kind of failures that some patients with mental illness would have, and because of the emotional difficulty of being physically alone for 8 hours a day. This led me to decide to work physically together with my co-workers. Have you been in this situation before? If you have, how well did you manage it? (Medications are a part of the therapy as well.)"
...for any reason... Ever!
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Schizophrenia isn't psychopathy. Not that psychopathy is a condition that would affect the quality of code.
You should educate yourself about mental illness. You clearly do not understand it.
Further, it's illegal to discriminate against the mentally ill.
I absolutely agree... except about the "right away" part. I'd say give it a week or two for politics' sake.
I have ADHD, so while working I feel a mental compulsion to jump around between three or four projects at once. I know that one of those projects is always going to end up being the one preempted by everything else, because I usually have enough competence for three projects, but feel most comfortable juggling four. I keep Slashdot as that fourth.
When starting with a new team, I'll usually spend a week figuring out the team dynamics and demonstrating my abilities to the rest of the team. Yes, I keep Slashdot open on my computer, but I'm not slacking off. My projects still meet deadlines and work as promised. Once I can show that, I'll mention to people, often individually, that I have ADHD, and I'll explain with a few prepared sentences how I'm very uncomfortable being limited to focusing on a single task. Some folks will ask questions, others will just accept it, but generally speaking everyone is open by then to the idea that even though I'm mentally different, I can still be a productive member of the team.
I have met one person who was concerned about my capability. He was under the impression that having ADHD meant I would be unable to focus on anything, which is an unfortunate persistent myth. By explaining my condition at the end of a productive week, I was able to give clear and specific examples of when my ADHD was an asset, and describe my mitigation techniques when it was a liability. We ended up working well together.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
from Wikipedia:
There is little point in arguing over definitions, much less so if you are trying to turn the conventional usage on it's head. Based on the context:
It is clear the person he was replying to (you?) was using the conventional meaning, not the archaic one you listed above.
I hired a woman with mental health problems to work in my computer shop. I told her that as far as I was concerned it was no different than if she were diabetic and needed to take medication to control her blood sugar. Unfortunately she did not keep her doctor's appointments, even though I ended up marking them on the shop whiteboard and reminding her, and she did not take her medication regularly. After eight or nine months, and some pretty unhappy clients, I had to let her go. She was very bitter and tried to cause problems. So I can understand why many firms might be reluctant to hire someone with such an issue.