What neurodiversity means for DevRel

Wesley: Dev deep dives ya. Thanks for having me. I do want to start off with something a little bit sombre and let you know what's going on with me. The tragedy that happened in Uvalde is on my mind, and so I'm not on my A game, so hopefully this goes well. But just wanted to just put that out there for everyone to know that I'm going to try to do my best, but there's a little nagging in my mind and hopefully that will not affect this talk too much. This is what Neurodiversity means to DevRel. This is a slide for the first presentation that I've ever done on this subject specifically. So I'm really excited and hopefully it goes well and you'll have some very good questions.

At the end of this presentation. Let's move into a little bit about myself. About me. I am, I consider myself a DHD and dyslexic.

That means two things. One, that this is very personal to me and it's affected me for the way that I've grown up and the way that I've be able to experience life and different places with having both A DHD and dyslexia. What that also means is that I just finished this presentation last night, so just heads up. So that's why it's going to be really beneficial to me to get feedback. So as you go through this, as you hear this, if there's any questions or any things that I can clear up or make things clearer, please make sure you have your questions ready at the end of this session. Also, if you notice in the corner there is a hashtag hashtag nd talk that's for divergent or neurodiversity talk. And that hashtag, if you put it into Twitter, you can see all my slides and you can also be able to send questions at the end after a day after and be able to find other people who are also talking about this subject.

So just wanted to make sure mentioning community that we can use this to leverage and connect on this one subject. Also wanted to say that my experience is my experience. I've been in DevRel for four years, but the way that I went through Dev Rel is different for everyone. And the way that I moved through the world as a neurodivergent person is also very unique to me. There's a saying, if you met one person, you've met one person. We are all different. We all have different ways of being. And so just wanted to put that caveat out there that I'm not an expert, I'm only an expert in my experience.

I'm not an expert in the general experience. And truth be told, it was only in 2020 when I really started digging deeper into the subject. I of course had a lot of trials and tribulations, a lot of people did in 2020, and that put me on a journey to rediscover myself, relearn about how I experienced the world and how that's different from the general neurotypical population.

Alright, and with that, let's get started. And we're going to start with a pop quiz. I know you weren't expecting it, that's why it's called a pop quiz. And I'm going to ask three simple questions. And these are easy, so don't think too hard, just hold the question and the answer in your mind. Once again, it's only three questions, so it's going to be easy. I'm going to read the question twice and then we're going to move on to the next one. And so we're going to go through these three fairly quickly.

Alright, here we go. First question, a bat in the ball together costs a dollar 10 cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? A bat in the ball together costs a dollar 10 cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

Second question, how many of each animal did Moses take on the ark? How many of each animal did Moses take on the ark? What comes into your mind when you think of neurodiversity? What comes to your mind when you think of neurodiversity? Okay, ready for the answers? I told you there weren't that hard, right? So let's go to the first question. Alright, the ball costs 5 cents and it's okay if you got this wrong.

Some people think that the ball costs 10 cents and the bat costs a dollar, but actually the bat costs a dollar five and the ball costs 5 cents because 5 cents plus a dollar, five is a dollar 10 cents, $1 more for the bat than the ball. So it's okay if you got it wrong. This is kind of what I wanted you to experience is your first instincts may not be right, might not be correct, and to demonstrate that if you're in a room and this question is around and everyone was saying that the ball costs 10 cents and you're the only one who is thinking that the ball costs 5 cents, that you might feel like there's wrong with you and you're because you're thinking differently than other people.

Now, now that I've gone through this first one, you're probably wondering, did you get the second one right? Alright, let's find out. The answer is zero. Did you get zero or did you get two? So Noah took two of each animals on the arc, not Moses. And this is another thing where your gut reaction or your first instinct may not be the right one. There is a way of thinking that brings you to one of these answers. And hopefully this is a little bit enlightening depending on how you got to that answer.

How what you feel is right and what is in your gut as you think you know is right, that this was easy that you can stumble to just on these simple questions. Alright, last one. Alright, when you thought of cultural references or when you thought of neurodiversity, I wonder if you were thinking about one of these movies. These are all from general different periods of time depending on what your experiences and what generation you're from. But these are representations in the media of neurodiversity. And actually to be specific, these are representations of autism spectrum disorder. So there's not a lot of diversity, even talking about neurodiversity and the actors in these movies that are portraying people who have a SD, they're all neurotypical. So interesting about that.

So in terms of what you've seen or what you know about neurodiversity, it could change depending on your experience.

And just to broaden the spectrum here about neurodiversity, there are a lot of terms out there that fall underneath the umbrella of neurodivergent. I'm not going to go through all of them, I'm just going to talk about the key terms that are important here. Neurotypical, neurodivergent, and neurodiversity. I've already used them all, but I haven't taken the time to explain them. So let's do that now. But before I get into that, I just wanted to say that some of the terms that you're seeing here, it's not comprehensive. So there are way more than what is just listed here and they're not in any sort of order. So if you're looking about where things are placed, there's just randomly placed.

So I just wanted to put that out there that I'm not highlighting any things over another. So let's go over what neurotypical is. So neurotypical is generally what people think of when they think of normal. Typical is what is considered average or the thing that everyone is considered, okay?

Neurodivergent is the other side of that coin. If you have neurotypical on one side is the, it's the thing that is seen as a person who has a condition, who has, if you look at the words there, syndrome disorder, those are the kind of ways that things are described for people who are neurodivergent. Now, if you think about it, disorder syndrome, neurodivergent is considered something of an anomaly or something that is off or wrong. If you look at the DSM five, which is the Diagnostic and statistical manual for mental disorders, you can understand why they're phrased that way because they're written from a neurotypical perspective. If I'm normal, these are abnormal. And what neurodiversity champions or what it means is that both are normal. It's part of the variations of the human condition. We all don't think the same.

It's just that the world is set up for neurotypical.

It's not set up for the neurodivergent, at least not by default. And so the exceptions are the things that make us neurodivergent, which is off. But neurodiversity once again means that it's all part of, if you go back in human history, if you go back neurodivergent, people have always been here. We're always, we're part of the tapestry of the human mind and condition. We are just maybe a little bit different than neurotypicals, but we're not super special in one way or worse in another way. We just experience the world differently and we see it differently. And that's okay and that is normal.

But these are some other words, maybe not clinical like the DM five, but DSM five. But these are some words that we experience from lay people, people who see us and other us. And it adds to the cognitive load of just operating in the world and trying to be yourself. There's masking involved, so trying to actually fit in, and that takes a lot of mental energy to just feel like you're one of the other people out there. And so there's a high chance that if you consider yourself neurodivergent, that you are also facing some mental health challenges.

One thing I wanted to talk about before about the world that people who are neurodivergent disabled per se, but the environments that we're placed in disables us. So if there is not accommodations, if there's not room, if there's not acceptance, there's more work that needs to be done in order to be in those spaces. So let's look at it from a different perspective. Let's look at it from a positive perspective. There are ways that people who are neurodivergent may see the world and experience it differently through words, through sounds, through visuals, through relationships. And they could be able to find words that fit better or words that don't fit at all, sounds that are more pleasant to them, that will be pleasant to other people. Hearing tones or frequencies that maybe people aren't as sensitive to being able to understand how things are placed in spaces and what will be more efficient or what will be easier or more pleasing to look at.

And understanding relationships between objects or concepts or even steps in a very complex plan. And these things are extremely valuable and useful, but they also, when you're young, when you see these things and you're trying to experience them in the world, you could be called a grammar nerd called nitpicky too particular. You dive too deep into the details, too much into the weeds, or you just keep bringing up all this stuff that's not really relevant to what we're talking about. These are some of the words in some of the ways that people can experience exhibiting these behaviours in a neurotypical world.

Now let's think back to 2020. The world kind of changed then, right? The events did a hard switchover for mostly being in-person events, to mostly being virtual events. The world is changing all the time. And if you're in dre, what we do changes all the time. We work with different products, different technologies, different segments, different concerns, different verticals, different developers even. We're constantly finding new problems and new solutions. Now with that in mind, wouldn't you rather have a diverse set of people around the table?

People when things are changing rapidly, they can say, Hey, the answer's zero, not two. And I understand that everyone in the room is saying two, but listen to me, hear me, and actually find merit in that minority voice in the room. So I hope this illustrates why it's important to incorporate people who are divergent in a world that's filled with people who are neurotypical.

The question is, how do we incorporate people who think differently in a team that may be predominantly people who are neurotypical? So let's talk about the hiring process. Look at your job descriptions. Do they weed out people who could be neurodivergent? Do they allow people to specialise in a certain thing? Maybe you're good at documentation, maybe you're good at speaking public speaking or live streams on twitch. Maybe you're good at one thing, but is your job description written so that the person who does it has to do all the things, has to be super well-rounded in order to fit in? Look at your descriptions, do an audit.

Figure out if you could be losing out on adding diversity to your team because of some of those restrictions. And then have flexible hours during the interview process or different ways that people can show up. Maybe allow them to have their camera off if they need to.

Try maybe something after hours, maybe they're not a morning person, maybe business hours. Don't necessarily work for them. Figure out the ways that you're restricting in the process of hiring someone that could make it hard for them to adapt to just even getting through the interview process. And then once they're hired, give them accommodations. Figure out what they need, figure out what will help them do their job and supply those. Help them be okay with being themselves. Remove some of that cognitive load to fitting in so that they can do their best work. Be clear on your expectations.

Don't say, oh, if you could kind of do or we're trying to, the mely language may not be good enough. Sometimes people need really clear guidance about what they need to do, when it needs to be done and how it needs to be done, if that is particular.

Or also if you're set on making sure the outcome is correct or the thing that you want, maybe not focus on the steps on how you get there, maybe just the results. So encourage experimentation, encourage people to try new things, have them fail or have them succeed. But see it as that as also success in even trying something new. And then you want to be able to keep the people on your team. So lean towards the objective rather than the subjective. Don't say that they're not keeping eye contact or you don't like the way that they're interacting in a way that you just can't put your finger on. But if they're doing the job, if they're doing the work, if they're getting the results, that should be rewarded. And if they're doing new things, they're innovating and that's what you want ultimately.

So innovation, you should reward for innovation and you should remove any arbitrary rules or barriers to success, advancement, or even salary adjustments. If there is just some random thing like, well, you weren't in the office this many times of the year or hours in the day, but they're still doing their work and they're still doing excellent things, why remove them from the team? So let's make sure that those are gone, those barriers to making sure that you retain people.

And if all else fails, if you don't remember anything from the previous slide, just listen to your people, talk to them. Create an environment where it's safe for them to bring their concerns. Listen to those concerns and take them seriously. Listen to your people and don't disregard it if you don't fully understand. If they say it's important to them, it's important to them. Alright, I'm going to leave with some resources. There are six here. Let's go through each of them.

So the double empathy problem. Now, this is not a book, but this is a general concept so you can Google it to find it and you'll have access to different ways of understanding this issue. And so double empathy problem is basically it comes from the world of autism where a lot of this stuff comes from. Because once again, when we think of neurodiversity, a lot of it goes straight to autism.

We're at the point of when people thought about diversity, they thought about adding more women to teams. And that means it was diverse if you add more women. And then since then we've known that there's so many different types of kinds of diversity in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, and so many others. But in the divergent world, we're still building up resources. So a lot of that comes from autism research, which is really great. But the double empathy problem is there is a misunderstanding that people who are autistic empathetic. So a person, someone who's neurotypical and they misconnect because the cues aren't the same, there's a different alignment there. But if someone who's neurodivergent talks to someone, sometimes those go away just like they go away if a neurotypical person is talking to a neurotypical person.

And so the frustration from the neurotypical person talking to the neurodivergent person is actually expressed felt by the other person who's trying to communicate with the person who is neurotypical. And so this is the concept that's in the double entity problem. And once again, if you go to that hashtag, you can find the links, it will be sent there.

And the next book is the Autism and Neurodiversity Self-Advocacy Handbook. That's a mouthful. Did mention I was Dyslexic, right? So this is a great book. I just finished it a few weeks ago, and it gives permission to say it's okay to say this isn't right. It's okay to not be taken advantage of, and it's okay to be yourself. And that's not wrong. And that covers work environments, but also relationships and even school-aged children.

So it covers the whole gamut of being able to advocate for yourself. And it's a great handbook also if you want to advocate for someone else who is also neurodivergent. So that's why I put it on this list.

Of course I had to add neurodiversity the Birth of an Idea. So this was written by Judy Singer. She is the person who actually coined the term neuro neurodiversity. And so without her work, we would not be able to have a term or the grammar or ways to talk about this subject in such nuanced ways, words and grammar give us the tools we need to convey concepts. And so this is an excellent book and I would highly suggest that everyone reads it just to get a sense of how this all came about. Judy's also an awesome person. I'm just going to drop that in there. Then I mentioned empathy.

So the book is called Against Empathy. So the book is called about how to actually not value empathy so much. And let me explain, we use it a lot. I know we use it for a lot of things as people.

But empathy basically is being able to relate to someone by putting yourself in their shoes. And we're talking about, when we're talking about neurodivergent people, there's a possibility that you may not be able to directly relate to their experiences, but you still can approach them with compassion. And this book really highlights how compassion should be more valued than empathy. The golden rule is treat people like you want to be treated, but I'm sure that you've also heard the platinum rule, which is treat people like they want to be treated. And this book will help you get there and be able to find a way to find that compassion for people who are going through or experiencing things differently than you are.

Then there's just work a once again, not centering around the diversion experience, but it is, I realised that was there. It's talking about what a good work and just where there's work justice, where people can feel included, where diversity is welcome and psychological safety is a thing that is fostered in the work environment. And so this is good for everybody, for the person who is learning how to integrate into maybe a work environment that may be different than what they're used to or what they experience outside of work. And also for people who have a role in creating these cultures in a work environment and how they can move to a place that allows people from different backgrounds to participate in equal fashion. So that's a really good resource there. It's written by a really great person and she also wrote Radical Candour. So I think that the way that she approaches this subject is so accessible.

She makes it, she uses plain language and I like it. Kim Scott is just a great writer in general, and so I like the stuff that she writes. So if you like Kim Scott and you like Radical Candour, please, please look into just Work. And the last one here, daring Greatly. I'm sure if you've heard of Brene Brown, you've heard of this story, you heard of this book, Brene Brown has a lot of different materials and they all touch on the same subject, generally speaking, which is vulnerability. And the reason why I've included this is because vulnerability is what you need to be able to put yourself out there to go out and live limb to give talks by being truthful, honest and take chances. And it's not easy and it's hard. And so even if you're not a person who feels othered by society, being able to be vulnerable is a great skill for everyone.

So I highly recommend this book for everyone, but especially for people who have gone through some of the trauma that I mentioned before who are trying to repair themselves, who are trying to figure out where they fit and how to fit within themselves, there is a lot of internalised ableism in the neurodiversity community and this is some of the books that helped get to where I am. And with that, that is the end of my presentation. So a couple of things. Once again, another resource is community, so use the hashtag ind talk. So with that, you can find other people talking about this presentation, this slides, and you can find each other. So having a community is going to be very helpful. And also, I'm Wesley a three on Twitter. If you want to talk to me directly, if I don't get to your question, your answer during this q and a period, send me a question today, tomorrow, or whenever you think about it.

And my dms are open if you want to do that in private. Thank you.

Suze: Thanks so much Wesley. And somebody in the chat has just said that they were lucky enough to meet Kim Scott in person, and they have verified that Kim Scott is a very nice person, in person as well. I'm jealous.

Wesley: Yes, she's amazing.

Suze: Yeah, thanks so much for sharing your insights with us from the first person point of view, being somebody who is neurodiverse. And like you said at the beginning, you can only speak for your own experiences. You don't claim to speak for everybody else. And I know it's very difficult for people to speak up, but I hope that it's encouraged others to share as well if they feel able to. So we do have a question in the chat from Brian. So Brian would like to know if somebody has built a facade from masking for some years at a current position and find then that person finds out that they're, what actions can or should they take? Does it depend on the level of inclusivity and support they feel in their environment that they're working in? And I feel like this is probably something that a lot of people face because a lot of folks, like you said at the beginning, they don't see things in the same way as they feel like the whole world is seeing this thing and they don't necessarily understand why that is until sometime later in their life and they might be into their career at that point.

So I feel like that might apply to a lot of people. So what kind of advice would you give somebody who might be in that situation?

Wesley: Okay, so if I understand it correctly, someone's been masking and then they basically have been outed, and how do you approach that

Suze: Or they find out themselves that

Wesley: They have an official diagnosis or they're learning this as well?

Suze: I think so. Yeah,

Wesley: That's a hard one. So definitely it matters the environment that someone's in. I don't know if I felt safe enough to go to my employer earlier on in my career. Luckily, I feel like I have gotten to the point where I've built up a reputation of being able to deliver consistently. So that feels like I have a reputation that's beyond any kind of labels that someone that I might put on myself or other people might. And so that's given me flexibility. But I also understand that there is a matter of intersectionality between me being a person of colour and me also having some of the neurodiversity issues that, or issues that might be seen by employer. And so my increased worry in that employer about my performance or my future potential.

And so that is an extremely personal question. One thing that has helped me is those resources that I did mention.

Sometimes understanding yourself can help highlight how you are different. I think we all kind of take a person centric approach to everyone else just by default. If I'm able to see shapes and manipulate them 3D in my mind, everyone should be able to do that and not everyone can. And so you might not know all the ways in which, well, everyone's like this or everyone understands this differently. So you might only be on the part of that sheet has all those negative connotations or words that people have put on you, and you might need to figure out what is true for you from your experience and what is different for them so that when you do talk to an employer, you can say, Hey, I know you might have some of these worries, but I can tell you why this could be a good thing for my job, or this is a good thing about me, or this is a way to mitigate some of the issues that you've seen before. This explains so much. This is how I can really excel. This is how you can push me in a direction where I know that I will be successful.

There's a lot of ways to approach that, but also that's know yourself more. And then when people ask you how you're different that you're able to kind of answer that question and give them tips to, if they're interested and they're wanting to make sure that they can do these accommodations, that you can hopefully give them some good advice.

Suze: Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately it is on you as the individual to know yourself and to do that labour of educating the other person, which a lot of folks that are marginalised do find in all aspects of their life. And what you just said just now about speaking to your boss about how can you make accommodations for me? And also what you said, you can see things in week 3D and turn around in your mind. Can't everybody do that? And that your platinum rule of treat somebody as they want to be treated automatically. And the age old rule was, the golden rule was treat somebody as you want to be treated that centres you, that doesn't centre the other person. You should be centering that person and their needs and how they might be a bit different.

We've got somebody, this next question does touch a little bit on the previous one. So this person is asking how you manage intersectional diversity being nd, but also underrepresented in other ways, gender orientation, race, et cetera. I feel like I'm other in so many ways it can be difficult to navigate.

Wesley: It's a hard question and one that I haven't gotten an answer yet. I'm still figuring it out. I am trying to do things. Every experience I get a little bit better. I help try to bridge that chasm of setting expectations upfront to make sure that things are out there. I over-communicate where I can where it makes sense, I get clarity and gain clarity where I feel that it might be confusion. I make sure that I'm explicit about what needs to be done and how I'll do it and make sure I get buy-in as early as possible. I make clear about what numbers and why the numbers are important.

And then I also try to really understand why those numbers are important from the perspective of those who are setting 'em. Sometimes in dore there are things that are really hard to measure. Some of these measurements are vanity metrics and some of these are vanity metrics that are set by the investors.

So yeah, they're vanity metrics, but they're still super important to get funding. And so there are things that are, especially me working in community, there's like, well, engagement is really, really important to me and I personally will trump that over size of how many members we have, but that might be switched from a person outside of that to really want the number to be high no matter what the engagement rate is because that's the number that they need to sell. So this is a collision between the practitioner and the practical, I guess, in some ways, and being able to understand that. And sometimes you can feel like I made the right call because you saw the zero and they said the two, but sometimes if the investors are expecting a two, you got to make sure that you can try to deliver that. So setting expectations and trying to reduce that delta between expectations and deliverables is where I am usually trying to focus and centre and make sure that that chasm is hopefully breached. But fingers crossed, but going also back, if you're in an environment where they aren't accepting, there's no psychological safety, it's really hard to have those conversations. It's really hard to really get that clarity that you might need to be successful. So yeah, hopefully society catches up to us.

Suze: Yeah, yeah. Well said. I've got a question of my own here. And you talked about the recruitment and selection process in your talk, and you mentioned about how some hiring managers will write a lovely job advert and they will be asking for this unicorn developer relations professional who can do everything. They're like a quadruple threat. And just in the general population, most people aren't good at everything and a lot of people are good at one thing and they really excel at that. What other ways do you think that people could improve the recruitment and selection process for people? Because we know that in tech it's broken anyway.

It's just generally broken. It is complete mess. I've heard of things like give the interviewee the questions before the interview, for example. Are there any other good tips you could give to hiring managers to really get the best out of people in that process?

Wesley: I'd say just like the coding interviews, make sure that whatever questions you're asking or exercises that they're doing that is actually related to the day-to-day job that people would be doing. So the questions might be hard, but they might actually need to be questions that the committee is struggling with. And there needs to be some pre-planning. So people need to understand their OKRs before they hire someone or the structure of where they'll fit in or the work that is the balance between strategy and execution and how much of each they want the person to do because it's really hard to go all in and just do all this work that's supposed to be done. And then you realise it doesn't really align with all of the top level goals. And then it's also hard for you to be the first person and you strategize and put everything in place and then people feel like you're not delivering because you're spending so much time planning and not actually executing. So I would say the business or the employer should do the work to understand their real actual needs, not copying from someone else or another DevRel job. And they're like, oh, that sounds good.

And then that is now my DevRel job. Understand how that position will fit into their scenario, their company, their department, their organisation. All of that stuff should be pre-planned, hopefully before they write the job description. And then during the interview process, making sure that whatever you're asking the person to do is relevant. And one last thing.

Generally speaking, a lot of people who are hiring for DevRel just because statistics like it's growing rapidly, the people are hiring DevRel don't know, but they want to hire someone to do DevRel, allow the person that you're bringing in if you feel that they have expertise to default to their counsel, to their understanding, to what they feel is best practises, rather than having to feel the need to impose some sort of structure or a way that they think that DevRel needs to be done instead of just realise that that is a theory in their mind when they put that job description, but in practise, make sure that they're able to be flexible enough to do the thing that is right.

Suze: Yeah, I've lost count of the number of times I've had that conversation. It's like, well, you hired me because you wanted my expertise. If you knew how to do it, then how come you needed to hire somebody? It's quite bizarre to me. Matthew, what questions do you have?

Matthew: So I think that something that really struck a chord with me was how you said that oftentimes compassion can be more valuable than strict empathy. And so it started me thinking about how a lot of what we do in developer relations is based around community, and community comes with expectations that come naturally to some people and not to others. So you gave some great resources there, but have you got some thoughts or resources for people who want to make sure that their developer communities aren't excluding people just because of unacknowledged assumptions?

Wesley: A lot of it is being able to listen. Some people will, if bold enough will tell you, but the dogma or the thing in your mind, once again, please be malleable to realise that everyone has a certain level of bias. You're going to approach something with bias and understanding that that is true and to move into a curiosity learning mode when you're experiencing other people or hearing other suggestions instead of some of the default defensive mode that we might have where we are not really listening to the other person, but just more entrenched and trying to push what we think onto others. But coming from a place of learning, a place of openness and of curiosity allows for that flexibility when you're talking about a community to be able to say, that makes sense. I did not think of that. Let's find a way to incorporate more people into our community what we all want. We want it to be accessible to more people, and if someone is giving you the gift of feedback of change, then of course what we should do as people who are running community is to find a way to make sure that person is accepted.

Matthew: Thanks. I'd just like to go back to the discordant to see if there are any other questions in there. So someone asks, are there communities for neurodiversity in tech such as a Discord server or something like that that you know of?

Wesley: No, I mean I'm sure there are. They're really hard to find. It's an estimated that what could be up to 20% of the world's population are considered neurodivergent, yet there is very little to be found with communities at least specifically around neurodivergency. And that's because a lot of people are closeted, hidden or not diagnosed, or they understand that there is a stigma attached to it. I have found some groups that are centred around neurodiversity, but they're not necessarily tech. They are professionals and there are some that are around, I'm not saying that they don't exist, but it may be harder to find because a lot of the stuff that I find are parents with neurodivergent kids or kids or students who are neurodivergent, but as an adult, as a professionals, as people in tech, that's really hard. There's hashtags actually autistic that is on Twitter, which is really good. There's this hashtag here in talk that hopefully people can use to find other people in tech to kind of build that community where I know I've failed personally being able to find that, but it's hard and I encourage anyone who knows of any to share it with the rest of us using that hashtag.

Matthew: Great, thanks. Another question here from Scott, this one. So Scott asks, do you have any strategies to recharge from the stress that comes with being a social media manager?

Wesley: I love people. It is one of those things where early on I decided just to lean into the thing that I'm good at and I actually get recharged. So I'm an extrovert, and so there's not a lot of stress, at least on the people management part. Most of the stress because of my dyslexia, it comes from some of the administrative work that comes with it. And I do a lot of just doing other stuff mentally, being able to disconnect, going outside, playing with my kids, doing fun stuff, watching videos, learning. I also get a lot out of learning. So I just usually do that thing where I feel like I'm enriching myself in other ways to refill my tank if I feel depleted by doing some of that other work. Also, making a difference really is a thing that also gets me going.

And so if I can help someone or if I can make someone's life better or make sure that someone is seen, this is something that I do that also makes me feel really, really good.

Matthew: Great. Thank you. Sue. Anything else from you?

Suze: So folks were asking in the chat if anybody knew about groups for divergent people in tech, somebody does know. They just need to check where or not they could share those groups because obviously it's a safe space for those folks. And so yeah, if you're in the Discord, please do hit that person up on DM if you want to know about that. I'm just having another quick look through. I think that's it. Oh, somebody's recommended the hashtag neurodiverse squad on Twitter as well, so that might be worth adding in as well. You're going to tweet about this. But yeah, thanks so much, Wesley for giving up your time today.

I know this stuff is hugely exhausting as well with everything that's going on in the world as well. So thanks for being here with us today.

Wesley: Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. Deep.