You can set reasonable boundaries w/r/t when and how you communicate with them. Without knowing details about specifically what you're dealing with:
- Team members who need to communicate too frequently can have dedicated time scheduled for them when it's convenient for you.
- You're allowed to tell them that you're busy, or to not respond to them until it's convenient.
- With folks who have trouble making themselves understood, I like socratic method type questions to get them to answer their own questions, or to get on the same page.
As a manager, you can be helping them to set goals, and listen to what they think they say they need to meet them. You can work with HR on any additional assistance they need.
While folks with autism spectrum disorders sometimes need additional support, your role as their manager doesn't need to change dramatically to address that specifically. You will also encounter people who either don't have a diagnosis, or you won't know have a diagnosis, and you will need to address their needs whether or not you know about it.
For someone who's "too stupid" to understand these techs, they certainly can explain them and their drawbacks and alternatives well.
This reminds me of a bit of advice from Austin Kleon that I've used frequently -- "Make bad art, too"[^1]:
> “Good” can be a stifling word, a word that makes you hesitate and stare at a blank page and second-guess yourself and throw stuff in the trash. What’s important is to get your hands moving and let the images come. Whether it’s good or bad is beside the point. Just make something.
This is a perspective I have to come back to, as an engineer building enterprise-scale things, when I'm working on small-scale projects. I don't need to use the same tools I use at work, I can pick "bad"[^2] architecture, I just need to build _something_.
For a side project I used some PHP to get a job done. Why? because you can edit the file on the server and keep trying it out till it works. On 90s style hosting that is cheap and honest. The iteration speed is amazing. CI/CD took <100ms.
When I wrote PHP on the server I had real problems with the "CI" part- I would refresh my page an manually test each change. Do you have Continuous Integration tests (i.e. automated) for this code or are you also doing the manual refresh cycle?
No shame either way, I think the juice isn't worth the squeeze for automatic testing short-lived code myself
Sorry that was my silly subtle joke. The CI I am referring to here is refreshing the page! And I agree the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
(I love CI systems at work and wouldn't live without them, but that wait time :-(, so everyone tries to get the OODA loop on their local machine )
One idea I had would to build an Elm-like backend language BUT with PHP's "edit the file on the server and it runs" nature. Combine that with some source control, forking and more of a VSCode editor on the server, and you would have a nice DX for small projects.
All those features exist but they live in different languages/stacks, you can't have them all at once (I hope this is where someone replies "you say that... but have you tried X"!)
> Whether or not sudo sends email is now configurable, so the warning may not be accurate. It is also confusing to the user since they will not know who the
incident is being reported to.
Got another Ergodox after hankering to try it again after selling my first after a couple months, waiting until I have a little less work to transition over to it as my WPM drops to about 10 while I'm learning.
Can't say enough good things about My Brother My Brother and Me. Three super clever dudes who just riff on advice questions and posts from Yahoo Answers.
Very much looking forward to the rest of this list. Obviously there are tons of lists on the topic, but his list has been slightly different so far, and his personal takes have been nice.
- Team members who need to communicate too frequently can have dedicated time scheduled for them when it's convenient for you.
- You're allowed to tell them that you're busy, or to not respond to them until it's convenient.
- With folks who have trouble making themselves understood, I like socratic method type questions to get them to answer their own questions, or to get on the same page.
As a manager, you can be helping them to set goals, and listen to what they think they say they need to meet them. You can work with HR on any additional assistance they need.
While folks with autism spectrum disorders sometimes need additional support, your role as their manager doesn't need to change dramatically to address that specifically. You will also encounter people who either don't have a diagnosis, or you won't know have a diagnosis, and you will need to address their needs whether or not you know about it.