Asperger's on the Job

Must-Have Advice for People with Asperger's or High Functioning Autism and their Employers, Educators, and Advocates

By: Rudy Simone

Narrated by: Rachel Perry

Up to 85% of the Asperger's population are without full-time employment, though many have above-average intelligence. Rudy Simone, an adult with Asperger's Syndrome and an accomplished author, consultant, and musician, created this insightful resource to help employers, educators, and therapists accommodate this growing population, and to help people with Asperger's find and keep gainful employment. Rudy's candid advice is based on her personal experiences and the experiences of over 50 adults with Asperger's from all over the world, in addition to their employers and numerous experts in the field. It contains detailed lists of what the employee can do, and employers and advocates provide balanced guidelines for success, while Rudy's Interview Tips and Personal Job Map tools will help Aspergians, young or old, find their employment niche. There is more to a job than what the tasks are. From social blunders, to sensory issues, to bullying by coworkers, Simone presents solutions to difficult challenges. Listeners will be enriched, enlightened, and ready to work together!

©2010 Rudy Simone (P)2017 Future Horizons

short and sweet

I was recently diagnosed with aspergers at the age of 22, and picked this book up to help understand myself, as well as to learn how to perform better at the workplace.

Short and sweet, Rudy Simone is right to the point. Approaching many different topics, Rudy gives practical advice and insight to help solve the problems that many of us face.

VERY INFORMATIVE

As someone who was recently diagnosed at the age of 32, I found this book helpful.

essential listen

I wish I had co.e across this book earlier in my life. It has excellent insight.

Comprehensive and excellent practical info

Found this to be a veritable 'pearl' of information that I wish had been available to me, when I was 20 to 30 years younger, and in the throes of making good decisions about what positions to apply for . I , however, realized that this invaluable information could be shared and passed on to others like me, who were starting out in their employmment pursuits. Thank you for this excellent source. Concisely well-written.

Wow actually a terrible narrator

I was very skeptical based on the other review. But it is distractingly robotic sounding. It is better at 2x speed or faster.

Even though Asperger's isn't "a thing" anymore...

... it still sort of is, I think.

I found so much helpful and relevant information in here that it was well worth tolerating the ever-so-slightly irritating narration. Honestly, they probably picked the perfect narrator for this but the dryness, sort of monotone, occasionally didactic performance sometimes interfered with my enjoyment of the content. Most of the time, I was just engaged with the learning. I am not any sort of expert on this (outside of a recent self-Dx of ASD), but I am sure that there is out-of-date info in here. Overall, however, even though the references and research quoted are all from the 00's, most of the insights still stand and have even been further verified since then.

Definitely recommended for an employee or employer struggling with interpersonal, sensory, and/or performance issues related to someone on the Autism Spectrum.

Required reading

It has deepened my understanding of the challenges my grand daughter faces. Employers and families will find lots of helpful information

I'm 37, I only realized I was autistic 2 years ago

I was diagnosed with OCD, anxiety, and depression about 10 years ago, it wasn't until about 2 years ago, when my son began to show all of the common symptoms of autism, that I started to realize that I too am on the spectrum. My son was diagnosed ASD with social and global delays just over a year ago. I've spent the last 2 years reading everything I can to make sure that I understand him, I did this because I didn't want him to feel isolated and alone growing up like I did, I want him to know that at least someone "gets" him. I spent every spare moment reading and watching him, I was almost frantic about it. my desperate need to spare him the crushing loneliness that I felt made me realize that I have always been misunderstood, I never bonded with friends, no one I grew up with was interested in the things I was interested in. my immediate family even found it near impossible to understand my perspective. I've had 19 jobs in 22 years from teaching Martial Arts and running my Martial Arts school to credit card collections to my current job doing overnight maintenance at Walmart. I have never understood other people's emotional response to anything. At first, almost from the moment I meet them, people tell me their most personal and intimate secrets and feelings, but eventually they all call me an asshole because my advice and guidance is perceived as cold and thoughtless when I've spent an incredible amount of time analyzing what they've told me and I give advice based on what is the right thing to do, if I see that they are being manipulative or mean based on what they tell me, I will always break down and explain how they are in the wrong. I have lived a life, drowning in guilt for the few times I didn't do the right thing when I was a kid, I remember almost every experience I have with someone and can recall so much that people also dislike me for that too. I have a natural talent for interpreting behavior so I always see more than people want to show which creeps people out. I firmly believed that I was trash, I thought my special skills were a curse, I have often wished I was never born at all, until my son's diagnosis threw me across a few thousand hours of learning. to finally understand my behavior and process, to finally feel like I'm not alone, I'm not crazy, I'm not an awkward fucking weirdo, I'm just a guy named Joe. it's been an amazing last few years, now I'm trying to figure out how I can be more successful because I'm constantly changing jobs. this book has some great insight and helped me realize quite a few things!

side note:
my special skills are never forgetting a face no matter how young they were when I saw them and how old they are now. because I remember almost every experience I have with people I can easily detect deception. after meeting someone a few times and establishing a behavior baseline I can easily spot even the slightest behavior changes and infer it's cause. I can predict future changes in behavior with decent accuracy by recalling everyone I've met with similar behavior and personality then imagining how they would be affected. I can now easily identify disorders, substance abuse, depression, no matter how well they hide it.

my understanding of people is that they lie, they lie to everyone in one way or another but the person they lie to the most is themselves, they lie to themselves so much that they don't even know who they are or how they feel. I realized that people are this way when I was really young and I started taking what people say with a grain of salt and studied everyone's behavior. who we are is defined by how we treat everyone around us.

sorry about my big rant and tiny review.

Simone did it again

This was a very informative book on the subject matter much like her other writings. I am grateful for her research and desire to help others.

Wonderful book, HORRIBLE narrator

As someone with AS, I have found it EXTREMELY difficult to get through this audiobook because of the narrator. Rachel Perry sounds *worse* than one of those robo-voices you hear reading books on YouTube. Her robotic, singsong voice really gets on my AS nerves (I have misophonia, and as a musician I am very sensitive to sounds). She sounds utterly artificial, and often I found myself wondering if she is actually a real person or an automated computer voice.

That said, I found the information *extremely* valuable, validating, and life-changing. Through listening to this and other ASD books I know 100% that I have what used to be called Asperger's, now called high-functioning autism or ASD. Suddenly my whole life makes sense! Up until now, I could never figure out why I was like this or that, why I did these weird things, why so much of my life and my quirks made no sense, despite years of intense self-scrutiny and not a few failed attempts at working with a therapist or counselor. Now I know why!

My only real complaint about the material is that the author switches audiences: one minute she's talking to the person with AS; the next she's talking to the "employer or advocate of a person with AS." Quite frankly, I doubt many employers will take the time to read/listen to this or any book on AS, and if they do, the book should be presented from that viewpoint. As someone with AS, I would have appreciated the focus remaining on my situation and what I can do about it, not switching to a different audience. For me personally, this just poured salt in the wound that my own employer likely will not read this book, however desperate I am for them to understand my disorder. (I'm not asking for the moon; just understanding when I don't want to sit in the middle of the crowd at meetings but instead prefer to situate myself at the fringe, where I don't feel so trapped, etc.)

Some people have criticized Rudy Simone for a lack of "scientific evidence," but as far as I know, she has not positioned any of her books as scientific treatises. I am also very much enjoying her book "Aspergirls," which is yet more validation that I have AS. I don't need a bunch of confirmation-biased scientific studies to tell me I have ASD: much more valuable is the validation of hearing the voices of others who have it, and whose experiences are exactly like mine.

If you have, or suspect you have, ASD, this book may prove of tremendous value for you. My husband has listened to it and says it helps him to understand me so much better -- and that, in itself, is priceless.

I just wish they had chosen *someone else* to read this book for the audiobook recording. It seems they picked the worst possible person on the planet to deliver a performance meant for people with Asperger's/ASD.