Eh, this just feels like "software engineering simulator." I don't have autism but a good bit of this feels familiar (am I on the spectrum?) I'm an introvert and have struggled to cope with corporate work for a while.

What helps:

- Challenging the idea that you need to mask to be successful. If masking is a recipe for burnout, then it actually seems like it's a strategy that will lower your chance for success. How much of the need here is self-imposed?

- Owning your calendar and timing for meetings to better suit your energy.

- Regular therapy and reflection, honestly.

- Regular exercise, doesn't matter who you are or what form, this is essential.

I can respect that this "simulation" fosters empathy, but worry that it also awfulizes/catastrophizes solvable problems. Figuring out functional routines and managing burnout is just as big a part of the job as writing code. It's very much a personal responsibility, maybe not in the job description, maybe harder for some than others, but it is our responsibility.

Heck, this isn’t even specific to software engineering. It’s basically just a “getting through the workday” simulator. I think there are a great many people who find working in an office exhausting. Personally, I was so much happier once I switched to remote work.

> Challenging the idea that you need to mask to be successful... How much of the need here is self-imposed?

Autistic people don't come into the world as fully formed adults with irrational ideas about the need to mask. They start off as children and attempt to socialize with other children. The autistic child in a neurotypical world just "being themselves" finds themselves repeatedly kicked out of friend groups and rejected by everyone sometimes including by their parents. This is deeply traumatic to a young child's psyche. Unloved and rejected, a solution appears! I'll just pretend to be like the other kids, even though they're stupid and wrong. They may actually objectively be stupid, but apparently they don't like being told that to their face. Pile on another decade or two of this, and hey, this child, now older and wiser, has autistic masking tendencies that cause them to burn out. Blame the now-adult person with autism all you want to absolve yourself of a need to concern yourself with other people's problems, but that's not actually helpful for those people suffering from autistic burnout.

> Challenging the idea that you need to mask to be successful. If masking is a recipe for burnout, then it actually seems like it's a strategy that will lower your chance for success. How much of the need here is self-imposed?

Masking is not always conscious, in fact it's largely unconscious. So many autistic people will go through their day around neurotypical people and feel burnt out by lunch and have no idea why. They don't necessarily realize they're burning tons of mental effort just talking to people or dealing with stimuli.

Autistic people learn to mask just to get by day to day. It's not like they got issued a "How to be Autistic: Masking for Success" guide book when they were born.

> It's very much a personal responsibility, maybe not in the job description, maybe harder for some than others, but it is our responsibility.

You might as well be telling a wheelchair-bound person that it's their responsibility to find a way up a flight of stairs or maneuver a cramped bathroom stall.

The reason it's called a "spectrum" is that everyone's on it. :)

The definition of autism has changed to pull in masses more people over the years, so if you're an older software engineer you may be autistic using the up-to-date definition.