If you don’t know me well, document should give you an idea about who I am and my patterns. Please help me improve this document by pointing out mistakes, or inconsistencies.

❗️Important facts about me

• I live in Oregon with my wife, Rachel Nigh (together for ~15 years)
• I am autistic, and am passionate about neurodiversity
• In my free time I am either reading, listening to music, cooking, or watching a movie

👥 Working with People

There is nothing I care more about than helping the careers and lives of the people around me. What this means:

• I am available. Need advice, feedback, or help, or whatever? Is it 10pm at night and you don’t know what to do? I am available and here for you. I deeply want to demonstrate my care for people, and will try to help however I can.
• I deeply care about diversity. I was raised with an incredibly privileged background. Taking that privilege and extending it to those around me, who have not been traditionally afforded that privilege, is a core part of who I am. If I can ever help you, or extend my own privilege in any way - please directly ask me. I would love to help.
• Your career is important to me. I love helping anyone better their career and compensation in meaningful ways. I cannot overstate the importance of this to me. This is especially true if you are someone who has been traditionally marginalized.
• I love being an advocate. Need support or help in some way? I personally measure my own impact through people. Helping people achieve their goals, whatever they are, brings me a crazy amount of joy. In other words, “Help me - help you!”
• I take nothing personally. I love feedback, and welcome difficult conversations with anyone. We are all trying to do our best, and I’ll take what you say with positive intent behind it.
• We are all trying hard. I strongly believe we are all trying our best given who we are at any given moment. We all get frustrated and have bad days/months/years. I’m here to support people, not to judge them.
• I ruthlessly prioritize. I love tackling big problems and scope. To succeed at that I have to prioritize what I do - and which I attempt to do in a very clear way. This is to both make my work transparent, and also to get feedback from people who disagree with my prioritization. Always feel free to push back on my priorities/focus.
• Everything is negotiable. I see almost everything as a negotiation or debate. If we are discussing anything - it is critical to me to understand your views and for us to compromise/negotiate together. I strongly believe that when we put our views together we create better ideas/things.

🔥 My Deficits

This is the last section not because it is the least important, but because it is about me. As with anyone, I have natural deficits that no matter how much I try to improve, still exist. I want to own these and be transparent with what those are.

• I cannot and will not advocate for myself. I find it uncomfortable and distressing to talk about myself, or to promote myself in any way whatsoever. This is not uncommon for people with autism. I have spent years trying to improve at this, and have come to accept this is a fundamental piece of who I am. This applies to anything in my life, from small things to my career.
• Being social takes energy from me. I love getting to know people, but being social is not something that gives me energy. I will often take small breaks from interacting to recharge. I am a homebody, and live an extremely quiet life.
• I do not think in a linear manner. Interacting with people can be challenging because I don’t think or process information in a linear fashion. As part of my autism, my thinking and memory is associative and pattern-based. This is one of the primary reasons I personally love async work. It gives me time to ‘translate’ thoughts well.
• I overshare and can’t read people. It is very hard for me to read social cues. For example, one of the hardest cues for me to read is understanding when a conversation is over. I’ll be super awkward about it trying to figure out “did I give you all the info you needed”. So I’ll often stay in a conversation for a minute or two more than needed. Feel free to be obvious/blunt when communicating, I will appreciate it.