Autism is my superpower: how Harrison became a Digital Engineering Program Coordinator
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Transcript: My name is Harrison Mobbs. I'm a digital engineering Lead Data Analyst. I had quite a rough childhood. I was quite erratic and my behaviour led to me being diagnosed with autism, Asperger's Syndrome at the time. My ideal job growing up was to always be a pilot. Left home when
I was 19 to go out and study at uni.
Found the study very hard, especially when it was online during COVID. Struggling to pay attention and stay focused and I got diagnosed with ADHD that time. After getting the diagnosis they said, "you wanted to fly, you had to be without the medication, without the symptoms of your condition". Which is a bit impossible.
And so I had to go back to square one and unfortunately that led to me being in a situation where
I was very underemployed and working multiple jobs just to sort of keep on top of my rent. I really don't like looking back at my past and thinking, "oh, what if things went different?" Because I'm very happy with who I am now and I wouldn't go back and change a thing.
Being here at ASA has really given me the stability I need to not only develop on my career but my life outside of work. I've been able to improve my social life around it. I'm not in that underemployed position I once was. Neuroinclusion means being able to cater to many different ways of thinking and many different ways of learning. It's not a one approach fits all sort of strategy, not one shoe fits all, and so you've got to listen to what they might have to say or pay attention to what they do in order to figure out what approach you need to take to that individual. The framework that is there from neurotypical processes can sometimes have holes if it's you know you have someone else who thinks differently and comes in and applies their way of thinking to that process.
Being able to provide not just for your highest performing employees but everyone. It's so important. There may be a reason why someone isn't the highest performing and that just could be
because they haven't been told a specific thing about their task and why it needs to be done for them to switch on and be able to go out and do it with that understanding.
A lot of the neurodivergent strengths like the rule based thinking and the attention to detail are great, especially as we have to apply our thinking to a lot of different engineering disciplines. We've got such a good team culture around it. Everyone has their own little quirks and traits and we all seem to blend together perfectly. Because of that we're able to get a really high level quality no matter what area we're working in.
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