It Takes A Village, and Veronica Yao is a Welcoming Mayor

Welcome back to Autistic Techie.

I am psyched today to be joined by Veronica Yao the person behind the curtain for Atypical Careers.

As a career coach, she specializes in working with neurodivergent job seekers, people in the workplace, and anyone else who really helps figure out what's going on with their

neurodiversity on their job, in interviews, and just figuring all their stuff out.

She's also the mastermind behind the same Facebook group with the same name with 79,000 people in it.

I've used this group quite a bit in my own journey.

I've answered a couple of questions in there.

And this is definitely one of the few spaces I've found for neurodivergent folks in their careers to socialize with other people in a pretty comforting setting.

Veronica does a fantastic job maintaining this group and working with clients and folks just like you to help figure out their brain in the workplace.

And I'm really happy to dive into her on workplace topics, running her own business, being in STEM, and learning more about her.

Veronica, welcome to Autistic Techie.

I'm excited to be here.

Thanks so much for having me.

Of course, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

where to start?

I mean, I guess it's worth noting that I didn't jump into career coaching right away.

Like a lot of neurodivergent folks, I had to kind of find my own way within my career.

It seemed like a lot of the traditional career advice that was being fed to us at the time and still is being fed to us.

Didn't really align with my experience.

This didn't really resonate with me and didn't really help me ultimately and I really found myself trying to figure out my own hacks and my own tricks for Navigating this crazy

job market that we need to navigate in order to survive

it was a lot easier to figure out what was happening when I had the final piece of the puzzle, which was my ADHD diagnosis.

Now, neurodivergence was not something that was foreign to me.

I grew up with a sibling who was autistic.

So I always kind of identified as the autism sibling.

I know that's kind of sounds like autism mom, and it kind of brings up feelings for all of us.

But that's really how I identified growing up was I am one of the main supporters of this, of this autistic sibling that I have.

And I'm so grateful that we still have a fantastic

relationship these days, but now I'm able to kind of relate to them through my own neurodivergent experiences and understanding what that unique journey was for me.

And by having all of these perspectives, I really realized that I could do the most good in the world by focusing on all these aspects of my career and my life that

seemed at the time like it didn't really connect, but after a while I realized, hey, I've been working for 10 years in marketing and a lot of it was focused on educational content

creation for job seekers and employers, best practices in the workforce.

I had this background of being surrounded by the neurodivergent community and then finding my own identity within that.

Just dealing with the constant burnout and the constant disappointment that comes with trying to meet the expectations of everybody around you and being labeled almost as a

failure over and over.

When I knew in my heart that that's not what I was, I was so much more than that.

But for some reason, I couldn't break through this wall.

And so I'm really grateful that I'm in a place right now where I'm able to kind of take those lessons from my own experiences and the people who I have managed to connect with

over the course of my career and really create a community and create a space where neurodivergent people feel validated in their journey and not gaslit into thinking that

they are.

you know, inferior or not working hard enough or, you know, anything like that, but rather realizing that we have a different set of challenges than a lot of other people.

And it's not as binary as people think.

There are a lot of nuances that we want to bring to the conversation.

And that's what I'm hoping to do with my work through Atypical Careers and our online community.

lot of points in order that I'm really excited to jump into.

The first thing that stood out to me as well is it sounds like you have a great relationship with your sibling who's neurodivergent and it sounds like you may have been

late diagnosed.

Is that correct?

Absolutely, I was diagnosed at the age of 30.

And that is 30 years of masking, performing, trying to figure out how to fit in.

You know, I remember when I was young, one of my other passions is musical theater.

I went to school for an art school.

I went as a vocal major.

I still sing.

I go to karaoke down the street all the time with my friends.

But

think it was really interesting because

I really saw the world as something that I needed to perform in.

It almost felt like improvisation.

It felt like that show, if you remember from the early 2000s, whose line is it anyway?

ah Maybe not as hilarious as that, but definitely kind of had the same vibes.

And what I realized that feeling was so many years later when I had that context was masking, trying to figure out how to contextualize

my actions within what the expectations of other people around me were.

Now I'm so grateful to be able to differentiate that I've been able to kind of pick apart what was my mask and what is the true me, least this version of me in this.

time and place and who knows who I'm going to be in the future.

But just having that knowledge and that ability to kind of separate that has really freed me in a lot of ways and I'm hoping that I can help other people find that within

themselves as well.

What's your go-to karaoke song?

my gosh, I've been singing so much Wicked lately and it was so popular back in like 2005 or whenever I was in high school.

And then it came back a few years ago with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo and suddenly everybody is singing Defying Gravity.

So I just kind of had to dust that off there.

I don't hit it as beautifully as Cynthia or Adina.

But it's definitely something that's close to my heart.

Everyone's gonna well up with a bunch of friends and do a Broadway rave, which is a giant dance party for Broadway songs.

just, I'm at the stage in my life where I get too sleepy and I'm downtown at 1130 PM and I'm like, God, I gotta take the train home.

So I'm kind of that that phase in my life.

So that's probably why I haven't gone yet.

If I have to go to the social, we just get a red bull or something.

And that'll keep me awake at least until the show is over.

But it's so much fun.

You hit an interesting point as far as like expressing yourself and being yourself and Wicked is actually a really interesting metaphor for that.

Because you have these two individuals, you have Glinda, who is like very bubbly, very out there.

So

so physical, so visible.

And also it's interesting because a lot of what her personality is all about is like being this very bubbly outgoing person.

It sounds like a very highly masking individual when all that she has to do all the time is be on 100 % at a time.

And you have Elphaba who's kind of in the other direction trying to fit in, trying to figure out what works and then

When she realizes that she can't get what she actually wants because it disagrees with her morals, she's like, no, I'm going to stand up for myself and do what I need to do in a

situation.

I just thought of that metaphor right now, but I think Wicked is fantastic metaphor for neurodiversity.

absolutely.

I think there is a reason why the neurodivergent community resonates so hard with this musical.

Even before it...

boosted back into popularity a couple of years ago.

It's really, you know, the idea of having to follow cultural norms when it is against what you feel in your heart, for lack of better term.

You know, I can really identify with sense of justice.

How many times have we all been in the workplace where we're seeing something that

obviously to us at least is unethical or nonsensical even and being told to just fall in line and let it happen and just having that

feeling.

mean, you know, well, you might just burst into song at that point and, you know, just start expressing, you know, how frustrated you are.

But we don't have anywhere to put that because if we say something, we risk ourselves and, you know,

maybe to an extent our safety, but definitely, you know, our mental well-being, we put some of ourselves on the line there.

But if we don't say anything, you know, there is that dissonance inside us that is, makes us question, you know, did I do the right thing?

And then we ruminate on that forever.

So yeah, in short, definitely think it's a really, really, there is definitely a reason why we resonate so much with those stories and a lot of other stories like it.

I still resonate with so much of like that and I still ruminate as far as like things that you said two or three years ago.

was like, remember that really embarrassing thing?

Or remember that moment where you should have said something else and you didn't or that you meant to say something and did not?

I have all those like invasive thoughts.

absolutely.

Like, I still have those sleeper thoughts that I think I've gotten over.

You think that the therapist has kind of helped you heal through it.

And then in the middle of the night, it's gonna wake you up and you're just gonna be like, that person, it's probably been about 10 years and they probably think I'm still an idiot.

But honestly,

You know, that's just something that we kind of have to accept.

Like, if that is something that is encoded in who you are, you tend to be that type of person.

It's not necessarily a bad thing.

It comes from a really good place.

But what you need to do is make sure that you have coping mechanisms to make sure that it doesn't stall your entire day.

Think about, I'm not saying you should be less sensitive.

You shouldn't let these feelings stop you from doing your work.

You have two options in that case.

You can either try and find a way to numb those feelings, push them down, put them away.

don't acknowledge them and you know over time it might bottle up or you need to find a way to kind of express them and put them forward.

I'm not even sure what I'm talking about anymore.

I think I just jumped to thought trains in the middle of that statement but let's see if you can take this and go with it.

I actually think that resonates with like masking the idea of I have to alter what I'm saying, what I'm doing, what I'm feeling to either try to fit in or try to feel like I

need to alter my behavior to get what I want.

That happens to me in the workplace.

Somewhat often I would say I'm lucky to be in a workplace where I don't feel like I have to mask all the time, but I've been in workplaces before.

I feel like I was like always on, always having to.

Obfuscate my feelings say something different or like just alter the way to do I remember a vivid moment actually when like it was my first job out of college and I I don't know

what I was doing at the moment, but I was like we're in like a casual outfit like by casual I mean like shorts and a t-shirt no logo is nothing that you would find

inappropriate but like this is what I thought was comfortable for me at the time and I remember someone had a conversation with me and they're like we were talking about like

what to wear to the job or whatever and I think like

I remember who it was or what they said, but the message I got was like, you should be dressing nicer.

And I kind of took it to the end of extreme and I started wearing a lot, quote, nicer stuff, like nicer pants, a button down shirt.

And that felt like a very highly masking moment for me.

I wanted to fit in.

I wanted to feel like I belonged in this job, even if it was, I would say uncomfortable for me.

I think I got into the point where I have a better sense of my wardrobe for stuff like that.

But at that moment, it felt like a very...

hard overcorrection to get people to like me, I guess.

Absolutely.

I can totally relate.

My first job out of university, I studied journalism, but somehow I ended up in this company that, you know, tried to get people to sign up for credit cards.

And long story short, I was working in that team and I felt so out of place, but so wanting to be able to fit in because I needed in my brain

to make sure that all the work and all the effort, all the struggles of going through school and all of that stuff, by the way, I love learning, don't love school, like just

not down for the format or anything like that, managed to make it through.

But, you know, I was really looking for a place to validate all of that work that I had done to show that, you know, hey, I came through the other side and, you know, now like

look at me go.

But honestly, this place was a frat house.

And when I'm talking like startup in tech and like at five o'clock, the boardrooms would turn into beer pong tables.

They had like this shopping cart that they would fill up with beer and push around the office so that people could just like crack cold ones and stuff.

It really like, I was.

really out of my element.

was, they knew I was not like, I was there being like, I'm just gonna go home and play Zelda and save a tiny world and no one got me.

So yeah, but over time, I think, you know, as we kind of get exposed to these different environments and see

what, you know, where we fit in, you know, over time, we will kind of figure out how to find our people.

It's never gonna be a perfect fit, but we get a little bit closer.

The problem is, is with our job market and the way that employment works in our world, there's almost no...

room for error from the first point.

Like as you said, you went to your first interview and they didn't take into account that this was your first interview.

They didn't take into account that you might need some guidance and you might need a couple of shots in order to figure out what was the right kind of attire for you or like

that would kind of meet the middle of being comfortable and being yourself but also

putting off the impression that you are aligned with their idea of professional.

Like ideally we would have some time to ease into it, but they kind of expect us to be perfect from the get-go, which is an unrealistic expectation for anybody.

I think that actually transitions well as far as the group that you run for Neurodivergent Careers.

You've got 79,000 people who all have some sort of community positive fraternity or friendliness of our people.

What inspired you to not only create this group but foster it into becoming the network that it is today?

I'm going to start off by saying I did not plan for this group to get this big.

It was never in the plan.

So when I first

decided to venture out on this journey.

I always knew I wanted to be a business owner.

I just was waiting for the alignment as to what I wanted to do.

So when I discovered my neurodivergent identity, I started digging into this community.

I was like, I want to serve this community.

This is the area that I'm seeing the most need from.

There's a lot of ADHD coaches and, you know, autism informed coaches out there.

But does anybody focus on career?

I'm

like, you know, fit into that.

And my background at the time was marketing, content creation, community creation.

So honestly, I just started off with what I knew.

I was like, what do I know how to do?

I know how to make a group.

I'm just going to make a group and see what happens.

over the first six months, it was pretty chill.

It was like 250 people joined every day.

was getting like five or six people asking to join.

was like, this is pretty good.

This is great.

I can kind of, you know, tap into what people are thinking.

I can have conversations and all that stuff.

And then six months in, I swear it started to blow up.

had no idea where these people were coming from, but at one point I swear I was processing like a thousand member requests a day.

And that was for me on one hand, I'm like, this is well, I don't know if it's great because what I what I really recognized was as much as my community was growing, it was

also a huge indicator that we didn't have anything like this.

People needed a place to go.

And so many people joined the group at this time saying.

I didn't know something like this existed.

This is something I didn't know I needed.

And it makes sense because as neurodivergent adults, we're left with almost no resources.

once we pass that age and all of a sudden we're expected to navigate a world independently without a roadmap, so to speak.

And of course, one of the biggest parts of that is navigating the workplace.

We don't have the option to not go into the workforce.

We have to because it is literally for survival.

And so that's kind of one of the unique things about the way that I approach the conversations in the community that I approach with my clients, my neurodivergent clients

who are looking for coaching.

It's not about, you know, professional development.

It would be so nice if I could climb the career ladder and be a C-suite executive and make a little bit more money.

No, for us, it's literally...

survival and trying to make sure that we don't lose ourselves to this world of work because ultimately as much as they would like us to believe otherwise, work is supposed to

support

our lives and not the other way around.

And so that's really what I dig into in trying to help people build a sustainable life, not their dream job.

That's not what we do here, but rather something that is sustainable so that they can go home at the end of the day and get satisfaction from other areas of their life, pursue

their hobbies, do what they love and all that kind of stuff.

You had an interesting point as far as you can't necessarily have your dream job.

And that's a hard thing to break to people.

Like your dream job may not necessarily be the one that makes you the happiest or is the most efficient for your life in the sense that sure, you can do what you love, but is it

exhausting?

Is it taxing?

Are you masking?

Are you scratching an itch for your hobby and sacrificing something else in the process?

That's a hard conversation to have with somebody when they're hell bent to really focus on this one thing.

but they're not able to process what it costs them.

Absolutely.

But the thing is that a lot of people who come to talk to me are usually past that point where they have, but maybe at one point they believed in a dream job and then they jumped

into the job market and they realized, it's more complicated than that.

And yes, everything is more complicated than people.

tend to say if anybody's giving you a blanket statement and saying this is a rule everyone in the world should follow, they're probably trying to sell you something because we're

all so diverse.

Even under the neurodivergent umbrella, we are all so diverse.

We all have different needs.

When I'm talking to someone, I don't ask, do you have ADHD?

Great, I have this set template for you to follow.

No.

I'm going to ask them about their unique experiences and then I'm going to figure out what that profile looks like and then I'm going to figure out how we can support them best

given that information that we're given.

You hit on something really important that like every neurodivergent person is unique.

Everyone has a different psyche, different strengths, different weaknesses.

I've had the chance over the last couple of months to meet with a lot of folks who are neurodivergent and have higher support needs, have other medical complexities, have other

intellectual disabilities.

I think it's something to be said for the breadth of neurodiversity where a lot of folks have lower support needs and are like kind of making their way in the workplace.

but might be getting held back by stereotypes or stigmas associated with a term such as ADHD or autism.

And then you have folks who have higher support needs and maybe will not be able to have like the same job at the same level of independence that I think people like myself take

for granted.

How do you think about that relationship as far as digging into what someone's strengths and what their needs are, on an individual level?

Yeah, this is something that I have thought a lot about over the last couple of years because that is something that I developed for my first online course, which is called

Misfit to Master Plan.

And I'm in the, it's fairly new and it's really exciting because it really kind of breaks down what you need to evaluate about yourself and takes you through the exercises for.

how to build a sustainable work life.

Of course, one of the first things you need to figure out is what does sustainability look like for you?

Because your energy spend, your resources, your support network, it's gonna be different.

If person A has a really strong support network, like, and you know, higher support needs, their needs are probably gonna be different from someone who has...

you know, maybe lower support needs, but doesn't have that extra network and doesn't have that safety net or that financial safety net.

So it's really about talking about not just what do you do at work?

What are your skill sets?

What are the industries you want to work in?

It's also about

What are the things that are important to you outside of work?

What are the things that you need to feel satisfied and fulfilled at work?

Because guess what?

If you are not feeling satisfaction outside of work, you're gonna bring that energy into work and you're gonna hate that too.

So we really need to try and figure out how to get multiple sources of satisfaction in your life outside of work because...

eventually when work inevitably dips, like you get a new manager you don't get along with, a new person gets hired and you're kind of annoyed with them, maybe you know, any sort of

thing that could happen.

Hopefully you have other things in your life that are established so that it can kind of even it out.

Maybe you're not so happy at work these couple of months, but your hobby in dance

has really been fulfilling and it kind of helps you through those tough times at work and stuff.

So obviously it's a very multi-layered thing, but the most important thing is to know what your current state is in terms of work sustainability.

What does sustainability actually look like for you specifically?

And then

you can start to build a roadmap there and suddenly making those decisions are gonna become a lot clearer because you understand what you're working towards.

Veronica, this has been a fantastic conversation.

Where can people find you on the internet?

Including I hear you have an upcoming podcast as well, maybe.

Tell us about where people can find you.

Yeah, absolutely.

so my new podcast is actually called Work is Rigged, and it's exactly what it sounds like.

It is for neuro it is for us to have conversations about what it's really like to be neurodivergent in the workplace, not what the textbooks say it's like, not what like the

experts say it's like, although there are some experts who are actually know what they're talking about.

Obviously.

But um, but that's what but that's what I mean.

We want to have like real honest conversations about that.

I'm so excited to be doing that very, very soon.

Um, obviously, you can find me on my website, atypicalcareers.com.

I'm at AtypicalCareers on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, all that kind of stuff.

And I have a lot of things cooking.

Like I'm really, really excited to show you guys.

So definitely stay tuned.

And it's it's really been a pleasure to be to chat with you.

I can't wait to stay tuned to all the things got going on and maybe be on your podcast in the future.

I'll put all the information about that in the show notes and I can't wait to stay in touch.

Veronica, thank you so much for this incredible conversation.

Thank you.