Middle-aged autistic woman ISO a work-from-home job

June 6, 2022 10:14 PM

As the title says, I'm a late-40s autistic woman (read: bad with social skills) who needs, for my sanity, to be able to work from home. I'd also, if possible, like to make a living wage. I'm wondering if there are any jobs that might be suitable? More details within, including my work experience.

I've spent my entire professional career working in public libraries. While an admirable field, it's stressful on the ground for someone like me who struggles with making swift judgment calls, interruptions, and constant social interaction.

Since the pandemic, I've thought that I *really* want to be able to work from home. I've seen how wonderful that has been for some neurodivergent folks I know who have been able to make that switch permanently.

Thus, switching into something like archives or academic libraries is not appealing to me. It's also not appealing because jobs are so limited, both in number and geographically. I am absolutely not picking up and moving across the country for a job at this stage in my life. And the pay sucks.

I know there are tons of types of WFH jobs out there. I struggle to make sense of what some of them even entail as they often have job titles that are meaningless to me. I know I could google each one of these, but was hoping that those here with WFH jobs that might be friendly to an autistic woman could share their experiences.

Just to make this extra-difficult, I have in the past tried to teach myself to code, and have found it tedious and boring. I know that this cuts off probably the biggest source of WFH jobs out there.

I've also made a go at it with freelance writing, and without any sort of specialized knowledge or experience, have found it all but impossible to earn more than a couple hundred dollars a month.

I'd really like to earn at least $50k a year, either immediately or within a couple of years. Due to inflation I feel that's really rock-bottom for not having to panic about money on the regular.

I'm willing to retrain and to spend a few thousand on that if I could get some kind of assurance that it's likely to lead to a job. I have in the past wasted money on certificates that led nowhere.

Thanks to my library experience, I am very good at project management, writing, research, and customer service. Of these, customer service is by far my least favorite.

Is this even feasible?

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (17 answers total)

I am an older autistic woman with a remote job (although it involves a little coding).

One job I considered, which might be up your alley, is a media analyst. These people research mentions of a product, service or organization in news sites, social media, etc. According to Glass Door, the average salary is about $56,000 per year. But one caveat -- I think they often work overnight.

Also, if you have any interest in data, that is a growing field. You don't even need to be a data scientist. You might be a polling reporting specialist, for example.

And if you put "research" or "researcher", along with "remote" into indeed.com, you will get a lot of ideas. One potential path is that of title researcher.

Good luck!
posted by NotLost at 10:32 PM on June 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

So, I know you said customer service is your least favorite, but just putting this out there — I have friends who have worked for Shopify support and found it surprisingly good for a customer service job. It’s full remote, with a mix of phone support and chat support. The entry-level roles probably don’t quite meet your salary bar (and I don’t see any English-language openings currently anyway) but there’s also more supervisory roles that might be a good fit for you.
posted by mekily at 10:33 PM on June 6, 2022

Also, some companies are now making an extra effort to hire autistic people. Here are some links; other might be out there.
posted by NotLost at 10:39 PM on June 6, 2022

Technical writing? It's not 'just' writing a manual, it's about bridging end users/business users and technical makers to a coherent and maintainable documentation. LinkedIn and Reddit both have decent technical writing communities with a lot of career path discussions.

I do project management with some technical writing now, mostly WFH and it's bliss compared to my other jobs. Project management in tech is fun because you need to be a jack of all trades, without knowing how to code but understanding how coders work and what's technically possible with the product you manage. The pay for project management in tech is ridiculously high compared to other fields, but project management in general is reasonably well-paid. You can get the proper certifications, but it seems to be based on actual work experience which you have.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:07 AM on June 7, 2022 [5 favorites]

Technical support is basically the gold standard right now in entry level work from home jobs. Phone/chat/case closures.

Search terms you could look for are help desk analyst, service analyst, tier 1 support. Those roles will generally start between $45-50k depending on where you live, as long as you're technically competent and eager to work well with others and learn new skills. If you've got experience on a particular software platform the company uses, like Salesforce, you'll probably be closer to $55-60k to start.

The company I work for uses the tier 1 team as feeders for nearly every other job we have, and most folks get promoted out after a year or so, so we're pretty much always hiring for that role. I'm sure other places are similar.
posted by phunniemee at 5:47 AM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

You might try looking into the healthcare field, particularly in the areas of project management, program management, documentation, and customer service. My non-profit, large health insurance company is always hiring in those areas, and we are fully remote and would definitely pay in that range just past entry level.
posted by invincible summer at 7:15 AM on June 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

I also took several runs at teaching myself to code. It was always a dead end until I found the problems I cared about solving, and a community of women that is also interested in those problems. Feel free to memail me if you want to chat.
posted by bilabial at 7:42 AM on June 7, 2022 [7 favorites]

I work for a megacorp in a highly regulated industry and we have a number of jobs that people with library science backgrounds/degrees are good fits for. They are all jobs in which information management is a key part of the job which is why a library background is beneficial. Many are fully remote as far as I know and the pay and benefits are good.

Some search terms would be: ‘training specialist’ (think more of organizing libraries of training materials rather than doing the trainings yourself), ‘learning management specialist’, ‘quality systems specialist’, and ‘document control specialist.’

DM me if you’d like some names of companies to search.
posted by scantee at 8:43 AM on June 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'm working from home as a consultant doing QA work for web developers (and designers, frequently.) They get up to 2 weeks to work on their projects. I don't have the luxury of taking 2 weeks to do my part of it because the work needs to get out the door at specific times, but during that waiting period it's often a very light workday. It's a lot easier not being in the office and feeling obligated to look busy during that downtime. My contract employer doesn't have any requirements about being in the office, and my actual employer follows their lead.
posted by emelenjr at 11:03 AM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm an early-40s non-autistic woman who spent most of my career in public libraries (with a stint in academic) and switched careers about 6 years ago. I did a local coding bootcamp which was actually pretty lousy but it got me a good career which is now permanently WFH, pays much better than librarianship, and best of all I never work nights or weekends anymore which was my #1 beef with being a librarian. As a data point, I never attempted to teach myself coding before enrolling in the bootcamp because I thought it seemed boring, but unemployment will cause one to make drastic decisions! Now I actually really enjoy the logical thinking behind programming and feel like this is a great fit for me, although I also really enjoyed being a librarian but the job market was just.... you know.

Message me if you want more info!
posted by jabes at 12:03 PM on June 7, 2022 [5 favorites]

These days in the US, nearly any office/desk job can be a WFH (aka remote) job. It's not just coding and customer service anymore. I suggest you think more about what you want to do - project management, research, documentation, technical writing, information management etc and go from there. Maybe think of industries or fields that interest you to help focus your search. Health care and pharma are huge and offer lots of remote roles. I would imagine all the big finance and consulting companies do too. Plus some government roles- state especially. And higher ed and non-profit (typically lower pay though). Remote jobs are become the default in many industries these days. You could try working through a temp agency to get your foot in the door and try out some roles as a short-term contract. Note that many remote roles do involve a lot of zoom meetings and personal interactions, just not in person. Good luck with your search!
posted by emd3737 at 12:46 PM on June 7, 2022

I’m a late 30s autistic woman and I work from home as a business intelligence report developer and it works very well for me (re: social anxiety/exhaustion). I’ve mostly done roles working with data and computers rather than with people, so that may be up your ally.

I also second technical writing since it is a field that requires a lot of alone/focus time and ability to neatly organize a vast amount of information but, unfortunately, it also usually requires you to gather your own information. At least that was the case when I worked in that role for a while.

In my current role, there are business analysts who do most of the client interaction throughout a project, which suits me fine.
posted by Cyber666 at 1:54 PM on June 7, 2022

Also consider checking out Neurodiversity Career Connector. (I think right now most of the jobs posted on there are technical, but you may find it useful to note which companies listed on the list permit remote work, and check those company's website directly for open positions.)
posted by oceano at 2:08 PM on June 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

I'm not in the US but assume you are, so YMMV. But where I am, government jobs (echoing emd3737) are fairly flexible and may offer full-time WFH or 2 or 3 days out of 5. Also, where I am, they're advertised with published salary brackets, which may take a whole layer of stress out the job hunt.
posted by happyfrog at 2:32 PM on June 7, 2022

This isn’t a field I know from experience (I think I learned of it here), but from what I understand, instructional design can make use of library and writing skills. It’s essentially designing online educational materials for universities or businesses.
posted by Comet Bug at 4:36 PM on June 7, 2022

Freelance book indexing. Might take a bit to ramp up to your desired salary, but fairly low barrier to entry and very friendly to the neurodiverse. American Society for Indexing should be your first stop. I didn't love their training course. The one at Berkeley is supposed to be pretty good.
posted by libraryhead at 6:51 PM on June 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Another role in tech (super high salaries) which is not coding is a Scrum Master. Also Business Analyst. Look at the definitions on any of the Agile websites.
posted by CathyG at 11:30 PM on June 7, 2022