A successful and optimistic Autistic Multimillionaire chronicles his journey with Autism and reflects on how the disorder has helped and hindered him as he went from high school dropout to successful husband, father, executive, and entrepreneur.
He explains what he knows now that he wishes heâd known when younger in order to make living with Autism more rewarding and less challenging. He explores what makes those like him - the âSheldon Coopersâ of the World - tick, and he analyzes and explains numerous powerful behaviors of those on the Spectrum that can relentlessly drive success in people ranging from Einstein to Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. What can everyone learn from their examples?
This book is Davidâs attempt to make the lives of others on the Autism Spectrum (and those close to them) easier and more successful by documenting the strategies, techniques, and tools that he developed throughout his life to both manage and leverage the attributes and behaviors related to his Autism Spectrum Disorder. Chapter topics include Symptoms, Emotions, Empathy, Hyperfocus, Special Interests, Employment, Parenting, Relationships and Marriage, Mindblindness, Bullying, Meltdowns, Masking, and more, all told from the personal perspective of someone who has been there.
A successful and optimistic Autistic Multimillionaire chronicles his journey with Autism and reflects on how the disorder has helped and hindered him as he went from high school dropout to successful husband, father, executive, and entrepreneur.
He explains what he knows now that he wishes heâd known when younger in order to make living with Autism more rewarding and less challenging. He explores what makes those like him - the âSheldon Coopersâ of the World - tick, and he analyzes and explains numerous powerful behaviors of those on the Spectrum that can relentlessly drive success in people ranging from Einstein to Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. What can everyone learn from their examples?
This book is Davidâs attempt to make the lives of others on the Autism Spectrum (and those close to them) easier and more successful by documenting the strategies, techniques, and tools that he developed throughout his life to both manage and leverage the attributes and behaviors related to his Autism Spectrum Disorder. Chapter topics include Symptoms, Emotions, Empathy, Hyperfocus, Special Interests, Employment, Parenting, Relationships and Marriage, Mindblindness, Bullying, Meltdowns, Masking, and more, all told from the personal perspective of someone who has been there.
The first time I met Bill was almost thirty years ago in his backyard. A pair of burly security guards dressed in too-tight purple Microsoft polo shirts politely escorted me through his home on the West Side of Lake Washington. It was a mansion to my mid-western eyes, though only a fraction the size of the more famous home he would later build sprawling across the hillsides of the lakeâs eastern shore. Windows 95 was still in the future, and I was at Microsoft working on the older operating system known as MS-DOS. I was just a temporary intern ââ not even a full-time âblue badgeâ employee yet ââ but back in those days, Microsoft was small enough to allow Bill to invite the top college prospects over for a backyard BBQ.
Out on the lawn with a microbrew in hand, we all clustered around him, hoping to catch his interest in conversation. Each of us had no doubt prepared something clever to say, just in case the opportunity presented itself: perhaps an insight about, or criticism of, a Microsoft product so perceptive or biting that heâd recognize our innate genius amongst the crowd and pluck us, like a gem, from the front lines. That was the daydream. The starker reality was that after our burger and beer weâd be hurried out the front door and back to headquarters in Redmond to work another of our 16-hour days, competing directly against one another for the top spots. Everyone came from the best schools: MIT and Princeton in the United States, Waterloo in Canada. With over 100,000 job applications coming into Microsoft every year at the time, just being one of those 30 was an incredibly big deal ââ especially if you were from the University of Regina like I was.
Thatâs in Saskatchewan if that helps any, but either way, I was only really at Microsoft by virtue of having put myself through college on the proceeds from writing software for a competing computer platform. My program, HyperCache, had already sold a few thousand copies before it popped up on Microsoftâs radar. My task now was to write something like it for their MS-DOS, releasing it for a hundred million PCs instead of just a few thousand. If that went well, there was a good chance of a full-time spot upon graduation â complete with their famously lucrative Microsoft stock options. Failing that, I could always go back to my old job at 7-Eleven (and so you can imagine why I wanted to make a good first impression).
We gathered in concentric circles around Bill as the setting sun glistened off the lake behind us. Few dared probe toward the center, where Bill himself stood alone, but I had an advantage with Ben, my manager. He knew Bill and seemed completely unfazed by fame or fortune. Ben pulled me straight through the gauntlet of would-be nerds and presented me directly to Bill as if I were a prized protégé.
He told him: âThis is Dave, our intern from Canada. In the space of four monthsâŠâ his voice trailed off to list the very real technical accomplishments that I had worked so hard to complete that summer. I listened in earnestness at first, but soon became highly distracted with one very real problem: it hadnât technically been four months as Ben had said. It had only taken three months ââ not four.
It was a small thing, but an important detail. Â I was sure theyâd want to know. I cleared my throat, spoke up, and interrupted them with the correction:
âThree months.â
Surprised, they both stopped, turned, and looked at me. My heart sank. Once again ââ as always ââ I had spoken out of turn, somehow saying just the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time. That much was obvious, and that was three decades ago.
And yet I just found out last week that I have autism! (Iâm writing this part raw, in the aftermath of that diagnosis, to capture my early thoughts about it.)
Ben and I had both long since moved on from Microsoft, and I had not seen him in several years. At some point along the way he had been surprised by a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder for his own adult daughter, and apparently, after better understanding the symptoms and seeing them in the context of his own family, one of his early thoughts was âDave should get himself testedâ. Soon after, he took me for lunch and told me about his daughterâs diagnosis, and without really being specific at all as to why, he encouraged me to investigate being tested for autism myself.
I wasnât really bothered by the idea, but I was a bit confused as to what would lead him to think so. I went home and took the Autism Spectrum Quotient test online and, of a possible fifty points, I scored forty. Clearly, I thought, I must be answering the questions with personal bias, so I had my wife of twenty-five years sit down and make sure I was being accurate and honest. I retook the test with her to be sure that I did not exaggerate. My score went up: forty-two.
For years I had joked that âIâm not on the spectrum, but you can see it from hereâ. I later upgraded that to âI might be on the spectrum, but Iâm on the non-visible portionâ. Still, I didnât really consider it possible. Iâm empathetic, sensitive, emotional, and funny ââ all things that I thought would preclude me from being anywhere on the autism spectrum. Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
Wait, Iâve Got What?
I booked the necessary appointments and over the course of a few weeks completed all the testing. I would have done better on the SAT and math sections with a little advanced practice but going in cold as an adult was also interesting in its own right. It sure had been a long time since Iâd done much long division! Preparing the full report took a few weeks, and my wife accompanied me to receive the results.
The good news? Apparently, Iâm reasonably clever. As in âthree standard deviationsâ smart. On some portions of the cognitive testing, I even achieved perfection ââ something theyâd apparently never seen before. But I was also slow. I got the right answer but took my own sweet time to get it. Each test runs to completion without you knowing the time limit, but they watch and record where you were at when the set time limit expired. I scored 1,550 (of 1,600) on the SAT but only if time wasnât considered: had I been cut off at the official time limit, I would have only scored 1,150, a fairly average score. The reason? Apparently, I have serious Attention Deficit Disorder. Oh, and as noted: it also turns out that I have autism.
More accurately, I was officially diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. As the doctor, my wife, and I flipped through the pages of the report in unison, terms like âsignificant social dysfunctionâ stared back at me. When we finally got to the autism-specific behaviors section, my wife was pleased to note: âWell, at least the numbers are good here, far above average!â ââ but then the doctor corrected her:
âNo, no⊠higher is worse.â
I used to be âgifted,â but now I had a âdiagnosis.â And it had a âbetterâ and a âworse.â Thatâs about all I felt in those initial minutes.
Not everyone appreciates popular media portrayals of autism, but weâll leave that aside, for now, to make use of two such examples as handy measuring devices: if I were forced to use a pop reference as perhaps the least accurate but most communicative way to express the amount of autism that I am affected by, I would say I have 80% as much as Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory. At current exchange rates, Iâd estimate that makes me about 25% as autistic as the title character in the movie Rain Man. As you can guess these are not professional metrics, theyâre numbers pulled from the air by a layman[1].
From the actual test report, I can see that Iâm more autistic than roughly 98.5% of the general population. While that might sound quite âautisticâ, Iâm still fairly âhigh functioningâ.  I donât use those terms a lot, however. Iâm also highly impacted in many ways ââ which is what makes my âbalanceâ point interesting, I believe. In short, Iâm far enough into it to deeply understand the autism thought process that is normally inaccessible to neurotypical people, yet still conversant enough to explain back to everyone what they are missing ââ and even how this condition can be of use in their own lives at times. Hopefully, I can explain it to you!
Unfortunately, as with many people on the spectrum, my brain is âcomplicatedâ in other ways as well. As I noted earlier, I have significant attention deficit disorder (ADD) (my mother says she would add hyperactivity to the list, but I was never tested as a youth). I also, to my great regret, smoked cigarettes for thirty years, and I believe it was that stimulant that allowed me to manage my dopamine and stay focused for most of my adult life. This probably explains why the ADD only really came to light when I quit smoking (or while sitting without them for long exams, depositions, etc.). On top of this, Iâve also suffered from anxiety, which has been known to lead to bouts of depression if not well managed.
Or could it be that these are just aspects of my autism, mischaracterized as unrelated anxiety and mood disorders for decades? These were among the questions I would attempt to answer for myself.
Learning these things about myself didnât happen all at once. In fact, it has been a process of discovery over the course of more than 25 years, treating problems and issues whenever and wherever they arose without systematically looking for a deeper connection between them. That I did not eventually diagnose my own autism surprises me. I donât feel bad for missing it, however, given that for decades more qualified educators and professionals also overlooked the same symptoms. To be honest, however, I cannot blame them either: over the years Iâve become a master at âmasking,â or the art of acting ânormalâ, which makes a diagnosis without specific testing even more difficult. Girls are reportedly even better at such masking, going undiagnosed even more often as a result.
The good news is that this odd mix of brain disorder and ability has not caused my life to descend entirely into chaos: in fact, quite the contrary. Although it has been a wild ride at times for both myself and those around me, this exotic brain of mine has served me incredibly well! If you will briefly indulge some self-congratulatory details: I graduated at the top of my university with an engineering degree (though years late in starting it because I had dropped out of high school); I have made multiple fortunes many different ways; I have invented, designed, and engineered products used daily by billions of humans around the globe; been issued half a dozen patents; started my own company in my den that went on to achieve over one-hundred-million dollars in sales; married my beautiful soulmate; raised four happy and successful children . . . and much more. And yet, for all this self-indulgent list of success, privilege, and grace, I still struggle with simple things like eye contact⊠and conversation flow... and relationships, and anger, and anxiety, and meltdowns, and a dozen other things we shall soon turn to look at.
It is only now, in retrospect, that I can look back and see specifically where certain aspects of autism impacted my life, for better and for worse, and it is here that I tell those stories. If I am successful, it will be because I not only explain and entertain, but I will have done so in a way that empowers you to apply some of those lessons learned to your own life ââ whether you are personally affected by autism or not. Because to be clear, life with some autism can be spectacular!
Whatâs Inside This Book
Within these pages, I have four related goals. The first is to give you a better understanding of high-functioning individuals with autism ââ the real Sheldon Coopers[2] of the world if you will. I want you to understand what makes us tick, what we think, why we think it, how we act upon it, and why we do it that way. From there the book will take an in-depth look at some important autism topics, often from multiple perspectives. For example, the chapter on employment considers both what it means to be managed by an autistic manager as well as what it takes to manage an autistic employee. The vantage point will continue to shift as we tackle topics such as parenting and marriage. The second goal is to help you understand specifically what makes some of those with autism so relentless in their pursuit of success. After identifying and discussing those traits and attributes, my goal is to help those with similar traits capitalize on them. Perhaps if a neurotypical person reading this can understand the characteristics, routines, and habits of certain individuals with autism, they too will be able to increase their odds of success through learning new approaches for their own lives.
There is no easy way to know if public figures such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are on the autism spectrum. If they are, none have publicly shared that information, and unless and until they do, itâs a private health matter that I wonât speculate on. We can, however, observe and identify certain traits and characteristics that they exhibit in common with people on the spectrum and note how they may have served to make those individuals so driven to succeed in their own endeavors, regardless of whether they experience the disorder or not. Which is almost the point: irrespective of who is officially diagnosed with what condition, if something worked for me, and it worked for them, it might work for you!
A third goal is to entertain you along the way, as it has been quite an interesting journey: not just for me, but for the loved ones around me, who must have sometimes felt as untethered as I did.
The tales of how autism has impacted my life and career are not here merely for the vicarious enjoyment of others. I truly believe that for someone with the disorder, and for those close to that person, both knowing how I persevered and seeing where I stumbled and failed can be useful and instructive.
The fourth and final goal is to help assure loved ones, especially any parents of children newly diagnosed with autism (at least those at a level of severity like my own). Having a diagnosis in hand can make things much easier to manage. In truth, this perceived responsibility I feel toward parents of such children remains my primary motivation in âcoming outâ about my autism. If I had known in my youth what I know now, my life would have been even better⊠or at least a much easier journey. Knowing that in just a few chapters I could tell you things that took me (and my family) a lifetime to learn by trial and error was a driving factor in me completing this book. In this way, I hope to possibly save you a great deal of angst and misery!
If you come along on this journey youâll watch as I go from being a bullied youth to winding up a high school dropout, then turn my life around sharply enough to return to school and ultimately secure distinguished research grants and scholarships. Next, weâll leave the small farming city in Saskatchewan for Microsoft at the height of the 90s tech boom as I get married, graduate, and emigrate all in one crazy weekend. Follow as I build a company ââ starting in my den ââ whose sales explode geometrically causing me to sell it for cash to a NASDAQ company. Right at the peak, I will be sued by the government, federally compliance-audited, and state tax-audited all at once during the sale, potentially scuttling the entire deal and prompting an autistic meltdown right in the offices of the attorney general!
Moving on from my personal experience with autism we will look at selected topics related to the disorder. Because autism is probably still new for most of us, we can follow the standard model of instruction: âHereâs what I tried, and hereâs what worked and what did not, and why I think that is.â We will follow that approach for important topics related to autism, such as Empathy, Emotions, Masking, Mindblindness, Marriage, Parenting, Employment, and many more. By the end of this book, you will know a great deal more about what itâs like to live with autism, and for those that were already keenly aware, you will learn a few secrets for staying sane and being successful: the things that I have discovered along the way.
Finally, we shall turn to some more speculative topics. As we unwind the complex attributes, characteristics, methods, and mannerisms of those with autism I believe there is much to be learned by neurotypical people as well. What caused the obsessive drive towards success in some people with autism? And if this is identifiable, can it be emulated? Are medical students cramming for board exams really âfaking autismâ selectively for brief periods? Can someone really be a âlittle bit autisticâ? Should people with autism âfake itâ to make friends, and where should the limits of such masking end? Are some movies and television shows with autistic characters as exploitive as some would assert? We will consider all these issues and more.
A book that provides ample insight and extensive knowledge into the lives of people with autism, by narrating a personal journey.
This is a book I picked up purely on a whim, or perhaps, or to be more honest, I was enticed by the "millionaire" part in the title, and was also keen to know much more about people with autism than my level 1 education from stereotypical characters on TV shows and sitcoms.
This book completely delivers what it sets out to do. It routinely breaks down biases and prejudices, explains the complexity and diversity within the spectrum and also shows how having autism has worked both to his advantage and disadvantage through wonderful anecdotes (one of them even featuring Bill Gates!).
That being said, the author is the guy who wrote the code for the Task Manager on Microsoft and has many laurels in the tech world up his sleeves. Everything combined, the book reads like a very personal account of a person with autism explaining what worked and what did not work for him in the way of life.
One key thing I learned from the book is more clarity on the politics of language while it comes to speaking of autism, should someone be called an "autistic person" or should they be referred to as a "person with autism"?. The author explains that his own personal rule was to keep the person first, and the symptom or identity secondary, and I guess that's a lesson any of us could carry everywhere, even beyond this context.
The only thing that kind of felt like a bummer for me, was when the author kept going, "this would be discussed in detail in the later chapters...under the title..", in those instances, the book (quite unfortunately) reminded me of a textbook.
But all things said and done, the book makes a solid point about itself and is a worthy helpful guide for many people.