Dyslexia Advocacy and Engineering Management with Nicholas Solter

Welcome back to Autistic Techie podcast.

Today, I'm super pumped to be joined by Nicholas Solter a seasoned technology leader and passionate advocate for neurodiversity, especially within the dyslexic community.

With an impressive background in software engineering and technical leadership, he's worn many hats throughout his career, from leading complex engineering teams, authoring books

on the subject, and being an incredible advocate for people who have dyslexia.

I'm super thrilled to dive into his experience.

Talk about his advocacy, learn more about his own show, his own Dyslexia podcast, and just learn about how he combines advocacy with being in the workplace and helping others learn

more about dyslexia.

Nicholas, thanks for joining the show.

Thanks for having me.

Of course.

I'd love to learn a little bit more about your technical background.

This is a tech career adjacent podcast.

I'd love to know how you got into this industry and where it all came from.

Sure, sure.

So I didn't set out to become a programmer.

I actually studied college as a bio major.

Turned out I didn't really like chemistry that much.

I took the intro CS class, loved it.

switched to computer science and this was at Stanford in the late 90s.

So it was kind of like the peak of the first dot-com era.

So, you know, it was just a good choice all around.

Yep.

And so since then I've, I guess I think of myself as a generalist.

I've been, I've been

a manager at various levels, including a CTO, I've been individual contributor, I've done mobile development, web development, backend, DevOps.

I kind of, I don't have like a specific area of expertise.

I kind of just do whatever needs to get done.

You do whatever the job requires.

Is there a particular kind of tech that you like more than others at this point?

I do really like mobile development still.

I find it really satisfying to work within the constraints of a mobile app, especially iOS development because there's kind of...

There's kind of one right way to do things when you're writing an iOS app, as opposed to writing a web app where there's like a million right ways to do things and the right way

changes or the new hot way changes every three months.

I also, lately I've been working on some like SQL, complex SQL queries.

I do like kind of digging in and optimizing that.

I've gotten kind of into that lately.

So yeah.

I remember in my last job board and I added an index to a table for a Postgres SQL query and it drastically improved the load time and I'm like, yes, I'm a front-end engineer and

I don't know if I actually did anything that worked here, but I remember that satisfying feeling of being in the backend and in database level and seeing that stuff kind of

percolate out to everywhere else.

It is satisfying and you get to talk about it for people too.

It's like, look at this cool thing that I did and they're like, but what is there to look at?

And it's a performance chart.

But it's still something that I take a lot of pride in.

If I ever have to touch back end, it's a cool thing to think about.

Now, you and I talked about this a little bit before, and we talked about your advocacy for people who have dyslexia.

How did you get started with that?

Sure.

So my daughter is dyslexic.

She's 17 now and it started really so so obviously before she was dyslexic like I'd heard of dyslexia, but like most people I didn't Really understand it.

Like I thought I knew what it was, but I really didn't know what it was and so when my daughter in first grade Wasn't learning how to read it Dyslexia strangely was not what we

thought

of.

Like it just didn't occur to us.

And so she was just like like the symptoms she was exhibiting in first grade was just not enjoying school.

Starting to it was affecting her self-esteem.

She was starting to feel dumb and

she was like doing worse in other areas, like her even like her math skills, because just because her confidence was getting so low.

like midway through first grade, she was like not able to solve math problems that she was able to solve before first grade.

Yeah.

So she was just like not doing well.

And we didn't we really had no idea what was going on.

But we actually pulled her out of school.

And homeschooled her for most of second grade.

And we still really didn't know what was going on.

You know, both my wife and I are like, we're fairly well educated.

Like we're not educators, but like we're fairly well educated and well read.

And like...

And we just still, it didn't like sink in that like, yeah, she probably has dyslexia.

Like it was a, it was a strange kind of thing the way it evolved.

And really it wasn't until like fourth grade that we,

that we finally were like, okay, she probably has dyslexia, let's actually get her assessed for this and get an official identification.

And so coming out of that experience and then digging into dyslexia and learning, okay, our best estimates are in the US that approximately 20 % of people are dyslexic.

Yeah.

Wow.

it's a spectrum.

So some people have it much more milder than others.

But yeah, mean, people say anywhere from 15 to 20 percent.

So that's like up to one in five people.

And so.

We often hear from dyslexic people that that they When they sort of talk to their teacher or with the parents of that dyslexic person when they when they talk to the teacher of the

school They'll say yeah, we've never had a dyslexic person before and it's like well You definitely have had a dyslexic person before you just didn't know it

There's an element of masking in there too.

I know masking is often referred to for ADHD and autistic people, but I absolutely know dyslexic people who have to mask or kind of like scrape by.

That's what I'm thinking right now.

Yeah, definitely.

And I think, think in my daughter's case, she was able to mask it by kind of like memorizing the picture books and stuff.

Yeah.

So like we'd read a picture book to her a few times and then she could read it back to us, but she wasn't reading it.

She had just memorized it.

Yeah, she wasn't able to like.

Like if you gave her the same words on paper out of context, she wouldn't be able to read them.

Interesting.

How much do you think the issue of diagnosis stems from a gender thing?

I know that, I'm assuming your daughter is roughly the same age as I am right now, I know that when I received my diagnosis it was still a mostly white male kind of thing for

neurodiversity.

That's changing now, but...

I mean, I think that's probably more true for autism.

probably I would guess ADHD as well, but I don't have any evidence to back that up.

I think that I don't know how much that plays into dyslexia.

because I don't know if trying to think about sort of your stereotype of a dyslexic student.

I don't do that.

definitely be curious to know if that plays into it.

I know that for autistic ADHD people, what I thought of when you were talking about it was the emotional aspect of it.

How much of her struggles in school were being attributed to emotion in her growing up versus her having an actual problem that she couldn't articulate.

That's interesting.

Yeah, that is a super interesting point that I actually hadn't thought of before because her first grade teacher, when she was really struggling, also wasn't really that good at

handling the emotion of the students.

And so she didn't like it when students in class cried and things like that.

So that could definitely have contributed to it.

That's an interesting point.

I hadn't thought of that before.

I know lot of folks who are women who have been diagnosed with autism and one thing that I have heard almost consistently from all of them is that when they were younger, their

neurodiversity was being attributed to emotion rather than something being different about their brain at the underlying level.

The bio- the biology of it being a little bit different.

Yeah.

So your daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia.

And then what led you to become a stronger advocate and have your own Desexia Journey podcast about it?

What led from you supporting your daughter to supporting other people?

Right, so it really came out of our experience of like not being able to identify her for several years and realizing that kind of like us, like everyone thinks they know what

dyslexia is, but when they actually see dyslexia, they have no idea what it is.

And there are so many people, like we figured it out and we were able to

you know, do some research and learn about this and realize that like there just isn't, it just isn't talked about enough.

Like people are just vaguely aware of it.

Like at every level, like parents don't really know enough about it.

Schools aren't really assessing for it effectively.

teachers aren't like, you a lot of teachers aren't super aware of it.

And so we thought that the best way that we could kind of help other people was by talking kind of parent to parent.

So that's the like hook for our particular advocacy.

My wife and I, was kind of just one day we're just like.

We should start a podcast.

Like we have, we have stuff to say.

Like, you know, listen to us or not, but like we have, we feel like we we've been through this.

We have learned a lot of lessons.

we've met a lot of interesting people and like, you know, we, if, this helps any, anyone out there, like, great.

Like, let's just put it out there.

And what has the impact of your own podcast been like?

Do you know what the ripple effect of it has been?

It's super interesting because you know this from doing a podcast as well.

Sometimes you feel like, am I talking to anyone?

I'm just putting this content out there, right?

And so it's so gratifying.

I actually just got a message just earlier this week from a podcast listener who...

Just was telling us how helpful it is and how this is the most helpful things out there for her dyslexia journey and and so I love I know someone I've never met who I have no

connection with right it's like it's and and we've gotten other messages like that as well, so It's really gratifying to know that that we're putting we're content out there

that that people are actually getting something out of

yeah, I look at the analytics for my show and I'm like, it's chuckling up slowly.

I only started this a few months ago.

So it's not like I have a big massive audience yet.

And I'm not expecting to have a big massive audience for a while.

But the number one thing that I've seen is consistency about making sure that you're consistently posting episodes and that you're engaging with people.

And I'm doing a little bit of social media as well.

I should be doing more, but I'm dabbling with that a little bit too.

Yeah, it's hard.

I'm not a natural marketer for sure.

Neither am I.

I just I'm winging it.

I'm like, maybe this will work.

Maybe it won't.

I use like the podcast clips and I edit those and I post those on social media, which is actually helpful because I was in the past I would like spend so much time making little

30 60 second reels and it would take me as long to make one of those reels because it worked for me to record a whole episode for the podcast and I enjoyed this so much more

and clearly you enjoy your show too.

Clearly people enjoy listening to your show.

And your podcast is targeted at parents, it sounds like.

Yeah, but I was gonna say, interestingly, there are a fair number of kind of dyslexic adults who listen to it as well and seem to get a lot out of it.

What have you learned the most from talking with dyslexic adults specifically?

it's it's kind of like I'll say something that sounds very contradictory but that every It feels like there are universal aspects to the dyslexia experience.

So like everyone we talked to seems to have Certain experiences where we're like, yeah, that was like exactly the experience of our daughter yet at the same time And this is

where it sounds contradictory Everyone's journey is unique

And so there are these like shared aspects, but you can't you have to be careful not to overgeneralize because Depending on people's you know, the parental support or like a

particular teacher.

I mean sometimes it'll be one Teacher who says one thing one day that like sticks with them for the rest of their life, right?

I felt that too in my own way.

And it also is a similar experience for autistic people and ADHD people where like my experiences as being autistic vary differently, greatly, from other autistic people, but

many of our other experiences are also the same, same with folks with ADHD.

Like there are some similarities, but they're not completely copy-paste from each other.

Yeah, exactly.

And it also resonates with things that teachers have said, things that other advocates have said, sometimes someone will say something that's very innocuous and doesn't mean to

be inspirational and then it ends up becoming super resonant.

The thing that stuck out for me as being autistic is if the worst thing that can happen is nothing, it's worth trying.

And that helped me figure my own brain out.

What am I so afraid of?

What do I want to try to accomplish in doing something that...

I perceive as being risky, but isn't actually risky.

Something like trying a new food.

As long as I'm not allergic to it, I can just spit it out if I really don't like it.

And so far I have not yet discovered a food I'm super allergic to, and I hope that I never do.

But I have discovered lots of things in that regard.

And when it comes to your daughter, when it comes to the parents, it really sounds like there is a great community of people around them and around you that

not only support you, you can kind of feed back into as well.

Yeah, we've met so many amazing people through interviewing them and it's great now because now we're actually at the point where people are reaching out to us to come on our

show.

Yeah.

I love that.

It's good to have a backlog of people who you want to talk with.

I've been doing cold outreach for me.

And again, I'm still new to doing this, but I enjoy it.

A little meta moment there, but I still enjoy being like, I want you to talk on a podcast.

And so far, nobody has said no.

And now when I apply to be in other people's podcasts, that's when I typically get the cold shoulder, but that's just expected.

Some of these shows are pretty big.

Yeah, for sure.

And so how, over the course of your daughter growing and maturing, how much more of a self advocate have they become and been able to achieve?

Yeah, that's a great question.

And it's something we talk about a lot on the show too, because as parents, guess our goal is eventually to allow our children to have their own independent lives and not be

dependent on us, right?

And so...

At the beginning, like in elementary school, as a parent, you're generally the one talking to the teacher and whatnot.

So she actually has been doing very well with this.

It started in middle school.

She actually went to a private middle school, very small.

So I mean, were like four, five people, six people in her class maybe.

And I guess I should acknowledge our privilege in being able to send her to a private school, which I think was the best choice for her.

And it's not accessible to a lot of people out there with dyslexia.

But she had some good teachers there who really kind of worked with her to get her to advocate for herself.

And so then when she got to high school and now she's at like a...

regular size, 2,000 person public high school.

know, toward the beginning, we did more of the like, talking to the teachers at the beginning of the year, things like that.

But as the years progressed, she's gotten a lot better.

And now we're really not involved at all.

Like she goes and talks to her teachers at the beginning of every semester and says, hey, I'm dyslexic.

Like, I need extra time on tests.

you know, can you give me your notes ahead of time?

Things, all those kind of things.

And then she, you know, reminds them about the extra time for every test and arranges with her other classes to be able to have that extra time and sort of all the details she's

really on top of herself now, which is great because she'll be going after college next year.

wish that I'd had that level of self-awareness when I was in high school.

I think in high school I was still kind of reliant on other people to tell me what I needed.

And it wasn't until I got to college when I was at Cornell where I'm like, this is what I actually need and I have to ask for it.

I wish that I'd had that level of confidence in myself.

And I'm super psyched hear that your daughter has that level of strength in their self.

Strength of conviction is what I'm hearing.

yeah, and I think it's been really, it's been really helpful, and I don't even know if she maybe doesn't even realize this, but like even just meeting other people in her class who

are dyslexic as well.

And so if there's like two of them who need extra time on the test, then that's great, right?

It's a easier to ask the teacher if it's two people versus if it's just one.

Even the one extra person, and I've definitely felt that too.

Even just the social aspect of finding another autistic person is like, wow, we have many of the same shared experiences and also some things are different.

Yeah, yeah.

How does your advocacy for your daughter translate into the workplace?

Have people come to you at your job on this subject?

What form is that taking, if any?

It's good question.

It reminds me, and I'll kind of lead into this a little bit tangentially.

So we had a...

a short recently.

We often do like what you're saying where like we post the content on YouTube and then we sort of pull out shorts from it and post those and those get the most engagement.

And we did have one short that was talking about the importance of it was kind of like I think I I title it like ask for what you need.

Right.

And we got a comment that was like I was like, well, like when you get in the workplace, like that's not going to work because like, you know.

boss isn't just sitting around waiting for you to ask for what you need, right?

Kind of a sarcastic take on it.

And it's like, I really disagree with that.

I think in the workplace, you definitely need to ask for what you need still.

setting aside the like...

legal requirements that the workplace has to accommodate people with various quote disabilities.

Obviously we don't like that term.

setting that aside, I think that, I mean,

most workplaces that I've been involved in and maybe it's unusual in maybe the tech industry is different than other industries, but I think most people are happy to

accommodate people for whatever they need, right?

So me personally, it's kind of more, I've been realizing more and more what I haven't done right in the workplace.

So I've been in a position of hiring manager at several different companies.

so in the tech world, as probably most of your listeners know, but maybe not, we do this kind of ridiculous thing where when you're interviewing for a programming job, you have to

do essentially

live timed test in front of the interviewee.

Yeah.

And so, I, it didn't even occur to me until a few years ago that this was not a fair way to assess people, on various

you know places on the neurodiversity spectrum like It's just not like it works well for some people And it's terrible for others

When I was a hiring manager at my last job at my startup, I actually gave people the option.

said, we can either do this synchronously, like a traditional whiteboard type of interview where we're in a virtual environment doing some coding, or we can do something similar,

which will be a take-home test.

And by and large, most people, but not everybody, but most people chose the asynchronous take-home option.

Because at least at that point, they have their own coding setup.

They have their own tools that they use.

And whether that's somebody who is neurodivergent or neurotypical people have like their way of working and doing that in a coder pad, leet code style of thing doesn't work for

everybody.

Not that it doesn't work for nobody, but most people, I choose to use their own setup that are familiar with.

Yeah, there's a great book that I read by Ed Thompson called A Hidden Force, Unlocking the Potential of Neurodiversity at Work.

Yeah, it's a great book and we had Ed on our show last year or the year before, I can't remember.

But he's really passionate about emphasizing that...

The traditional work environments and the traditional selection criteria really damages the organizations as much as the people that it effectively discriminates against because

they're not getting the benefits of all the neurodiversity.

Like they're selecting for a very narrow range of people who can do, you know.

one thing very well, which in the case of our field is like do a timed test under pressure, right, or whatever, and not benefiting from the spectrum of neurodiversity

across the human population.

big distinction that I've heard, especially about neurodiversity and disability, is culture fit versus culture av.

I think I have been in interviews in the past where I'm kind of, it's like a square peg trying to fit for a round hole and I can't force myself into that round hole as an

neurodivergent person.

And people who are dyslexic or ADHD might not be able to fit themselves into a culture that can't support them.

Not that they don't want to be there, but they can't.

Be there.

Oh yeah, totally.

The culture fit is such a terrible practice.

Because it used to be, I mean it used to effectively just lead to hiring, you know, straight white men.

over and over.

Like, oh, you know, if you don't want to have a beer with us after work, or if you're not like a gamer or whatever, you don't fit in this organization.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's definitely part of it.

So I would say like, I'm really trying to change my hiring interview practices when I can.

And then the other thing that...

I've started really trying to do is just the same type of accommodations that people have in school for dyslexia specifically is like, okay, materials ahead of time or like not

having to like read stuff on the spot.

Like, great.

That's easy.

Like send it right up before the meeting.

Like, don't don't expect people to like, you know, read it live in the meeting and have anything meaningful to say.

Like give people time to think about it ahead of time.

going to ask and it sounds like that your greater awareness of neurodiversity has directly influenced how you manage and how you lead.

Is that fair to say?

try to.

Yeah, I mean, think I've gotten a lot better at understanding that.

Everyone is unique and everyone so this is like a more global understanding like I used to think and this is like super embarrassing to admit right like I'm when I was in high

school I used to think like okay.

There's like one There's like one way to be smart and that means like people who you know do well on standardized tests or whatever right like and I you know, thankfully I've I've

come to understand that that that really you know

how well you do on a standardized test measures how well you do on a standardized test.

That's it, right?

And so yeah, so I've really tried to be more aware of everyone's unique abilities and unique ways that they contribute and really, really.

gonna say leverage that.

I mean hate to say that because that sounds so like transactional but I mean yeah.

it to foster and grow unimpeded.

Right, right.

Yeah, so think I've become a better leader from becoming more aware of that.

Like, nobody's perfect.

Nobody is ever going to know to do all of 100 % of the right things 100 % at a time.

That's unrealistic.

But you're conscious of it, you're aware of it, and that's more than I can say for people who I've worked with in the past, unfortunately.

Just the fact that you're aware of it, like, hey, maybe we should have an agenda before this meeting, or like present this information differently so somebody else can process it

differently, or...

we can change the mode of how this is going to work to take better advantage of the way that somebody works or does this.

Right, right.

Or even something as simple as like, like it's so easy to just, you're in a meeting like, okay, any questions?

Nope.

Okay, great.

Let's move on.

And like actually stopping and for real, like, okay, let me actually pause for 30 seconds or longer and say, okay, like, like, really think about it and give people actually a

chance to speak up.

It's so funny you say that because me as autistic person, find myself doing that by accident and I try to be conscious about like, it's okay for there to be silence, it's

okay for people to like process and move on and like, I definitely am guilty of that as an autistic person and I will freely admit that I could be better at

I mean, yeah, like you said, it's, can't all be perfect at everything.

And I definitely am not.

Do you have any big, big advice you would give to people?

If you could say any one thing about the sex scene that you wish more people knew about, what would you say to folks?

Yeah, I mean, think with dyslexia, and I think this can be generalized to all types of, you know, differences, neurodiversity on the spectrum, I think as a parent, you really

have to trust your instincts.

Like, if you think there's something, and again, I don't mean this pejoratively, but if you think there's something,

not right.

And I don't mean that having dyslexia or autism is not right, but I mean that your child is not fitting into the system and that there might be a sort of innate reason in your

child for that.

Like, trust your instinct.

The best case scenario is the doctor tells you what you need to know to support your child better.

And I totally agree with that.

think there's very little harm that can be done by taking your child or someone you care about to see an professional to get an expert opinion and to go for the paperwork and go

for all the testing.

My favorite is when I hear about adults who go for testing and they joke about what the testing process is like.

And I am sure it's different for adults as it is for kids, but that testing process can be very enlightening for people.

yeah, totally.

like, it's just, it's so, people, you know, there's a lot of discussion obviously about labels, right?

And I think that in my experience with dyslexia in particular, it seems like people are fairly universally happy to get a label in the sense that they then understand

why this is harder for them.

Yes.

them something else to understand.

It gives them something to read about and listen to, like a show like this or a show like yours.

it's like, I'm not, I'm not dumb.

Like, I have dyslexia.

Like, I'm smart, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

I totally get that.

Nick, this has been an incredible episode.

If people want to find you, they want to listen to your own show, where can people catch up with you?

Sure, it's called Dyslexia Journey.

It's available on all podcast platforms.

So Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube as well.

I will make sure that I put links to your show in the show notes.

those, whatever you're listening to in this episode, you'll be able to find his show and go add his recent episode whenever you get the time.

Nick, this has been an amazing time.

Thank you so much for coming on and for talking about offering Dyslexia.

I really appreciated it.

and Shay, thank you as well for what you do.

It's, I think, a labor of love for both of us.

Yeah.