Tinkering with Tech and Hyper Focus with Mathew Hultquist

Welcome back to the Autistic Techie podcast.

I am joined today by Mathew Hultquist, a former engineer of Mentra, a very close friend and colleague of mine, current software engineer at Lattice, and a bootcamp graduate,

self-taught engineer, and one-of-a-kind unicorn engineer.

I've been meaning to reconnect and catch up and dive into all this stuff for a while, Mat so thank you for coming on the show.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

I'm excited to be on here.

Yeah, like I already know you quite a bit.

We've known each other for about a year and a half, two years at this point, but can you tell the rest of the audience a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, hi, I'm Mathew.

Since I was around nine years old, I've been into just messing around with computers, breaking stuff, and trying to fix it, usually failing.

And that carried over into software.

Breaking stuff is a pretty, just a typically complicated thing to do.

I know that it's been like, oh my gosh, I broke the inside of the computer and I've messed up a couple of internals for PCs that I've built myself and it is frustrating.

So I totally understand all of that stuff.

How did you get into that?

What inspired you to get into technology?

We had this, you know, Dell Optiplexes?

I'm vaguely familiar.

There are those really like old computers that used to be in like school computer rooms.

My family had one and it was the family computer which unfortunately you don't really see anymore.

It's kind of a good nostalgia memory.

But late one night I was curious about how it worked and decided to take it apart and I completely broke something in it.

I don't remember what.

But I had to figure out how to fix it before my parents woke up so I wouldn't get in trouble.

And ever since then, I've been hooked.

So the important question is, did you actually fix it?

No.

They were very upset and I don't think we had a computer for quite a while after that.

Do you remember what it is you broke?

I think the hard drive.

Yeah.

one.

No, I've done that before.

I've like snapped a cable or snapping a cable is easy.

You replace the cable, but snapping the port on the drive itself, um, you can't trivially fix that.

Good luck.

yeah, especially when then you think, hey, I can maybe just hit it back into place and end up breaking it more.

My favorite thing is going on Reddit and seeing there's a subreddit like tech support gore or something.

people who like, my favorite is people who like ram USB ports or USB cords into like an HDMI port or ethernet cord being like, see it works, but no, you've actually just made it

worse.

Have you seen Tech Support MacGyver?

It's like that, but everything like works.

Okay, definitely gonna have to look into that for How did you journey on the path to software engineering specifically?

So you started off with messing with your parents' computer and breaking it, but at what point did you then venture into coding and programming?

Minecraft.

was curious about how I could modify it to make it do fun things that it wasn't supposed to do.

And I ended up learning some really basic Java and developing plugins for an old server software.

I don't think it's made anymore called Bucket.

Okay.

And so I'd make these fun, just silly little plugins for that, put them on a server and then show them off to friends.

And ever since then, I've kind of had the itch to like, just build something stupid.

And it progressed into a career, honestly.

I've seen people who do like really crazy programming things.

they're called like redstone blocks in Minecraft.

Yeah, it's like Redstone, but 10 steps higher.

So if you type in a command, will, you could like teleport a player beneath the world.

What do you mean by higher?

You have more access to do things with redstone, or at least then you did.

With redstone, you'd only be able to move like blocks around in a one by one area or like open a door or turn on, they're called redstone lamps, but they're just light bulbs.

Gotcha.

the bucket plugin, if you typed in a command, you could have it teleport every player into one spot, spawn a bunch of creepers, and blow everyone up, for example.

No, that's happened to me before.

Like, I do a lot of Halo Master Chief collection and I see that all the time.

Where like, just like scripted events.

Yeah, it's just scripting, essentially.

How did that lead you into, I forget which step came first, I know you've told me in the past, but how did you get into a software engineering bootcamp?

I know a lot of people who are in tech are in it because of a bootcamp.

How did Minecraft lead you to a bootcamp?

Yeah, Minecraft kind of ignited the software development spark.

I thought it was cool.

So after Minecraft, I started making little websites.

I went to this kids coding class thing where you learned Scratch.

But a lot of the instructors there were working with Java and JavaScript and HTML and CSS.

So they were showing me cool little tricks you could do with the

I think then new ish HTML5.

And I thought it was really cool.

So I started playing around with that.

I played around with that for until about after high school, made a few fun scripts like one to log into the school network switch and turn it off.

A bit nefarious, but I told them.

They weren't happy.

in trouble at school.

I forget if I got in trouble or just got like a conversation with somebody, but I got in trouble because I discovered this loophole on Windows computers.

I didn't hack it, but I discovered a loophole where like if you right clicked on a specific thing, you could open the command prompt on Windows.

And obviously the PC is still very locked down.

You can't really do anything even if the command prompt is open.

But like it was a big enough deal where I had to talk with the principal at the time.

But I explained to him like,

I'm not trying to break anything, I'm trying to tell you this is a problem.

was a very, like a white hat hacker kind of mentality at the time.

And they took it seriously, but it was very scary for freshman year old me, so I know exactly what that's like.

Did you anything fun with the school's router while you had it?

That situation was very similar, except they didn't take me seriously.

They just used the default login credentials for the network switch.

So all the script did was login via Telnet into the switch and then type in shutdown and press enter.

It was kind of a proof of concept to show them, you should probably A, be separating your student's Wi-Fi from the faculty and like infrastructure Wi-Fi.

But also, if they have access to this, they can turn it off.

and effectively halt your school.

I did end up getting access to the entire network and like the Google workspace, I was given access.

They had an IT guy come in and his job was to like fix it and to replace the old IT guy.

And I showed him and he was like, cool, you wanna help?

So I was able to do a little bit of sysadmining there.

That exact thing happened to me as well in high school where after that happened, like, can you like help us with this stuff?

And I was like, yeah, I think I definitely got on the better side of teachers because of that.

That exact same thing happened to me, just like help teachers with like random ins and outs and odd things.

One time they looped me into fixing, not even like related to like IT stuff, but they wanted me to fix the digital scoreboard that you used on the football field.

And I didn't really know.

anything about that, but I had to figure it out.

And this was at a time when Google was out there, search engines were getting better, so I was able to figure it out, but it was still the age of Windows XP and Windows 7, so these

things weren't necessarily fast, and they had to have one specific laptop, which had the specific port for it to work with the projector, the display board, and nothing else

worked.

That's so funny.

For me, my favorite story was when someone left the networking closet unlocked.

So another student went in and just unplugged one of the access points, but nothing was labeled.

That took a good few, like, took like an hour or two to figure out which.

which unplugged cable was the AP.

During that time, the entire upstairs portion of the school had no Wi-Fi.

That is, when I moved into my current apartment, I labeled all of the Ethernet ports in the house because I couldn't stomach not knowing where anything was.

And it took me a solid hour or so to wire everything up, plug it into the port.

I also had the MacGyver solution.

I didn't have like a network testing thing.

So I have my phone, which is USB-C on it.

And I had a USB-C adapter with Ethernet.

So all I to do was just figure out like, is the light on the Ethernet port blinking?

And if it is, then it has a connection.

So I did that for like an hour or so.

I did the same thing when I moved in except the ISP wouldn't turn on the internet and then when they did it was limited to like 2 megabits a second.

Nothing is labeled still but I know where one of the cables goes because it's the only one plugged in.

We talked a lot about tech, and I want to talk a little bit about your brain, how you think, how you approach problems.

At what point did you realize or had a diagnosis for, had an understanding that you were neurodivergent?

Where and when did that come into play?

My parents thought I was going deaf when I was a kid, so they took me in for like hearing testing and whatnot.

They very quickly found out that yes, I could hear.

I just chose to ignore them.

So they took me to a like psychiatrist or therapist.

I don't remember which one.

And they put me through a bunch of, like, I guess tests and said I had Asperger's.

so I've known since I was a kid, but I've always been told, yeah, don't use it as a crutch and like, just kind of ignore it essentially.

And it wasn't until Mentra and like meeting you and everyone else there,

It wasn't until then to where I started to like look into it and actually learn about it a bit more and figure out, I'm so tired all of the time because I'm trying to act like a

normal person.

It was very eye-opening and it was a lot of fun.

Masking is exhausting.

And I know you and I have spoken about masking specifically a lot.

I had a similar, almost a similar set of diagnosis when I was younger.

I was also either choosing or not aware of responding to things.

And my parents were like, is he deaf?

And then they brought me into a professional and they're like, nope, he has autism slash Asperger's.

And I don't refer to his Asperger's anymore, but it's, that's the same diagnosis that I had.

And also like until I was like a high school senior college freshman, did I not realize what this stuff means?

This is like why it's important.

But I feel really happy and honored that myself and other folks at Mentra were able to help you become more aware of your neurodiversity.

And with Mentra and all of that, it's been a crazy journey, a crazy ride.

What was the thing that stood out to you the most about your time at Mentra?

I'm trying to figure out the right word here.

I guess refreshing it was to kind of let the mask down a little bit and be my freak self around people other than my wife or like my family.

It was nice to be somewhat me because I had forgotten who me was.

I think Mentra is an interesting story and I don't want to get too much into the details, but I think in the beginning of your time at Mentra, I think that was very true.

And it's a startup and startups can be very stressful.

And I hope that over the course of the startup, over your time there, you're able to maintain that to an extent.

yeah, absolutely.

Mentra was an absolutely wonderful experience and I miss it to be honest.

It was very eye-opening and refreshing and a lot of fun, especially when we got the new office.

Building all of that furniture and having so many leftover screws somehow was amazing.

The offices are fun.

I've been following all the stuff at Camp North End and they finally opened up the Tipsy Pickle The secret parking lot is gone.

it took them long enough.

I was so upset when they took away that parking lot.

At what point did that lot shut down completely?

Because I remember when I stepped back from Mentra, it was closed every once in a while, but when did it close close?

I think like a week or two after your final day.

Okay.

It looks really cool though.

Like if I'm back in town, if I'm back in Charlotte, I really, really want to go because it does look really cool.

Walking by that empty space over and over and over again and being like, when are they going to put something in there, when's it going to be done.

And then like I see all the pictures inside.

It looks so cool.

And I know we joked about like, let's have a one-on-one over a pickleball game or let's do happy hour.

Let's go get drinks.

That would have been so cool.

I'm bummed I'm not there to see it, but it does look very cool.

I have not kept tabs on Camp North End at all, so I didn't know they finished it.

I thought it was still going.

But it took them a good, what, like two years or so to, no, not a year.

the summer.

Like, they had the space for a while, I'm not sure what the holdup was, I'm sure there was a reasonable excuse for the delay.

But they didn't start construction on it until September, the summer of 2024.

That was when people were in there on a daily basis.

I remember Conner hyping up the pickles that they'd have, saying that we'd have to go and get pickles.

I don't think he's gonna fly back in from Germany for a pickle.

No, he just started a new job, but I'm happy for him in Munich.

I think another favorite memory of Camp North End was when they opened up the Halal place.

That place was really good.

Shameless plug for Tipsy Pickle and Camp North End.

And I don't remember the name of the Halal place in Camp North End, but there's only one of them.

If you go there, I promise it's there.

They're both really cool.

Spinning back to your brain for a second, what do you...

What do you miss the most about Mentra?

I don't think I had a chance to ask that question.

I miss being around people who get me, like in a professional environment.

Yeah, I think that's the thing I miss most.

being able to talk the way I talk.

Because I don't think I sound particularly intelligent half the time when I talk.

But it was nice being able to talk.

how I usually do around like Carly and have people go, yeah, okay, let's do what you mean.

Do you find that the experience you had at Mentra is helping you be a better self advocate or more confident?

Do you find that that experience was still helpful to inform what's happening now?

yeah, absolutely.

Before starting at Mentra, I used to think everyone had the same mindset of like, okay, you have autism.

That's weird.

I don't really want to talk to you.

Like they look at you different.

But after, after Mentra and during Mentra, I realized that people don't really care.

Like,

They do, but they don't care enough to where they'll completely exile you.

They'll be like, that's neat.

Any way I can like change the way I communicate to help you survive, I guess.

Yeah, TLDR.

I learned that people are much more open and willing to adapt to your communication styles or to help you better work and thrive.

In environments where managers or teams don't know about neurodiversity at all, what are you finding that you have to do to educate them or communicate to them?

I understand that everybody knowing about neurodiversity is a vacuum.

We are recording this during the first day of neurodiversity celebration week, but not everybody knows that it's even a thing.

So if somebody's listening to this and has no idea what they can do to help people like you, what would be some advice that you could give to them?

Be honest.

It took until Mentra for me to be honest with people and be like, yeah, sorry, I can't hear you in this really crowded restaurant because I'm listening to everyone at the same

time.

I've learned that people are more willing to accommodate and learn and change if they know someone personally who has like autism or ADHD or like bipolar.

They're more open to changing rather than if you were to sit them down and be like, I get overwhelmed at

my brother's football games so I don't want to go to them.

Yeah, just let them get to know you, the real you.

usually people are more open than you think.

You really hit the nail on the head there.

Like, that's so true in the sense of people are far more predisposed to helping or being kind or being just a friend if they have a basis for comparison, even if the basis for

comparison is very different.

I know for many people in my life, I am the only autistic person that they know of.

But because we have had interactions, because we have crossed paths,

They're now a little bit more prepared to talk to other autistic people and work with them and be kind to them because I've had a chance to meet them and to some extent explain

things and articulate them, especially for people who don't have that chance or ability.

Exactly, because for most people what they see is...

Like someone with autism who's not able to speak and is incredibly intelligent, but they're not able to like communicate So they assume all autistic people are the same way

Most people don't realize that it is indeed just a spectrum and there's people who Have more severe autism, I guess and

lesser, like high functioning versus low functioning.

Yeah.

So for most people I've learned it, it's just they need to experience across the spectrum in order to grasp, hey, they're just normal people.

It's funny, I talk about stuff like high support needs, low support needs, it's a whole complicated thing.

Cause when you think of me, you think of somebody who is pretty autonomous.

have a high ability of executive functioning.

I drive a car, can get groceries on my own.

I can do my own thing.

I do taxes.

but if you bring me to another restaurant, bring me to a loud environment, somewhere with a lot of sensory input, then I become less able to function.

So

Am I more autistic, less autistic?

Who even knows?

People give me a hard time about that all the time.

like you can get up on a lectern and talk for an hour, so there's no way that you're autistic.

And I say to that, well, bring me to a loud club and then we'll really see what that looks like.

I will want to leave more than anything.

Or even just walking down a sidewalk with cars passing.

That happened to me in Charlotte.

I'm not making this up.

Like, I was walking with Ariana.

We were in Charlotte.

We were walking in the South End.

And I had been feeling grouchy that day.

It was probably work related.

I don't even remember what it was.

But I was just feeling like a little bit off.

And I had said it to her.

I'm like, I'm feeling off.

I don't know why.

I'm just letting you know that I don't feel 100%.

And I don't know what it was.

Lo and behold, five minutes after we say that, a really, really, really loud fire truck.

zooms by and I my brain just melts into a puddle and I go home sit on the couch and just Turn on TV.

I turn on something mindless.

I think I turned on chess table on Netflix something very mindless and unserious

Yep, I feel that.

Yeah, I feel that.

How would you say that your neurodiversity helps you in the workplace?

Do you think that it helps you solve problems better, quicker, helps you solve more difficult problems?

Yeah, I'd say it does.

When I am able to, and this, I don't think I've told you, I've started taking Adderall, which has helped with this a lot.

When I am able to hyper-focus in, like choose what I want to focus on, I can complete a week's worth of work in a day.

So when I am able to hyper-focus on my work, it's really nice because you're just in the zone.

You don't realize that you've been sitting here for six hours and you really need to go to the bathroom.

So you're able to just fully focus on the problem.

I won't be mad at you, whatever the answer is.

Did you do that when I was at Metra?

It's okay?

No, like, I'm glad you're being honest and honestly I don't blame you.

So I'm curious, what did you do in the other time during the week?

Yeah, so when I am able to hyper focus, I get as much done as possible.

So that way when I'm not able to really focus in on what I'm supposed to be doing, because everything just looks like fun little symbols, I guess dancing around, it looks like

hieroglyphs.

That way when I'm not able to focus in, I don't have to worry about, hey, I have this deadline I really need to hit.

I need to focus on this, which would then make it much more difficult to focus in.

As for what I would do, I would sit there, attempt to work, everything looks like hieroglyphs, then I'd go, this is really stupid, and then I'd go take a walk.

and then repeat like three or four times before I eventually give up and take a nap.

I completely feel the same way sometimes.

I definitely have like productivity bursts and I'm not sure if that's the autism in me or something else.

I don't think I have ADHD but I could be wrong about that.

yesterday I felt a very like productive like three hour burst.

We were talking about my wife is away and I did a bunch of cleaning.

I'm not normally a big cleaner but I'm like this stuff is messy I have to clean it.

I did the laundry.

I vacuumed, I cleaned out the vacuum, I cleaned out the filter and all that stuff.

I tightened some things that have been loose, just little things that have been bothering me, all kind of coalesced into one moment and said, that's it!

I am spending the next three hours cleaning.

And then I spent two hours after that playing Halo Reach.

Yeah, funny story.

I did the same thing like last weekend.

I had been meaning to clean out the vacuum for about six months or so.

It was getting kind of like icky looking.

Mm-hmm.

So I got this huge burst and I cleaned the vacuum out, I vacuumed the entire apartment, I swept the kitchen, I mopped the floors, I did everything.

And then afterwards, when I crashed, guess, we ended up watching Tasting History with Max Miller on YouTube.

That sounds good.

He is pretty awesome.

He finds recipes from like way back in time, like middle ages or so, and recreates them.

I'm gonna have to look into it.

My brother and I, came back home late the other night and we just wanted to watch something on TV.

We turn on Amazon Prime and there's this series, with Anthony Bourdain that was on there.

It says at the top of the screen, this series goes away in nine minutes or eight minutes.

And we're like, we have to watch it, but they're gonna cut us off after nine minutes.

But they don't.

So we start the episode and it keeps going after midnight.

And then like, and it goes click to the next episode and says, we had an issue loading this episode.

So we may have been the last people to watch that Anthony Bourdain series on Amazon Prime.

And now I want to watch Anthony Bourdain.

I feel that that was the office on Netflix so much so that I went through and downloaded all of the seasons and I have not watched it since.

I tried to watch The Matrix last night on Max You'd think that Max would have it, but they only have the newest one, which I've heard is okay.

It's...

yeah, it's not the best.

But I did watch it behind the scenes of the Matrix, which I think is really cool about how they put everything into it, how they got a little leeway and how big of a hit it was.

Yeah.

Mat, this has been an awesome time and I'm so thankful you were able to come on the show.

If people want to connect with you, talk with you, learn more about you, where can they find you?

Hi, you can find me on LinkedIn.

I don't think I have any other social media.

I'll put your LinkedIn in the description.

There's only one of you two.

I tried to find another person with your name out there before, but there's not.

There's one of you.

There should be another guy named Mat Holquist.

No, M.A.T.

your name with your full name, but he spells it just M-A-T.

Yep.

Yeah, I do my full name.

But there's another guy somewhere in North Carolina who shares the same name as me and my dad, which I thought was really cool and didn't even think about it being confusing for

taxes.

Taxes, tax, taxis is coming up.

Don't forget to file your taxes.

Mat, this has been awesome.

Thank you so much for coming on the show and I so appreciate you getting chance to catch up.

Yeah, thank you.