Show Notes
Coding Chats episode 71 - Anita Kalmane-Boot talks to John Crickett about neurodiversity, its spectrum, strengths, challenges, and how organizations can foster inclusive environments, especially in software teams. Discover practical strategies for recruitment, team building, and accommodating neurodivergent individuals to enhance innovation and productivity.
Chapters 00:00 Understanding Neurodiversity 03:32 The Spectrum of Neurodivergence 06:30 Strengths of Neurodivergent Individuals 09:08 Creating Inclusive Teams 12:10 Improving Recruitment Practices 15:00 Work Environment for Neurodivergent Individuals 17:43 The Connection Between Neurodiversity and Software Engineering 23:38 Exploring Neurodiversity in Engineering 24:39 The Impact of AI on Neurodivergent Workers 27:08 Inclusive Recruitment Practices 32:57 The Role of Managers in Hiring 38:46 Disclosing Neurodivergence in Job Interviews 44:11 The Future of Neurodiversity in the Workplace 46:11 Exploring Related Content
Anita's Links:https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitakalmane/
John's Links: John's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncrickett/ John’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johncrickett John's Twitter: https://x.com/johncrickett John's Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/johncrickett.bsky.social
Check out John's software engineering related newsletters: Coding Challenges: https://codingchallenges.substack.com/ which shares real-world project ideas that you can use to level up your coding skills.
Developing Skills: https://read.developingskills.fyi/ covering everything from system design to soft skills, helping them progress their career from junior to staff+ or for those that want onto a management track.
Takeaways Neurodiversity covers a wide spectrum — including ADHD, autism, and dyslexia — not just a single condition. Neurodivergent individuals often have exceptional strengths like pattern recognition, deep focus, and creative problem-solving. These traits make neurodivergent thinkers particularly valuable in software engineering and tech roles. Traditional hiring processes can unintentionally screen out neurodivergent candidates. Small recruitment adjustments — like sharing questions in advance or allowing written responses — can open the door to better talent. Managers are key to creating environments where neurodivergent employees can thrive. Many neurodivergent people struggle with whether to disclose during interviews — psychological safety reduces that burden. AI has the potential to reduce friction for neurodivergent workers, but also brings new challenges. Embracing neurodiversity isn't just ethical — it leads to stronger, more innovative teams.
More from Coding Chats
Coding Chats Episode 83 - In this episode, VB from OpenAI’s developer experience team explains why he thinks plan mode is obsolete and how coding agents have shifted from step-by-step instructions to outcome-driven, long-running work. We cover how to write a good agents.md, why tests still matter when agents write the code, spec-driven development, and why cloud agents may be the future of dev tooling.
Coding Chats Episode 82 - John talks with Dave Westgarth, head of delivery at a Databricks consultancy. Dave shares his path from a psychology degree and McDonald's into tech, and they discuss why the Scrum Master role is so misunderstood, how it differs from a delivery manager, and whether either needs to be technical.They also look at how AI is changing delivery work. Faster code just moves the bottleneck upstream, John argues there's no AI-specific skill you can't learn in a day, and engineering fundamentals are what make AI useful.
Coding Chats Episode 81 - Ben Howdle talks to John Crickett about being a first time CTO in a start-up. Ben, author of The First CTO, shares what changes when you move from building technology to leading a technical team: the pressure, the trade-offs, and the realization that writing code is only part of the job.Drawing on startup experience and lessons learned the hard way, Ben discusses how to balance quality against runway, manage people, and communicate technical decisions in terms that founders and other non-technical stakeholders can understand. He also explores why resourcefulness, resilience, and comfort with ambiguity matter so much—and why CTOs often spend more time selling ideas than they expect.Whether you’re stepping into your first CTO role or leading a technical team at an early-stage company, this conversation offers candid insights into the realities of technical leadership.
Coding Chats Episode 80 - start-up advisor Alexander Berkovich shares his expertise on building successful start-ups, hiring strategies, CTO roles, and the importance of communication between technical and business teams. Discover practical tips for navigating the challenges of early-stage companies and how to align technical excellence with business goals.
Coding Chats Episode 79 - Richmond Alake, Director of AI Developer Experience at Oracle, joins John to discuss agent memory — how AI agents store, retrieve, and adapt to information. He argues that developers building memory on flat files are naively reinventing the database, and that once you factor in concurrency, security, and scalability, a proper database is inevitable. The conversation covers the full memory stack and how Oracle's AI database keeps embeddings and data together without shipping sensitive information to external providers.