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Comment by erichocean | Hacker News Reader

Instead of calling them "assholes", I wish people like the OP would just be honest and say they don't want to work with people on the spectrum. There's no shame in that, it's perfectly fine to prefer neurotypicals at your workplace; the vast majority of people do.

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I don't typically comment on things like this, though in this case I very, very much want to.

My son is autistic. He's 8. We had him tested when he was 5. He also has ADHD. If ever anyone cares about working with non-NT folks and those on the spectrum it's me. We moved to where we live specifically so we could get early intervention for him.

My five year old daughter might be on the spectrum, we are having her tested. She does have expressive/receptive language disorder.

Our youngest daughter, now 2, seems NT so far.

For the record on the original material. There's a chance the person was non-NT, as you suggest. However, that same percentage chance exists for at least three, maybe four, of his co-workers as well, the ones that were effected by this person.

I'm not dismissing your original statement. I do think it is harder for non-NT folks, even in tech. It's why my style is the way it is. If anything, I'm likely overly sympathetic to the non-NT folks given my situation.

I've written two other things that I often reference when talking about these topics that might be interesting. I hope you can appreciate my side knowing more about my personal situation and how that influenced and shaped my current views.

https://medium.com/@jasonwarner/no-one-is-the-villain-in-the...

https://medium.com/@jasonwarner/just-one-weird-trick-95fe7b5...

Some people are just assholes. Most assholes are pretty normal, aside from being assholes. They are generally not socially unaware, or particularly awkward, or show difficulty with communication, or anything else that might indicate obvious autistic behavior.

And similarly, most people I might characterize as slightly autistic are not assholes. I've worked with some really awkward folks, and people who were really bad at picking up social cues, and people who were unable to express themselves well. I don't think any of them were assholes, even if they weren't always easy to work with.

I think it is really insulting to people with autism spectrum disorders that you would assume anyone characterized as an asshole is autistic. I also think this attitude contributes to some of the asshole behavior on our industry. We write some unacceptable stuff off as "geek behavior" when it's just people being assholes, which is an activity exclusive to neither geeks nor autistics.

Do you know something we don't, or do you mean to imply that anytime someone refers to another as an asshole the asshole must have a neurological condition as their excuse? I didn't see an indication from the OP that the person in question is on the autism spectrum.

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