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Comment by mruts | Hacker News Reader

My boss at my old job had OCD and autism and it was possibly the most demeaning infuriating experience of my life. I had to account for my day in 5 minute increments and if I ever talked about anything to my coworkers I had to write a wiki page about it. Every commit, a wiki page. And whenever I submitted a PR, all he would do I s write a bunch of bile about how he didn’t like my variable names. Or that I should add more comments. Or that he I should squash my commits because he didn’t like them.

I grew to absolutely despise him and eventually I was so upset and angry going in everyday that I quit.

I hated that guy so much, I would have dreams about killing him.

Anyways, maybe autistic people can be good workers, but they should never ever ever be allowed into management.

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I'm sorry you had such a poor experience, and it does sound like your boss should never have been given those responsibilities if he behaved that way, but those failings were his own and do not necessarily reflect on all autistic people.

One asshole doesn't mean all people with 1 trait in common with him are unfit for something. Don't generalize.

Sounds like maybe he was just an asshole. How do you know this was due to his autism and not due to just that?

Maybe it was a combination of the two, but let me tell you, his inability for empathy and emotional understanding was the crux of the problem. I've known a handful of autistic people and while I definitely know some really nice autistic people, I think that being a manager requires a lot of empathy and understanding that they just aren't equipped to handle.. When you have power over people and you are unable to empathize with them, you become a tyrant.

Your generalizations are discriminatory and unfounded. People on the spectrum are, well, a whole spectrum.

I, personally, am on the spectrum and have very strong empathy and emotional understanding. It wasn't natural, but it is a skill I developed after much hard work trying to get by in a normie world.

It does, however, cause a high cognitive load. My analogy is software emulation. Most people have dedicated hardware, but I have to do it in software at a cost of increased CPU usage.

Tldr; you can't make sweeping generalizations about which jobs a diverse group of people should be allowed to work. Bad bosses come in all shapes and sizes.

yes, but, do you think that there are some personality types or people who are more likely than average to be bad then good at being a manager? Don’t you think that autistic people might possibly be on one end vs the other?

Also, don’t you think having to “emulate” things reduces your throughput compared to a “normie”? Wouldn’t this imply that you might be worse than other people at managing people because your pipe is saturated?

>> there are some personality types or people

Yes, assholes in particular are bad at being managers.

On a more serious / less sarcastic note, you seem to have a preconceived notion of what autism should look like and/or what range of behaviors it entails. There _are_ types of it that would cause one to be an exceptionally bad manager, but there is also a strong possibility (that I think you need to consider) that your manager's flaws weren't caused by autism at all. People with severe autism typically don't make it into management positions in the first place.

I consider myself to be on the spectrum. I'm never the "heart of the party" (nor do I ever feel any desire to go to parties), I find it somewhat anxiety inducing to approach people I don't know well, stuff like that, pretty mild. If it I didn't feel like it impacts my life in a negative way, I'd call this "strong introversion" or the like.

Yet I'm basically the polar opposite of what you've described in your original post (other than being hard-ass on code quality), and I've received glowing praise from my former reports. I give people guidance and autonomy, and let them be adults. And if they aren't, I give them more guidance and perhaps very slightly less autonomy. If they can't function in this set-up, we part ways. This, by the way, happened only once. The person just didn't want the job I think.

If people with severe autism don’t make it into management, isn’t it likely that the bell curve is shifted versus neurotypical people on who can be a good manager? Wouldn’t this also imply that an autistic manager is more likely to be a worse manager than a neurotypical person? (Just considering the statistical distributions).

Of course, this doesn’t have anything to do with you (according to your post, you seem like a good manager), I’m talking about the statistical distributions.

And while I understand why someone might get offended by a statement of the form: short people are slower than average at running when you are a short person who runs very fast, I am just describing the distribution (in which any individual could be an outlier), not an affirmative statement like: there does not exist an autistic person who is also a good manager.

I hear what you're saying, and I'm sorry you had to endure this. But again, unless the person had a very strong degree of autism, there's a strong possibility that they were just an asshole towards you, rather than not able to feel empathy on a more fundamental level. FWIW I have encountered plenty of socially awkward and personally unaware people, as well as more than a fair share of just plain assholes, but I have never (in 25 years in the profession) encountered anybody in a manager position so impaired that they'd turn the lives of their reports into a living hell _because of that impairment_. FWIW the worst manager I've seen was an extraverted, narcissistic psychopath.

> his inability for empathy and emotional understanding was the crux of the problem

oh the irony!

Ummm, it seems like the problems may not be 100% on your ex-boss here. If you’re having dreams about killing somebody, perhaps a little self introspection is in order.

I'm not going to defend a negative generalization of all autistic people, however I am going to ferociously defend thinking or dreaming of killing someone being perfectly normal.

I had an investor in a company I started who used his position as a giant dick-waving platform. He would constantly come in and tell us that we shouldn't be paying ourselves salary, or that he could make more money by opening a lemonade stand.

Eventually I started having thoughts and dreams about, if not killing him, him having a terrible "accident."

I think if you haven't wished death on someone ever in your live, you're either living in denial or haven't met a wide enough range of people. One day you might have to associate with someone who's entire existence you find vile and pointless, and you might change your tune.

A Zen teacher I listen to by podcast, said that one of the nicest things his Zen master told him when he was a student was: "Sometimes people have weird thoughts, and it's OK."

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