Hacker News Reader

Comment by Thorentis | Hacker News Reader

What things are considered "neurodiverse" and what things are considered mental illness? Genuine question. A case could be made that schizophrenia or psychopathy or any other condition is simply another example of diverse neural make-ups. Where is the line drawn? If there is no line, then Google would obviously still be making a call about which types of neurodiversity they want, and which they don't. Which puts us right back to square one anyway. This is just another way for them to fit the "Diversity" buzzword into marketing material.

View on HN

There is no line. But unfortunately, I think Google only wants to hire people who they can accommodate easy (easy enough for the "diversity" points).

Have awkward social skills and prefer working away from other people? If you're a good programmer Google won't care. Have trouble following any instructions whatsoever? You're probably out of luck.

Honestly I think it would be nice for people with schizophrenia and more serious conditions to get employment. Even if it's hard to get them to actually contribute something, for their own self-worth. But I doubt companies like Google will do much for those people without an external incentive.

I don't think it's just about diversity points. There's a real competitive advantage to building a workplace that can accommodate smart but different people.

My impression is that despite the perception of Google as having a very progressive and liberal culture, they are actually pretty ruthlessly capitalist and won't go out of their way to accommodate people who are ultimately detrimental. They are just being open-minded about what kinds of people they can put to use.

I agree on the smart but different line. When you serve the entire world, your average Google worker might miss a lot of important use cases. I've been the colourblind guy in meetings, sitting next to the guy with kids and the girl from a country without steady electricity, to name a few.

Can I ask you if non-neurotyptical people would fit in this picture? Aside from being capable employees, are there perhaps moments when a non-neurotyptical person could chip in with design changes?

(I’m Autistic) I think folks on the spectrum would have a particularly keen eye for spotting ambiguous UI design details and text copy. As a person particularly prone to information overload, it nudges me towards smaller and more modular code functions.

We’re not superheroes or mutants, and everyone is different, but Autistic people can help to balance out designs in subtle ways because we are atypically balanced ourselves.

The line is drawn at the point that someone's mental condition would negatively impact their coworkers.

Someone slightly on the spectrum who's somewhat awkward in conversation but an otherwise great developer? Probably a pass, unless their conversational awkwardness makes communication difficult.

Someone further on the spectrum who has a meltdown if their daily routine is even slightly disrupted? Probably not a pass, unless that routine never crosses the path of a coworker.

Someone with untreated bipolar disorder who lashes out with little provocation at their coworkers? Fail.

Someone with an IQ of 80 who's literally incapable of coding, and would thus be total dead weight on the team? Fail.

Someone with an IQ of 80 who's literally incapable of coding? Fail.

I actually worked with a developer who said their tested IQ was in the 80s.

I’m very skeptical that someone with an IQ of 80 could be employed as a software developer. I think other explanations are more likely. Your coworker could be joking or lying. He could be mistaken (eg: interpreting a percentile as an IQ score). The test could have been mis-graded. Or maybe he was just having a really bad day. If he took an IQ test again, I seriously doubt he’d get such a low result.

A person with an IQ of 80 usually has trouble functioning in society. It can be difficult to teach them concepts like alphabetization or hypotheticals. For someone with such cognitive impairments to become a software developer beggars belief.

It could also be a partial IQ score of 80. IQ tests are divided in 4 key areas each scored separately. If all 4 scores are similar they can be averaged to get the final tested score. If they are not it’s called a “gap” and the average score is meaningless.

With gap results it’s not uncommon to see 2 low areas scoring 80s and 2 high areas 120 or even 130+.

“A developer declaring a tested IQ of 80” could be a gap case and somewhere along the way the nuance got lost in translation.

Not necessarily. They could also score in the 70s in 2 areas, score 115 in another, and 90 in the last one, and get a score in the 80s.

Beyond that, IQ is not even predictive enough of job performance for a standard deviation to be a death sentence.

Come on, IQ 85 is only one standard deviation below the average, and correlates at around .4 with job performance. That means you'd expect someone with IQ 85 to be on average less than a standard deviation under the average at job performance.

It's definitely possible for someone with IQ85 or IQ80 to be better at programming than the average IQ100 programmer, and it's not even that unlikely. Let's not overstate this.

The average software developer does not have an average IQ. Look at the figures at the end of this paper[1]. Even professions like nursing have IQs averaging close to 110. "Science and engineering occupations" are around 115 average, with nobody below 90. If you look at college majors, you'll get similar results.

Our occupations and interests cause us to self-segregate into cognitive strata. For the same reason you don't know many Trump voters or young earth creationists (despite the fact that they're 1/3rd of the US population), you probably don't know many dumb people (or many super-geniuses). Individual differences in cognitive ability are far greater than our personal experience indicates.

1. https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2002-hauser.pdf

According to the paper you linked, right around 20% of people in IT, materials engineers, and even people in the natural sciences have an IQ in the 80s or lower. (under 90).

Wouldn't you believe that, that's only slightly less than the general population which is at 25%, or right around what I predicted above :)

The median IQ difference between college professors and service workers is not even a full standard deviation.

Beyond that, I said average IQ100 programmer, of which there are many that can do a perfectly serviceable job in many sectors.

Individual differences in cognitive ability are great, yes, but they are not even close to being perfectly represented in IQ.

I don't know many Trump voters or young earth creationists because of where I live, but I know quite a bit of their relative equivalent where I am right now. Yes, there are a lot of differences, but I know enough young-earth-creationist and far-right engineers/stem people to know that it's not that simple.

Anyways, I think I made my point clear, IQ is not a very good predictor of job performance, you can definitely be a programmer with IQ85, and a great many are.

You misread the figures. The bottom of each bar is the 10th percentile. If you draw a horizontal line, "Natural science - physical, life, and math" has its 10th percentile around 92.

It seems my vision is skewed. Opening it in paint, that is correct. Still, 85 is within the bottom tenth percentile for programmers/technicians and material scientists, and the median for farmers and say engineers is only around a standard deviation.

People with an IQ of 80 mostly can't learn algebra, and by algebra I mean solve a linear equation with one unknown. If your colleague can do fizzbuzz the person who tested them did a crap job.

There's plenty of people with IQ80 that can do fizzbuzz and solve linear equations.

IQ is not the metric that people think it is. You could be above average at doing mental math and finding ways to push data, yet be under average and spatial problems, language problems, etc..., and get an IQ of 75.

It's also not that good of a test and not that predictive of actual programming ability, even if you're not being dragged down by other tests.

So what language were they working in?

Well if my company is any indication, VBA.

As an ADHD person I tend to be suspicious of progressive sounding ideas around things like neurodiversity because they usually get tied in with attitudes that culimate in telling me I shouldn't need my medication. Even amongst the academics I know it's very popular to argue I only need my meds because of x societal factor. I'd much rather not be forced to trust society and just have my medication to deal with the problem.

There's no clear boundary but one criteria for some mental illnesses is that it causes problems for the person's life. So a high functioning autist could be perfectly healthy in a world without informal human interaction. Pedophilia is not a mental illness unless it gets you into trouble, then it is.

I'd guess the reason for targeting autism is there would be a disproportionate number of highly capable workers hidden in that group which would be missed by normal hiring practices. You wouldn't expect that from, say, schizophrenia or most other neurodiversities.

This is really difficult and quite a grey area. Just to make a point, is gender dysphoria an acceptable neural diversity, but bipolar affective disorder is not?

N=1, but I had my most successful group project ever with someone who was dealing with bipolar disorder.

The solution? He was a master communicator. He would tell me when he was having a manic streak and took on more work. When he was going back down, he communicated that and I took on more. If he started going unresponsive, I reached out and asked, and he told me where he was and what support he needed.

Now he's doing better and found the right medication, but crivens, I've been in a lot of other group projects, and I really miss him.

I’m sorry to be that guy, but the myth of bipolar people being super productive during mania needs to die and posts like yours reinforce it. Some bipolar type 2 people may be slightly more productive while hypomanic. For serious cases, mania is much, much more dangerous than depression and if someone tells you they’re manic you should rush them to the hospital, not give them more work.

This is a great story and I am happy for the outcome for sure.

If the test of a person being employable is that they keep their condition to themselves, then it's mental illness. You can't ask for accommodations for mental illness, is my definition. No matter what the rules on paper.

Different workplaces have different tolerances for people who seem unstable; for instance, if someone bursts into tears, are they pressured out? It varies.

Schizophrenia has nothing to do with psychopathy, sociopathy, multiple personalities, or anything you've seen in the movies, by the way.

> You can't ask for accommodations for mental illness, is my definition.

No idea what you're talking about because obviously you can.

I'm probably not in disagreement with you about any facts regarding mental illness and tolerance thereof in the workplace. It's more about definitions of words.

I think it's useful to define mental illness as those conditions where you can't take advantage of your rights on paper; where the proof that you are coping adequately is always and forever that you are not sharing much if anything - mostly coping with symptoms while at work is not enough.

Schizophrenia, bipolar, etc.

It's very clearly shown in this thread why these are different from conditions people are free to talk about. Most people can't imagine that someone with the above conditions can be employable, especially as a knowledge worker, whereas Aspergers/autism has become a cliche used to stereotype programmers in general.

There is no way to enforce a law that says people shall trust others regardless of their personal judgement. So there is no equalizing the privileges that some "neurodiverse" people have and others do not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com