Mentra aims to match neurodivergent jobseekers with jobs | Hacker News Reader

Mentra aims to match neurodivergent jobseekers with jobs

techcrunch.com

113 pointsrntn72 comments

I was curious about the associated job specs. Whether they read like "Wanted: Software dev with the hyperfocus of ADHD and none of the nasty downsides".

However on page 3 or so of the very visually noisy sign up flow I've lost interest, doesn't look like there's an option to see any listings without first typing in ridiculous amounts of information.

Made it to the end by skipping fields and asking google what a representative american phone number is. The 'search' function returns no hits, even when you type in keywords from the example job postings. Likewise the buttons next to search marked things like "remote" or "internship" return no results. The page has "show more" on it, but says you've reached the end after a total of 15 listings. The four I looked at were indistinguishable from job listings seen elsewhere.

So the initial impression is they've put a huge amount of effort into trying to get information out of job searchers and not so much into trying to get employers to post roles on it.

Thanks for sharing. I didn't make it past page one (https://app.mentra.com/signup) for similar reasons, and based on your experience it sounds like I'm not missing much.

Apparently they figured out the "why" of their mission but the "how" (how they intend to accomplish the mission) is lacking to say the least. The site feels no different to me from other job search boards -- AFAICT, they're just using different words.

It’s especially bad considering their target audience, of whom I am one.

Wanted, ADHD devs because... they can... focus more?

Is this a joke?

"Hyperfocus" comes from the theory that ADHD is not a lack of attention but rather a difficulty focusing one's attention. The idea goes that ADHD people can some times "hyperfocus" on things for very long periods of time.

It should be noted that the idea of hyperfocus isn't actually present in the DSM-5 (the standard classification of mental disorders) and largely came from a smaller group of psychiatrists and authors in recent years. Despite being a very popular concept on the internet (merely posting this comment is going to make me a lightning rod, I know), it's rather contentious concept in official diagnostic circles. It's also extremely misunderstood in internet discussions about ADHD with many non-ADHD people misinterpreting it as a sign that they might have ADHD.

Note that stimulant medication (a common treatment for ADHD) can often make hyperfocus worse, and hyperfocus is a well-known side effect of stimulant medication being dosed too high. It's also not considered unique to ADHD and is definitely not diagnostic for having ADHD. Specifically, focusing for things for long periods of time by itself is definitely not a sign of ADHD.

I'd add that ADHD hyperfocus is focusing on one thing but that the thing is not necessarily what you want it to be. For example, I've become obssessed for a few weeks on boardgames, to the exclusion of everything else but after that I had no interest whatsoever. Sometimes, it can be useful when I'm focusing on something actually relevant to my career, life. Sometimes, like with boardgames, it can lead to me buying 80 board games, and wasting my time on something completely useless...

As regarding to medication, I seldom use my ADHD medication (concerta makes me way too sleepy if I'm sleep deprived and I have a toddler so I'm always mildly sleep deprived) but when I did, it actually stopped the hyperfocus in that it allowed me to think of something else besides my obsession du jour.

i don't know if this counts as hyperfocus, so i'll just call it focus

i can focus on something only when i can detach from everything else. that can be difficult to achieve. because it means that i can forget to take a lunch break, miss meetings, or skip other responsibilities. so most often i am afraid to focus because of all these sideeffects.

that means in order for me to be able focus on something someone has to take care of everything else that requires planning or thinking ahead. sometimes that is not possible. forget focus if i had a fight with my wife and have to worry about what happens when i get home.

on the other hand focus can also be used to avoid some other unpleasant task. the only way to solve that was to find ways to make that task less unpleasant.

(Disclaimer that basically all of ADHD is contentious and I don’t want to argue but just explain)

Hyperfocus is a symptom of ADHD. This can be someone who spends 14 hours in one go fixing a bug. Downsides are that it’s generally not sustainable, and it’s just as likely to be the wrong thing as the right thing. I know a ton more about air cooled engines but didn’t do my taxes on time kinda thing.

"I spent the week creating a typescript interpreter that verifies the type safety of our bash scripts using typescripts string template capabilities"

no, it's just someone who actually knows what ADHD is.

That misnomer of a name has led to a lot of confusion on the part of ignorant (about ADHD) people who make assumptions based on it.

> Some research shows that neurodivergent people can make teams up to 30% more productive when placed in the right environments.

This rings true for any kind of "difficult" team member. All people have intrinsic advantages, and many who are considered "difficult" to work with, either are in the wrong role, are expected to be doing something that's uncomfortable to them, are not strong with communication, deadlines, estimating, etc.

Your job as a team leader/manager is to figure out how to best utilize their talents, without letting the shortcomings get in the way of the project / rest of the team. Someone's really bad with deadlines? Don't give them deadlines! Assign them to more "async" work like writing tests, documentation, maintenance, etc.

For me, with a strong technical background but no experience managing a team, having found myself in that role for the first time, it helped to think of it as an optimization problem. Databases are great at handling many rows of columnar data. GPUs are great at heavily parallel work like matrices.

Every human is good at something. [NSFW] https://www.oglaf.com/gifted/

> deadlines, estimating

IMHO, most of them can do well with these things as long as you're not asking them to completely make something up.

software estimates is making something up

I think making an estimate for something that works is doable. Making an estimate for what the boss asked for, is NP Hard.

> NP Hard

What exactly is the size of your input here.

It was a nerd joke. Not an actual formula.

>Every human is good at something.

I dunno man, some would accuse you of invalidating their suffering by offering such a statement.

but you are suffering because others, or even you yourself can't recognize what you are good at, so how does that invalidate your suffering?

If I meet a guy with no legs and my first reaction is to highlight the strengths of great parking spaces and saving money on trousers, he might see that as me failing to acknowledge the reality of his situation.

Maybe.

Also possible they might actually laugh and counter with their own upside to being leg incomplete joke and welcome you for not looking away like so many others do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Leg

Cracking jokes with amputees is a real minefield ~ Invictus Games Opening Speech

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invictus_Games

Fact is, there's no way to keep a person from being offended if they want to be. No logic, no evidence.

And this is an attitude that is freakishly respected these days. Whole groups of people validating each other's offendedness. And even getting offended on behalf of people they never met.

And to belong to a class of people widely known to be in a permanent state of offendedness, and unassailably so, and generally respected as such, is a highly desirable and sought-after position.

The maniacs have taken over the asylum.

and all i had in mind was something like: oh damn, you are really in a rough spot. i'd like to help you figure out what options you have left. there has to be something useful that you can contribute.

Funny, I made some collages of images from the Ukraine MoD about as soon as Russian attack last year and a lot of them were of the Ukraine delegation to the Invictus Games which were really remarkable.

I hate to say it as I could see this helping, but this seems like a ripe way for neurodivergent employees to get themselves tagged as such, and sold to who knows - ADP/payroll providers, credit scoring, insurance, other health-based risk assessors. Telehealth platforms, in a semi-related instance, just got caught for not following HIPAA, as in it didn’t apply to the platforms and the data collected by it (just applied to the healthcare providers using the platforms).

Upvoted. Excellent point.

Interesting that it’s backed by Sam “remote work ‘experiment’ was a mistake” Altman. As an HSP, I can say that remote work is essential for me. I think many other neurodivergent people would agree.

As an ADHD person I abhor open offices. I do appreciate the ability to socialize and bounce ideas, but it never allows me to get into the zone. Someone walking by my desk or talking near me will disrupt me. Like my text editor, it helps when I can adapt my work environment to me. If you want me to succeed in the office, give me an actual office with a door and a window to the outside. Don't cheap out on the walls and make them thin, optimize long term outcomes not micro actions. A door let's me communicate to others that I'm in the zone and to not come in unless there's a level of importance. This isn't something I can get through slack or an open office. Slack won't let me say "only send me notifications if a user has been told I'm busy and asked if it can wait" (or not ping me until I turn off my focus mode).

The problem really comes down to trying to fit everyone into a neat little box. But we're humans, not automata. Our variance is our strength, not a weakness. To each his own I guess.

I put this in my reviews, my yearly feedback to the company, in-person feedback, etc. Management seems to think its a one way street from full offices to open floor plan and never back again. Their nihilism is exhausting.

I'm just confused why we don't think people are different from automata. We've been calling everyone a unique snowflake for over a decade but pushed harder and harder to make one size fits all

HFA + ADHD. I absolutely agree. I find that I focus easily when I have an ignored distraction just out of sight: a coding stream, a let's play, or what-have-you. It's as though it keeps the distractible part of my brain occupied, so the focusing side can get to work. I would never be able to do that at an office - it would be misunderstood as a distraction in the forefront.

I'm also logical to a flawed degree, and RTO makes me actually angry (yay autism) because it's such an extreme example of illogical stupidity. Altman is the last exec on earth that I would want anything to do with.

> I can say that remote work is essential for me. I think many other neurodivergent people would agree.

Suspect autism spectrum, diagnosed ADHD at 38 (5 years ago), I can say for me at least: Remote is the only way I can function. I've done tech support and hated it, even chats. Chats was better, because I have severe phone anxiety, but just being in an office with so many people (Bluehost) was insane.

I've been doing freelance dev most of my career (10 years), if only because its basically guaranteed remote. Also, I'd like to stay in southern utah, but that's beside the point. If the office was next door, I wouldn't want to go (unless I was paying for the office, and it was only my office, nobody else's - then I'd go there to get away from family while I work).

Now that I think about it, in my life I've had two jobs I didn't much mind: Delivering pizzas back in my 20s, and software dev -- both essentially were remote. Pizza's I did have some in-store time, but I was 'mostly' free to let my mind wander, or chill to tunes in my car. Dev is basically the same, I don't like to deal with people or noise unless its my noise (media devices). I have toddlers, some days that's torture tbh, love them but - those you love can torture you pretty damn good. :)

I wonder if there is a diagnosis available for people that need frequent, in-person, validation from others as that seems to be a main source of distraction in offices (open or otherwise).

Maladaptive extroversion?

I have ADHD and remote work is the absolute bane of my existence.

ADHD + APD. The quality of my work (and the ease with which I produce it) have both gone up by a ton since I started working remotely.

Who knew controlling every aspect of my work environment would improve my work and also my life this much?

I wouldn't want to travel e.g. crowded commute as Japanese and Indians have to go through.

"neurodivergent" sounds like a sexy sci-fi movie title. If you ask my previous employers they'd have a different description, like "Hard to manage. Too frequently off in the weeds. Wouldn't know a real priority if it bit him on the balls".

This is a privacy nightmare and I can't believe it's being built by neurodivergent people. I wonder if they know history, and how much.

I'm out about being ND at work, but being out to people at a startup is not the same as having my diagnosis on a database somewhere. This information will almost certainly be sold.

The people building this are either naive (most likely) or malicious, and the people signing up have got to be either naive or desperate.

Not surprised Sam Altman is backing this.

All tech companies need to do is pursue some niche hobby or game modding/speedrunning/hacking forum, it's the low hanging fruit of neurodivergent savants, most of whom are likely significantly smarter than most engineers at any non-FAANG tech company, just without the necessary social skills for the hiring game.

I went through the hoops recently for a technical support role for a large company that makes NAS appliances.

I was given an in by a friend already working there as she personally had my resume forwarded to her manager and joked "he's used Gentoo for 15 years, he can do this"

Despite years upon years of experience, the final hiring manager round believed I "wasn't interested" in the role because I "didn't ask any questions about the company"

During said interview (a forth round of interviews) I had admitted that I'd either asked everything I wanted to know either to the employee who referred me, or the managers in previous rounds.

As an absolutely neurodivergent person I was quite surprised by this response. In my own mind I would have thought "I've been picking the brain of your employee for weeks" would have demonstrated quite a high level of interest.

Sadly as they say I "didn't play the interview game" and thus have come up short

That's such a stupid reason to reject someone, i wonder if the company was just making up reasons. Its basically impossible to have interesting questions about the company after round 4 of interviews.

I mean, in most tech jobs the social skills don't end at the hiring game. I've had several jobs where dealing with corporate culture and its games, managers, peers, meetings, review cycles, etc was significantly harder than any of the tech stuff. Many companies are at least partially dysfunctional and some are very dysfunctional. Being able to understand the power games going on, not fully but at least enough to stay out of the fray, can sadly be a critical skill.

Wow there's a lot of prejudice to unpack there, but the one I'm most curious about is your impression that people are working at non-FAANG businesses because of their excellent social skills.

There's a lot of imagined, manufactured offense here which should perhaps remain packed up. You know a strawman fallacy makes your paraphrasing both inaccurate and rude, no?

> neurodivergent savants, most of whom are likely significantly smarter than most engineers at any non-FAANG tech company, just without the necessary social skills for the hiring game.

Was replying to this.

> neurodivergent savants

That's stereotyping.

> significantly smarter than most engineers at any non-FAANG tech company

Elitist in more ways than one by claiming engineers working anywhere but a FAANG are not only dumber than FAANG engineers, but also inexperienced kids.

> just without the necessary social skills for the hiring game

Ah yes all it takes is "one weird trick" to get hired!

That "one weird trick" is probably 60-70% of why you would pass an interview. If you've gotten to an interview, they already believe you have the technical qualifications. The technical / white board interview is just due diligence. Having social skills requisite to make the interviewers like you is very literally the only thing they don't know about you, which is what they're testing for.

The hiring requirements for FAANG / MAGMA / F100 companies are higher than those for non-FAANG. Maybe smarter isn't the best term, knowledgeable or competent would work better. His point still stands though.

There was an HNer who tried to build a job board specifically for neurodiverse folks a couple years ago, though it now seems to be defunct. [1]

I wonder if these folks will have a different outcome; one difference is that they've raised millions. TBH, I could see that being an advantage or a disadvantage.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34157907

They mention targeting 3M ARR in 2024.

I'm honestly astonished by the target number.

I hope people are smart enough to not not volunteer being in a database of neurodivergent people, to be sold to the highest bidder, if not today,whenever the current owners make an exit.

I will never understand how people are so trusting and I like to think I am more trusting than most lol.

How is this not a series of discrimination lawsuits in the making?

"not having a disability" is not a protected class, nor is "neurotypical", so I think you can probably just do it.

I'm pretty sure "disability status" cuts both ways.

That said, this appears to be a recruitment firm. They aren't hiring people, they're matchmaking people with companies. I'm not sure how anti-discrimination laws would apply to this. I can imagine that if a company uses this recruiter and manages to erase that information before candidates meet the hiring team, it could be okay.

i don't actually know much about employment law, but as I understand it this is different from most of the other protected classes (race gender etc.) after googling I found this statement from the EEOC:

https://www.eeoc.gov/foia/eeoc-informal-discussion-letter-32...

"Favoring an individual with a disability over a non-disabled individual for purposes of affirmative action in hiring or advancement is not unlawful disparate treatment based on disability, and therefore does not violate Title I of the ADA.(1) Both the text of the ADA itself, as clarified by the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, and the EEOC's implementing regulations explicitly state that an individual without a disability cannot bring a claim of discrimination under the ADA."

Ah, interesting. I wonder how (if) that will stand in the face of the Students for Fair Admissions ruling.

I don't think it would, or should, but this isn't what's going on here. The idea isn't to hire disabled people over more qualified candidates. The idea is to hire disabled people whose disabilities actually make them more valuable for the role, and that's not discrimination based on disability status. It's more like the NBA hiring based on height.

The first thing that comes to mind is "what if a neurotypical person sued?", but the more troublesome legal development would be "what if a person with a different kind of disability sued?" That is, if a company is just hiring people with ASD, can someone with dyslexia sue, on the grounds that they're being discriminated against?

At what point is it not discrimination? Can you sue if you're completely incompatible with given job. Like deaf music reviewer.

The term of art is 'bona fide occupational qualification', or BFOQ for short: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualifi...

The DOJ has been on vacation since Enron

unfortunately the reality has become such that lawsuits and fines are just the cost of doing business, so long as the investor money keeps coming.

I wonder what percentage of this is going to be used for spotting points of interest from aerial photos.

I am not neurodivergent, but I was raised by people who were. I sometimes wonder whether being able to embrace and understand that spectrum of thinking & behavior was the one skill that made my career.

Hey look a startup that will perfect the exploitation of those "neurodivergent" enough to tell on themselves.

Can't seem to upload a .txt file resume, it looks like only .docx and .pdf are accepted. Any reason why? .txt is the most universal file format.

PDF stands for "Portable Document Format". It carries not just textual content, but also layout with it, making it generally suitable for reading on a screen as well as printing out on paper. Documents that used to require physical printing on paper (such as resumes, but also other things like homework assignments or corporate forms) have had a much easier transition to digital with the help of formats like PDF since that's what the format was designed for

The .docx format is generally also acceptable since it is commonly supported by Windows applications and also contains formatting and layout information in addition to text

Plaintext files not only lack formatting, but they also depend on the character set that's being used. If you type up your resume as a .txt file on a *NIX machine and your prospective employer opens it in Windows Notepad, they might see all of your words squashed together rather than typed out in a way that you intended

And even if your plaintext resume did open properly, scanning it would be a chore compared to your competition since there would be no visual cues like large headers, indentation (which can be affected by word wrap in plaintext), or hyperlinks (useful for linking to email addresses, phone numbers, online profiles, etc), to name a few things

This is a hilariously neurodivergent way to create a CV, I love it

How is this not a niche search service?

I just signed up, thanks for sharing.

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