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Comment by RationalDino | Hacker News Reader

You haven't said enough for anyone to offer real help.

I mean you've got to accept that he won't be aware of, let alone considerate of, other people's feelings. Social rules will be a challenge for him. He won't respect you simply because you're a manager. You have to earn his respect. He will be very logical and reasonable with what he does understand. His ability to remain on task is going to be limited unless he's fired up. But if he gets there, his productivity may shock you.

He will likely overestimate how much he understands. But when he actually gets things, he really will get them.

This is all vague generalities.

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    He won't respect you simply because you're a manager. You have to earn his respect.

This is good practice even for non-autistic employees, but… it’s reasonable to expect that an autistic person knows that there is a hierarchy to their job. Depends on what you mean by “respect” here of course, but mild autism that still allows you to work in a professional setting is not a blanket excuse for being disrespectful to coworkers or managers.

There's a whole lot of things between not having respect (not abiding to authority) and being disrespectful (hurtful, offensive, etc).

> he won't be aware of, let alone considerate of, other people's feelings

Many autistics are very much considerate of other people's feelings - once they're made aware of them. Most that I know are in fact much more considerate than NTs.

That said, it's still possible that they will come across hurtful or disrespectful even when they're making an effort to accomodate such feelings - simply because they will be more logical and less emotional in their speech and general demeanor.

It helps if the communication and effort goes both ways - the autistic person trying to accommodate the feelings of others, and others trying to understand the (sometimes brutal) logic of the autistic.

Denis Leary wrote a song about that guy.

why are you talking about me?

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