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Comment by lostmsu | Hacker News Reader

> The percentages of workers that are neurodivergent is much higher than usual

Is it much though? 38%? I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies.

> there's a big cadre or neurodivergent people that are just in the line where they are very productive workers anyway

Alternatively, it just became popular to label others or oneself that way. And tech elites have nothing better to do in free time. Also DEI benefits! Who else would be allowed a medical break due to a burnout and stress?

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> Is it much though? 38%? I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies.

How do you know this?

Do you have access to their medical records?

Are you in HR and have access to any accomodations they may have filed?

Do they even have accommodations filed at work? Neither I nor many of the people I knew in university who had accommodations needed them in the workplace because the structure of an undergrad course setting is wildly different from that of an actual workplace.

I have told HR at basically every place I've worked that I had filed for accommodations during university and that I generally manage my disability well but that I may need to file for formal accommodations at some point in the future. This isn't something that I've necessarily told people I work with and it's not visible or obvious. Most disabilities aren't.

> I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies.

Were you a solo founder of 5 companies? I literally cannot fathom that you worked at 5 even very modest-sized tech companies and never experienced a colleague with some level of what we’d call neurodivergent.

I can’t validate that the rate is 38%, but I find it hard to believe it’s under 5% and if it’s 5%, you’d be hard-pressed to avoid crossing paths across 5 companies and 15 years.

That's unfair. Even a founder of a company wouldn't have any legal means of knowing for certain the disabled status of their employees.

Federal contractors are required to track the percentage of self-identified disabled employees for reporting to the government.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-41/section-60-741.42

There's neurodivergant and there's neurodivergant. I've definitely worked with oddballs and nerds and various atypical folks. But there's a massive gulf between them and someone with legit no questions about it autism.

>I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies

How does one even know this? Do you ask everyone you meet if they are neuro-divergent? That’s awkward as hell.

> Is it much though? 38%?

I'd say 30-40% is definitely in line with what I saw at various FAANG employers. Though it may be that other types of employer optimise less for those attributes.

> I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies

Have you considered that you yourself may be neurodivergent?

Have you considered the fact that you may be neurodivergent? Your assumption that you’ve never met a neurodivergent co-worker is surprising.

From what I understand, some autistic people assume everyone has the same worldview and agenda as they do, they lack a theory of mind. I’m not making this accusation about you, I’m bringing it up because I find it surprising that everyone you’ve worked with is neurotypical.

I can usually tell if someone is neurodivergent or not within the first minute of meeting them, usually just from eye contact and body language.

> Have you considered the fact that you may be neurodivergent?

I scrolled through some of their Reddit comment history (it's linked on their profile) and I think I would peg them as probably autistic. Their patterns of emphasis, placements of sentence breaks, certain turns of phrases and pattern of emotional expression seem to closely match a few autistic friends I have & a few autistic coworkers. Research on this hasn't fully developed though so I can't really offer references (other than the preprint that inspired me, https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/untangling-biologica...)... I still don't really have a non-ambiguous way to call the different types.

> it just became popular to label others

Feel like my theory of mind is just fine given its predictive power.

I feel like all you predicted was the natural antithesis of the argument you made, and not actually some universal truth. Your "predictive power" is just common sense. You say people aren't neurodivergent, and your argument is then "see, you're saying people are neurodivergent again. I win."

> I’m bringing it up because I find it surprising that everyone you’ve worked with is neurotypical.

So there are two potential explanations there. The one where I don't see neurodivergence where it does exist and the other one where you do see it where it does not. Would you be OK with 50/50 probability each of these options being right as the baseline assumption?

Yeah, I’d be fine with assuming either one of us could be correct as a baseline. I hesitated when posting this at first because it’s hard to ask that question without sounding like an asshole, I appreciate the measured response as I was not trying to be aggressive.

Like you said, my perception of neurodivergence in others could be entirely incorrect, I have no way of knowing.

> I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies.

Hmm, have you looked in the mirror perhaps?

> > The percentages of workers that are neurodivergent is much higher than usual

> Is it much though? 38%? I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies.

Just another anecdote, but where I work (tech startup) there are at least 7 other employees (that I know of) and I can identify every single one as autistic. Three are one type, another three are another type, and I think the one other as well as myself are the same type.

Research in the space hasn't advanced enough yet for this to be consensus, but in my opinion this preprint is exactly correct, and is what taught me that there are even subtypes to recognize at all: https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/untangling-biologica...

There are, of course, plenty of non-neurodivergent tech companies. These are typically boring corporate ones, though I think there are some non-flashy ones that are perfectly respectable. I don't think Microsoft would count, though; Asperger's can look a lot like a lack of neurodivergence if you don't pay close enough attention.

My company is about 100 people. I regularly interact with maybe 12. I'm AuDHD and so are at least 5 others---4 that I have regular interaction with and have told me, and one who I do not have regular interaction with but told me anyway. There are also at least 3 pure ADHD people.

> Also DEI benefits!

Ah, you accidentally showed your hand there. DEI does not provide benefits; it seeks to prevent continued, assumedly unfair, selection processes. Whether or not that is appropriate, or if the system was unfair, is arguable; fictitious "benefits" are not.

No one gets a DEI check from the government. But since you don't even see that others around you have disabilities, we can't really expect you to know much more than Fox tells you.

> DEI does not provide benefits; it seeks to prevent continued, assumedly unfair, selection processes.

So it is not a benefit to be hired for a role over your peers because you satisfy an ethnic requirement needed for an arbitrary quota? I dont know about you, I'd sure love to have that on my side.

> DEI does not provide benefits

I don't know how you can define DEI without enumerating benefits these policies provide to certain groups of people, some of which, like the ones being discussed, have very flexible boundaries.

> No one gets a DEI check from the government.

We are discussing private institution(s). But if left unchecked that could expand to local governments.

> But since you don't even see that others around you have disabilities

Oh, I've seen plenty of people who had disabilities for the purposes of draft/mandatory military service.

> we can't really expect you to know much more than Fox tells you.

Your ability to figure out other people's information sources is most certainly no better than my ability to figure out if people have mental disabilities.

> Ah, you accidentally showed your hand there.

And you accidentally showed your hand there.

> And tech elites have nothing better to do in free time

This is it exactly. Programmers believe that we are God's special autists. 'Neurodivergent' is a nonfalsifiable label just like 'queer'

> I haven't seen one in 15 years across 5+ different companies.

I'm guessing you are blind, yea? Otherwise how could you otherwise justify such a statement?

> Alternatively, it just became popular to label others or oneself that way. And tech elites have nothing better to do in free time. Also DEI benefits! Who else would be allowed a medical break due to a burnout and stress?

The person is clearly retarded themselves. Let's not judge too harshly

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