Young Adults With Autism Can Thrive In High-Tech Jobs | Hacker News Reader

Young Adults With Autism Can Thrive In High-Tech Jobs

npr.org

58 pointscodegeek33 comments

"They may really flourish at engineering-type tasks"

I see a problem there. In my own experience, the hardest skills for newly minted software engineers to learn are the social skills. Not having those soft skills is career-limiting because engineering is a highly collaborative, cooperative process. And being "senior" or in management requires even more of those people skills.

Maybe a known glass ceiling is better than not being employable but it bothers me that there's no acknowledgement of the limitation.

The glass ceiling is there even for not so prominent cases and it can be an even worse experience. I grew up fine, with minor social issues but was always limited at work due to limited social interaction or for "we do not know why, but it does not seem right to give you a promotion". After my son was diagnosed with Autism and I found out I was an Asperger's it started making more sense. The realisation of the glass ceiling is important, because there are always career paths that do not lead you on top of others but in places no-one else has been.

Sometimes, also, you get better in social skills if you do not treat the interaction as such but as engineering a communication flow to achieve a result. When you get the hang of it, it looks like you are a normal communicator. Which goes a long way to explain that you are not exploiting a relationship, you just have to actively process it at a more conceptual level rather than have it cached in your "emotional intelligence".

I'm not sure I understand what problem you mentioned you see here. I think most people know social difficulties are associated with ASD. What constructive additions would you add to the article, beyond just "these people will never be good managers" or other such unfortunate stereotypes?

Also FYI your implication that aspergers etc. limits collaborative ability is wrong. The only difference, in my case, is a lack of small talk, fluff, and emotional context. While this may impact promotions in workplaces where politics trumps technical ability, for many people it does not impact ability to communicate eloquently and collaborate efficiently.

In fact co-workers who know me well especially enjoy brainstorming with me, I've been told, because you can't offend me by shooting down my ideas, suggesting scrapping entire lines of work, etc. (this is one positive benefit in my particular case of aspergers).

Conversely though, it takes a lot of effort for me to constantly remember how sensitive and attached people can be to their ideas. This requires a careful effort to walk on eggshells when pointing out bad designs, dangerous code, etc., but generally is not a problem as long as I formulate a good social protocol for such situations.

I think the keypoint to all of this is that there are some so called 'disorders' that are actually highly valuable to society. Creative people who can connect dots like no other often have ADD, incredibly intelligent people have highly functioning autism. Why were these classified as disorders? Because most of the education system goes back to how the military classified and sorted out people suitable for their ranks. Everyone was going to follow a template to be a member of society. What changed all that? I think a lot has to do less with the end of conscription (which many countries still have), but rather with feminism getting stronger and opening doors for anyone. And IT :)

As a blind person 100 years ago I would have been pushed into being a piano tuner. This is not something I want to do. Maybe rather than having all autistic people be told technology is a great choice for them some effort should be made to treat the underlying condition? If they decide on their own then that they want to work in technology more power to them. We shouldn’t be steering them toward jobs that require limited human interaction as a way to shove the underlying issue under the rug though.

I am glad to see that an ASD based tech company is going for more than just testing. Specialisterne and Aspiritech are excellent but slotting ASD folk into just software testing seemed a bit limiting. Also, the inherent conflict of testing (i.e. telling someone you think they made a mistake) always seemed problematic.

One thing that many high functioning autistics share, is a low level of cognitive empathy. What this means, is that we often do or say things that other people find hurtful and offensive, not because we want to insult them, but instead because it doesn't make sense to us that someone would be offended by it. This could actually be a good thing in software testing, because you are likely to get a completely honest assessment of the product.

Can't any of those high-functioning brain cells be put to good use learning social skills and choosing to practice a higher level of empathy?

In my experience, I've found that applying the Golden Rule and "seeking first to understand" generally takes conscious effort and practice... and it's also my assumption that I'm not the only one on the planet like that, seeing as how Steven Covey's "7 Habits" book spent 1/7th of the book on developing empathetic habits.

I can't speak for everyone, but in my experience, social skills can be learned to a certain extent, but it takes an enormous amount of energy. I'm not sure why, but when go to a large social event, like an office party or a birthday, I feel completely exhausted afterwards.

I don't really know about cognitive emphathy though. Logically, I can understand why someone is upset after they explain it to me, but I normally can't pick up on something until its too late.

Very true, worst kind of empathy is when you realise hours or days or week or even years later make that connection to a event and realise your embarasment you never experienced at the time. So you rebuild your mental social handerling flowchart and carry on.

you realise hours or days or week or even years later make that connection to a event and realise your embarasment you never experienced at the time

This happens to everyone. It's part of normal social growth & development to have your brain wander and suddenly realize one made a faux pas (or figure out the truth about an old situation).

"Can't any of those high-functioning brain cells be put to good use learning social skills and choosing to practice a higher level of empathy?"

If you understood ASD better then you would realise that would come across as offencive.

As for golden rules, well there are always exceptions to any rule. Getting a job in IT involves convincing a bunch of HR people who know nothing about IT that you are best for the job. That would be the issue stopping most ASD(Autistic Spectrum Disorders) from getting the roles, and startups are just too dynamic and change to quickly for most comfort zones, let alone somebody with ASD.

As for empathy, it is such a open area and yes I'm sure we all learn, still I know if I kick somebody in the bollocks then even I know how that person is feeling ;(

would you prefer a feigned empathetic interaction to an honest one?

Yes. Listen to Act II of This American Life "Play the Part" http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/458/p...

fair enough, i'll listen. skeptically. but i'll listen.

In my experience (and I scored 28-29 AQ, depending on the day), there's a different kind of empathy that is very common on the spectrum.

It is often very easy to do a deep kind of empathy, where you focus a lot of energy into running a full simulation of another person in your head. This is often much easier when the person you're simulating is similar to you (e.g., on the spectrum). It takes energy, and it's really hard to parallelize, that is, I can't easily deeply empathize with a dozen people at once.

What a lot of normal people seem to be good at is a doing a first-order approximation of other people's intentions and motivations, a shallow type of empathy if you will. And perhaps it's just that if they're interacting with "normal" people, they can make a lot of assumptions that don't hold true for Aspies.

That being said, there are a lot of good strategies I've learned on how to make chit-chat with normal people and "flow" conversation -- I explicitly had to learn it as I was not born with that package pre-installed.

This is news? Software development has attracted Asperger's types for virtually as long as the field existed.

The news, I think, is that there is a software company (actually an institute) just for people with an ASD, with training to help them focus their {personality|condition|disability} into something positive.

Seriously. Basically all the biggest names in tech fall somewhere along the spectrum and I'd say easily a quarter of the people I've worked with.

There can be a really thin line between the classification of high functional autism and aspergers and just plan introverted. My son is definitely in the in the challenged side of the coin, so I am not claiming at all it isnt 'real', just saying have to be careful with these kinds of classifications.

What exactly is your point here? You've essentially said nothing at all.

A label sometimes dooms people to a fate - "I have Aspergers so there's no point in me trying to socialize, I'll never understand it."

Which is tragic, especially if the condition is mild or not entirely cross the big thick fuzzy line of has it/doesn't have it.

I actually think it's standard practice to under-diagnose something like this, because of what it sometimes does to borderline cases. I could be so incredibly wrong, though, so please let me know.

I find the most helpful model to be a (probably multidimensional) spectrum containing everyone. Most people are in the neurotypical part of the spectrum, some are like your son, some lie in between, and some are way off in the extreme parts. The borders are wide and fuzzy.

(This model sounds almost too obvious to state, but it prevents a bunch of irritating arguments about what discrete bucket to put someone it.)

As a side note, a collection of academic papers relating Asperger syndrome to sci/tech:

http://www.mendeley.com/groups/519371/asperger-syndrome-and-... (and also a collection of various non-scientific links: http://delicious.com/stared/asperger)

But in short - since the article "The Geek Syndrome" on Wired (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html) it's hardly surprising that hi-tech can attract (mildly) autistic people. For a more scientific stance on that topic, see e.g.:

S. Baron-Cohen et al. "The Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ): Evidence from Asperger Syndrome/High-Functioning Autism, Malesand Females, Scientists and Mathematicians" (2001) http://web.sls.hw.ac.uk/teaching/level1/A31RH3/baron%20cohen...

Ah, Wikipedia says that comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has a cousin Simon who is an internationally recognized autism researcher.

As a parent of an autistic child obviously I am happy to see the increased recognition of where people on the autism spectrum can find ways to be autonomous in happy productive lives.

It's no fun waking up every morning knowing one day you'll be gone and won't be there to take care of them and if you haven't got them to a place where they can be either fully autonomous or well takn care if with sufficient resources left behind for that, then they will suffer the consequences. It's hard. But we are not without hope nowadays.

My one concern reading the article was of exploitation - does that 3x 98% accurate employee understand his/her value and how to negotiate appropriate compensation for it? That being said it is still a big step forward to have opportunities with the potential for under-compensation than to have no opportunities at all.

I'd say that, especially with programmers being able to find agents (10x Management that was just on the HN) - perhaps these autistic, but very good developers will be sought after by those who know they can make them more productive - in effect they're the low hanging fruit of this model because they're probably worse at these soft skills overall I'd imagine and have the most to gain.

They suit the work, not the workplace. A software company is not as different as the leaders think.

Eg suits. They are scary to autistics, who are used to comfy clothes like jeans and Tshirts. Getting over the change to the collar alone is a big step. After that there's probably something individual to each person that they will find easy, such as resource finding.

Not all autistic people have a problem wearing business attire. Personally, I care so little about my appearance that I don't really give a shit what an employer wants me to wear.

Most non-autistic individuals prefer if we can work in comfortable clothing, too.

Yes, I chose something relatable.

This could be great answer for 'woman discrimination' in IT. Why there are is only one woman speaker at conference? Because we gave more space to people with mental dissabilities and autism :-)

And dudes with big muscles are good at digging ditches.

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