7 ms·

Beautiful minds, wasted: how not to squander the potential of autistic people

101 points by the_duck 10y ago

mason240 10y ago
>Firms that set out to recruit autistic workers, such as Walgreen’s, a big pharmacy chain, find them just as productive as their peers. I did not know that Walgreen’s does that.
- DiabloD3 10y ago
  Sadly, they do it for their own benefit. It ticks boxes they need to tick for Federal law and tax reasons. Do not think they do this out of the kindness of their heart.
  - tehwebguy 10y ago
    So the legislation achieved the desired effect?
    - DiabloD3 10y ago
      Yes, but the legislators did it for their own personal benefit, not out of the kindness of their own hearts. It's self-serving narcissism the whole way down.
      - afarrell 10y ago
        Is it not a wonderful thing when incentives are properly aligned? > narcissism Is there actual narcissism here rather than mundane following of incentives?
      - st3v3r 10y ago
        So fucking what? Why does anyone care?
  - minikites 10y ago
    The means justify the ends in this case, I think.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    > Sadly, they do it for their own benefit. Around here a consulting company has specialised in this (you don't get an interview unless you have an autism spectrum diagnosis) and last I heard it wasn't at all sad: Some autistic people with correct skills were paid good money to do things they really liked well like iron out rare bugs in financial services etc. So not only to fill some quota and not taken advantage of. Oh, and said company made good money IIRC.
    - DiabloD3 10y ago
      The context was Walgreens. Some companies are smart enough to hire high functioning autists to hammer down hard to nail bugs. Most aren't.
      - reitanqild 10y ago
        The only part I tried to nuance was that "for their own benefit" doesn't always mean pure evil.
    - watmough 10y ago
      I have a great job with a large information services company troubleshooting large expensive complicated software and large expensive complicated data. It's a laugh. Innit.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Which matters more: that they do something right, or that they do it for the right reasons? Or: Which matters more to you, that they help people, or that their hearts are pure?
  - koluft 10y ago
    Let me introduce you to the market, where self interested parties exchange goods and services for mutual benefit, increasing society's wealth.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Sounds like federal law is working!
  - morgante 10y ago
    I donate a substantial portion of my salary to charity. My primary reason for doing so is because I derive utility from the feeling of contributing to the collective good of humanity. Does that make my good acts and charitable contributions somehow less valuable? Moreover, the entire point of such tax incentives is to offset the additional difficulty and cost of employing challenging employees.
6stringmerc 10y ago
>A debate rages about when and how to include autistic children in mainstream classes. Oh does this ever bring up a whole bag full of unpleasant childhood memories. I get that it's difficult for those with disabilities to function in 'normal' settings - I've got a physical handicap that is obvious from time to time (but hidden otherwise). In turn I never sought out activities for which I was an incorrect fit - you know, hockey, wrestling, soccer - they weren't going to change the sport to make it easier for me to play, nor should I expect them to. We are not all equal. If there's a way to solve the mentioned debate, I think it will still take another 40 years for us to figure it out. We can't even take care of Gifted and Talented students with any systemic, national and local support, to fulfill their potential. If we're talking "beautiful minds" going to waste then, honestly, I think we should start with this end of the spectrum. This article is, by and large, a plea for help and paints an extensively rosy and joyous picture of employing a person with the mentioned handicap. After half of my lifetime + change working in hourly or professional jobs, I did not particularly share the same optimism. Good help is hard to find, and that's before even considering "making little accommodations" for potentially disruptive conditions. I'm just not quite so optimistic, but would love to see society figure a lot of this stratified talent capitalization out sooner rather than later.
- flatline 10y ago
  I think you raise some good points, but I don't really know what it's like working with autistic individuals. People working hourly jobs present a wide variety of staffing problems. They don't show up for their shifts on a whim because they had something better to do, or they had an emergency or are sick and don't call in or find someone to cover. People lose their tempers at difficult customers, they stand around talking or playing on their phones instead of working the line, they step out on unauthorized breaks, etc. etc. I'm sure autistic individuals will have some of these problems, and some unique ones, but I suspect they are free of some others. If someone is living in a controlled environment they are less likely to have scheduling difficulties or a busy social life that interferes with work, for example. Some will be completely unfazed by any sort of conflict or confrontation and will go on doing their best regardless. On the whole, I bet a lot of them are actually exemplary employees that simply require a different but no more onerous set of accommodations than a "normal" employee.
pepijndevos 10y ago
> The range of consequences is also wide. At one end, the autism of a computer scientist may be barely noticeable; at the other, a quarter of autistic children do not speak. This makes me both laugh and cry.
- cwbrandsma 10y ago
  Ya, I'm a computer scientist with Aspergers (part of the Autism spectrum), one app that I wrote was for non-verbal autistic kids to allow them to speak via an IPad (OneVoice). I can't imagine having to deal with that.
- paulmd 10y ago
  It makes intuitive sense that there's a bias towards mild autism/Aspergers in high-skill computer scientists. Most would probably say that their "education" began long before any kind of formal schooling in the topic. It takes a certain kind of child to stay inside and poke at computers all day instead of going outside and doing something social. And in general, the hyper-focus of mild autism is exactly the kind of thing that drives people to become highly proficient in a technical topic. And on the flip side, severe autism is a nightmare. Although modern society doesn't really do them any favors - historically there were lots of repetitive tasks that needed doing, a person with fairly severe autism could be perfectly fine working in a bakery or blacksmithing or something. Nowadays we really have two kinds of jobs - high skilled, for which we expect people to sit through a lot of formal education, and service jobs, which are highly social jobs usually involving "emotional labor". Neither of those is very suitable for someone with severe autism.
  - navait 10y ago
    The article notes that Walgreen's (exclusively service jobs) has found their autisitc employees are as productive as normal ones. Do you think that they are not employing people with severe autism?
  - morgante 10y ago
    > It takes a certain kind of child to stay inside and poke at computers all day instead of going outside and doing something social. a) Why do you assume that working on computers at a young age necessarily implies social impairment? I've been working on different ideas (particularly games and businesses) with friends since I was 12. b) Many sports also require hyper-focus to excel at a young age. If you're willing to use that as a criterion for autism, why aren't exceptional athletes who spend hours a day shooting hoops alone considered autistic?
KON_Air 10y ago
>one in 42 boys...38 in S.Korea Are we calling every socially awkward kid autistic or did we, as humanity, finally "done did" the genepool?
- maldusiecle 10y ago
  Leaving aside the tastelessness of phrasing the question this way, you may be underestimating the prevalence of mental health disorders in general. This is the NIMH's page on the prevalence of schizophrenia in the general population, for instance: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/schizophrenia.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/schizop... It sounds like the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders is a bit over double that, but as the article notes, that includes "functional" autists whose symptoms may be hardly noticeable to those around them.
  - hyperpape 10y ago
    This is the point I was going to make. Lifetime incidence of mood disorders appears to be over 10% as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mood_disorder#Epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mood_disorder#Epidemiology. Since the rate of autism diagnosis has increased, I'd also like to hear more about the predictive accuracy of some of those statistics. When you read that only 50% of autistic children in the US graduate high school, you have to read that in the context of rapidly increasing diagnosis. Does that mean that the kids that are currently being diagnosed still have only a 50% chance of graduating?
  - KON_Air 10y ago
    Let me rephrase it, are we diagnosing these disorders wrongly or are we heading towards a human population which has more people with disorders then not? Because 1 in 38 or 42 are scary numbers.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      If the consequence is an effective remedy, what's bad about recognizing certain behavioral tendencies? It doesn't have to be the case that population genetics are the thing driving the change.
the-dude 10y ago
Dutch software agency specialised in testing, employing autists only: http://specialisterren.nl/socialenterprise/introductie.html http://specialisterren.nl/socialenterprise/introductie.html [dutch]
djrobstep 10y ago
I do wish people would stop romanticizing autism with phrases like "beautiful minds". From personal experience, I can tell you that there is nothing too beautiful about growing up with a brother who never stopped throwing tantrums like a toddler, whose intelligence never developed beyond about three years old, and who without the right medication won't stop hitting his own forehead and barking like a dog.
- brador 10y ago
  Autism is a spectrum. This beautiful minds piece is likely referring to controlled autism, where you get the special power of deep thought and mindless work ethic without the tantrums part.
  - koluft 10y ago
    It's still deeply tacky empty euphemism. Do non-autistic people have ugly minds?
- Kenji 10y ago
  I agree with you 100%. Tbh I think there are two kinds of autism. 'Real' autism, like your brother has, or people who cannot speak, etc. This kind seems to be much rarer, but a tragedy for everyone involved. I read an article (linked here on HN but I can't find it anymore) about someone taking care of such an autistic person and it is heartbreaking. The other kind I would call 'newest fad' autism that people who are a bit socially awkward label themselves with, and pride themselves with their 'beautiful mind' and their intelligence. Bonus points: They don't have to improve themselves and their social skills because it's a mental health thing and out of their control. The catalogues of mental disorders (like DSM) say a lot about a society.
  - koluft 10y ago
    You shouldn't spout off about medical topics you are uninformed about.
  - dghf 10y ago
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
There's a disturbing trend emerging that I really don't like, and it's not the conventional "autistic people will not make good workers" argument. In fact, it's something of an inverse: the expectation that every autistic person you hire is going to be an idiot-savant that will have unparalleled focus and attention to detail once you hire them. Autistic people are still people. They make mistakes. They're not robots. I'm glad we've moved away from blacklisting them, but we're getting to the point of fetishizing them instead. Both directions are still dehumanizing.
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >the expectation that every autistic person People seem to accept stereotypes when they're positive.
  - serge2k 10y ago
    Are they even that positive? There always seems to be this underlying "yeah they are freaks, but you can take advantage of their weird behaviour".
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
skynatnet 10y ago
5 years reading fist post. Has anyone ever thought of not putting so much effort on so called education. Many of tease beautiful minds are able to do things without the academics that others go though to become Qualified in. Where as when you try to force them to go though school they are unable to adapt to that completely unrelated medium of learning. Me personaly I dropped out of High school on my 6th year because I was unable to get past 9th grade English. Never got though collage never got my GED, and not due to a lack of trying. I am now in my 3rd engineering job not in title but in the work I preform. 1st structural engineer, 2nd Mechanical engineer, and now Systems engineer. I am not going to try to clam to be a genius but I do find myself ecelling above some of the engineers who delegate there projects to me. There are so many fields out there where these people not just the autistic can learn to do just by doing. The only reason they are stuck flipping burgers is because we have this preconception that you can not learn without a certificate form a institution of Higher education. FYI Sorry For the bad spelling I reviewed this for 30 min, and fixed everything I could find.
- kwhitefoot 10y ago
  > Sorry For the bad spelling I reviewed this for 30 min, and fixed everything I could find. But a spelling checker, such as the one built in to Firefox, would have found them all as you typed. Why is it that almost no one uses them?
  - skynatnet 10y ago
    Used it, but somethings just I couldn't find the right spelling for.
  - NoGravitas 10y ago
    Most of the spelling errors in their post were 'wrong word' errors, aka the [Cupertino effect][0]. A spell checker would not have found those. It's possible they were also relying on auto-completion, which increases this type of error. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupertino_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupertino_effect
- luxpir 10y ago
grillvogel 10y ago
those are more people that could be working for corporations! we must right this wrong!
kwhitefoot 10y ago
How about just not squandering the potential of people?
- an_ko 10y ago
  Could you expand on your ideas for improvement?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  This is part of an overarching goal to do just that. Find people who have been marginalized due to past prejudices and give them the tools needed to thrive. Programs that help disabled people find and maintain jobs tend to be significantly less expensive than the old technique of just warehousing them.
nils-m-holm 10y ago
The German company "auticon" is employing autistic consultants exclusively (medical diagnosis required). Recently, I happened to talk to one of their in-house coaches, and from what I've heard, they seem to make quite an effort to create a work environment in which people with autism can thrive. http://auticon.de http://auticon.de - not affiliated.
ecmendenhall 10y ago
I work with a manual QA team who explicitly recruit testers on the autism spectrum. It's a great mission and they've done great work: http://www.businessinsider.com/startup-hires-people-on-autism-spectrum-2014-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/startup-hires-people-on-autis...
morgante 10y ago
> The current estimate is one in 68—or one in 42 among boys. Does anyone know where these numbers come from? It's much higher than I would have expected.

101 points by the_duck 10y ago

>Firms that set out to recruit autistic workers, such as Walgreen’s, a big pharmacy chain, find them just as productive as their peers. I did not know that Walgreen’s does that.

DiabloD3 10y ago
Sadly, they do it for their own benefit. It ticks boxes they need to tick for Federal law and tax reasons. Do not think they do this out of the kindness of their heart.
- tehwebguy 10y ago
  So the legislation achieved the desired effect?
  - DiabloD3 10y ago
    Yes, but the legislators did it for their own personal benefit, not out of the kindness of their own hearts. It's self-serving narcissism the whole way down.
    - afarrell 10y ago
      Is it not a wonderful thing when incentives are properly aligned? > narcissism Is there actual narcissism here rather than mundane following of incentives?
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      So fucking what? Why does anyone care?
- minikites 10y ago
  The means justify the ends in this case, I think.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  > Sadly, they do it for their own benefit. Around here a consulting company has specialised in this (you don't get an interview unless you have an autism spectrum diagnosis) and last I heard it wasn't at all sad: Some autistic people with correct skills were paid good money to do things they really liked well like iron out rare bugs in financial services etc. So not only to fill some quota and not taken advantage of. Oh, and said company made good money IIRC.
  - DiabloD3 10y ago
    The context was Walgreens. Some companies are smart enough to hire high functioning autists to hammer down hard to nail bugs. Most aren't.
    - reitanqild 10y ago
      The only part I tried to nuance was that "for their own benefit" doesn't always mean pure evil.
  - watmough 10y ago
    I have a great job with a large information services company troubleshooting large expensive complicated software and large expensive complicated data. It's a laugh. Innit.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Which matters more: that they do something right, or that they do it for the right reasons? Or: Which matters more to you, that they help people, or that their hearts are pure?
- koluft 10y ago
  Let me introduce you to the market, where self interested parties exchange goods and services for mutual benefit, increasing society's wealth.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Sounds like federal law is working!
- morgante 10y ago
  I donate a substantial portion of my salary to charity. My primary reason for doing so is because I derive utility from the feeling of contributing to the collective good of humanity. Does that make my good acts and charitable contributions somehow less valuable? Moreover, the entire point of such tax incentives is to offset the additional difficulty and cost of employing challenging employees.

6stringmerc 10y ago

>A debate rages about when and how to include autistic children in mainstream classes. Oh does this ever bring up a whole bag full of unpleasant childhood memories. I get that it's difficult for those with disabilities to function in 'normal' settings - I've got a physical handicap that is obvious from time to time (but hidden otherwise). In turn I never sought out activities for which I was an incorrect fit - you know, hockey, wrestling, soccer - they weren't going to change the sport to make it easier for me to play, nor should I expect them to. We are not all equal. If there's a way to solve the mentioned debate, I think it will still take another 40 years for us to figure it out. We can't even take care of Gifted and Talented students with any systemic, national and local support, to fulfill their potential. If we're talking "beautiful minds" going to waste then, honestly, I think we should start with this end of the spectrum. This article is, by and large, a plea for help and paints an extensively rosy and joyous picture of employing a person with the mentioned handicap. After half of my lifetime + change working in hourly or professional jobs, I did not particularly share the same optimism. Good help is hard to find, and that's before even considering "making little accommodations" for potentially disruptive conditions. I'm just not quite so optimistic, but would love to see society figure a lot of this stratified talent capitalization out sooner rather than later.

flatline 10y ago
I think you raise some good points, but I don't really know what it's like working with autistic individuals. People working hourly jobs present a wide variety of staffing problems. They don't show up for their shifts on a whim because they had something better to do, or they had an emergency or are sick and don't call in or find someone to cover. People lose their tempers at difficult customers, they stand around talking or playing on their phones instead of working the line, they step out on unauthorized breaks, etc. etc. I'm sure autistic individuals will have some of these problems, and some unique ones, but I suspect they are free of some others. If someone is living in a controlled environment they are less likely to have scheduling difficulties or a busy social life that interferes with work, for example. Some will be completely unfazed by any sort of conflict or confrontation and will go on doing their best regardless. On the whole, I bet a lot of them are actually exemplary employees that simply require a different but no more onerous set of accommodations than a "normal" employee.

pepijndevos 10y ago

> The range of consequences is also wide. At one end, the autism of a computer scientist may be barely noticeable; at the other, a quarter of autistic children do not speak. This makes me both laugh and cry.

cwbrandsma 10y ago
Ya, I'm a computer scientist with Aspergers (part of the Autism spectrum), one app that I wrote was for non-verbal autistic kids to allow them to speak via an IPad (OneVoice). I can't imagine having to deal with that.
paulmd 10y ago
It makes intuitive sense that there's a bias towards mild autism/Aspergers in high-skill computer scientists. Most would probably say that their "education" began long before any kind of formal schooling in the topic. It takes a certain kind of child to stay inside and poke at computers all day instead of going outside and doing something social. And in general, the hyper-focus of mild autism is exactly the kind of thing that drives people to become highly proficient in a technical topic. And on the flip side, severe autism is a nightmare. Although modern society doesn't really do them any favors - historically there were lots of repetitive tasks that needed doing, a person with fairly severe autism could be perfectly fine working in a bakery or blacksmithing or something. Nowadays we really have two kinds of jobs - high skilled, for which we expect people to sit through a lot of formal education, and service jobs, which are highly social jobs usually involving "emotional labor". Neither of those is very suitable for someone with severe autism.
- navait 10y ago
  The article notes that Walgreen's (exclusively service jobs) has found their autisitc employees are as productive as normal ones. Do you think that they are not employing people with severe autism?
- morgante 10y ago
  > It takes a certain kind of child to stay inside and poke at computers all day instead of going outside and doing something social. a) Why do you assume that working on computers at a young age necessarily implies social impairment? I've been working on different ideas (particularly games and businesses) with friends since I was 12. b) Many sports also require hyper-focus to excel at a young age. If you're willing to use that as a criterion for autism, why aren't exceptional athletes who spend hours a day shooting hoops alone considered autistic?

KON_Air 10y ago

>one in 42 boys...38 in S.Korea Are we calling every socially awkward kid autistic or did we, as humanity, finally "done did" the genepool?

maldusiecle 10y ago
Leaving aside the tastelessness of phrasing the question this way, you may be underestimating the prevalence of mental health disorders in general. This is the NIMH's page on the prevalence of schizophrenia in the general population, for instance: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/schizophrenia.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/schizop... It sounds like the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders is a bit over double that, but as the article notes, that includes "functional" autists whose symptoms may be hardly noticeable to those around them.
- hyperpape 10y ago
  This is the point I was going to make. Lifetime incidence of mood disorders appears to be over 10% as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mood_disorder#Epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mood_disorder#Epidemiology. Since the rate of autism diagnosis has increased, I'd also like to hear more about the predictive accuracy of some of those statistics. When you read that only 50% of autistic children in the US graduate high school, you have to read that in the context of rapidly increasing diagnosis. Does that mean that the kids that are currently being diagnosed still have only a 50% chance of graduating?
- KON_Air 10y ago
  Let me rephrase it, are we diagnosing these disorders wrongly or are we heading towards a human population which has more people with disorders then not? Because 1 in 38 or 42 are scary numbers.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    If the consequence is an effective remedy, what's bad about recognizing certain behavioral tendencies? It doesn't have to be the case that population genetics are the thing driving the change.

the-dude 10y ago

Dutch software agency specialised in testing, employing autists only: http://specialisterren.nl/socialenterprise/introductie.html http://specialisterren.nl/socialenterprise/introductie.html [dutch]

djrobstep 10y ago

I do wish people would stop romanticizing autism with phrases like "beautiful minds". From personal experience, I can tell you that there is nothing too beautiful about growing up with a brother who never stopped throwing tantrums like a toddler, whose intelligence never developed beyond about three years old, and who without the right medication won't stop hitting his own forehead and barking like a dog.

brador 10y ago
Autism is a spectrum. This beautiful minds piece is likely referring to controlled autism, where you get the special power of deep thought and mindless work ethic without the tantrums part.
- koluft 10y ago
  It's still deeply tacky empty euphemism. Do non-autistic people have ugly minds?
Kenji 10y ago
I agree with you 100%. Tbh I think there are two kinds of autism. 'Real' autism, like your brother has, or people who cannot speak, etc. This kind seems to be much rarer, but a tragedy for everyone involved. I read an article (linked here on HN but I can't find it anymore) about someone taking care of such an autistic person and it is heartbreaking. The other kind I would call 'newest fad' autism that people who are a bit socially awkward label themselves with, and pride themselves with their 'beautiful mind' and their intelligence. Bonus points: They don't have to improve themselves and their social skills because it's a mental health thing and out of their control. The catalogues of mental disorders (like DSM) say a lot about a society.
- koluft 10y ago
  You shouldn't spout off about medical topics you are uninformed about.
- dghf 10y ago

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

There's a disturbing trend emerging that I really don't like, and it's not the conventional "autistic people will not make good workers" argument. In fact, it's something of an inverse: the expectation that every autistic person you hire is going to be an idiot-savant that will have unparalleled focus and attention to detail once you hire them. Autistic people are still people. They make mistakes. They're not robots. I'm glad we've moved away from blacklisting them, but we're getting to the point of fetishizing them instead. Both directions are still dehumanizing.

forgetsusername 10y ago
>the expectation that every autistic person People seem to accept stereotypes when they're positive.
- serge2k 10y ago
  Are they even that positive? There always seems to be this underlying "yeah they are freaks, but you can take advantage of their weird behaviour".

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

skynatnet 10y ago

5 years reading fist post. Has anyone ever thought of not putting so much effort on so called education. Many of tease beautiful minds are able to do things without the academics that others go though to become Qualified in. Where as when you try to force them to go though school they are unable to adapt to that completely unrelated medium of learning. Me personaly I dropped out of High school on my 6th year because I was unable to get past 9th grade English. Never got though collage never got my GED, and not due to a lack of trying. I am now in my 3rd engineering job not in title but in the work I preform. 1st structural engineer, 2nd Mechanical engineer, and now Systems engineer. I am not going to try to clam to be a genius but I do find myself ecelling above some of the engineers who delegate there projects to me. There are so many fields out there where these people not just the autistic can learn to do just by doing. The only reason they are stuck flipping burgers is because we have this preconception that you can not learn without a certificate form a institution of Higher education. FYI Sorry For the bad spelling I reviewed this for 30 min, and fixed everything I could find.

kwhitefoot 10y ago
> Sorry For the bad spelling I reviewed this for 30 min, and fixed everything I could find. But a spelling checker, such as the one built in to Firefox, would have found them all as you typed. Why is it that almost no one uses them?
- skynatnet 10y ago
  Used it, but somethings just I couldn't find the right spelling for.
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  Most of the spelling errors in their post were 'wrong word' errors, aka the [Cupertino effect][0]. A spell checker would not have found those. It's possible they were also relying on auto-completion, which increases this type of error. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupertino_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupertino_effect
luxpir 10y ago

grillvogel 10y ago

those are more people that could be working for corporations! we must right this wrong!

kwhitefoot 10y ago

How about just not squandering the potential of people?

an_ko 10y ago
Could you expand on your ideas for improvement?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Sanddancer 10y ago
This is part of an overarching goal to do just that. Find people who have been marginalized due to past prejudices and give them the tools needed to thrive. Programs that help disabled people find and maintain jobs tend to be significantly less expensive than the old technique of just warehousing them.

nils-m-holm 10y ago

The German company "auticon" is employing autistic consultants exclusively (medical diagnosis required). Recently, I happened to talk to one of their in-house coaches, and from what I've heard, they seem to make quite an effort to create a work environment in which people with autism can thrive. http://auticon.de http://auticon.de - not affiliated.

ecmendenhall 10y ago

I work with a manual QA team who explicitly recruit testers on the autism spectrum. It's a great mission and they've done great work: http://www.businessinsider.com/startup-hires-people-on-autism-spectrum-2014-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/startup-hires-people-on-autis...

morgante 10y ago

> The current estimate is one in 68—or one in 42 among boys. Does anyone know where these numbers come from? It's much higher than I would have expected.