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Dell Autism Hiring Program
- owldimoon 8y agoThank you for sharing this. As someone with ASD who feels disadvantaged by traditional interviewing, it's comforting to see more examples of companies expanding their approach. I live in Canada, so this doesn't seem to be available to me. But, I still have a year or so until I graduate, so I think I still have time to sort out my plans.
- harianus 8y agoThis is a great move Dell. Hope others will follow.
- newnewpdro 8y agoWow, this strikes me as unbelievable. How things have changed since the industry was up in arms over Alex St. John's "Recruiting Giants" PDF [1] where he explicitly called out the "holy grail" employee: Be on the look out for the holy-grail... the undiscovered Asperger's engineer. (usually found on open source forums) * They have no social skills * They generally marry the first girl they date * Can't make eye contact * Resume and educational background is a mess... because they have no social skills * They work like machines, don't engage in politics, don't develop attitudes and never change jobs [1] https://www.geek.com/news/developer-bro-alex-st-john-want-a-great-coder-hire-someone-autistic-1652730/ https://www.geek.com/news/developer-bro-alex-st-john-want-a-...
- lugg 8y agoPeople are generally more forgiving when you perceive your employees' disability in a positive light instead of viewing their disabilities as something to exploit. It's a subtle difference, but the first one encourages/enables the employee to function in spite of their disability or perhaps one day overcome the shortcomings, or simply work in a way / environment where it becomes irrelevant. (Software development already gets us 90% of the way there) The other, well, that one doesn't really give a shit as long as you're productive, i.e. it will probably still exclude a large portion of autists and never really help anything. Hell it probably expects to never give them upward mobility with that last remark either.
- anth_anm 8y ago> People are generally more forgiving when you perceive your employees' disability in a positive light instead of viewing their disabilities as something to exploit. Is that what this is? I guess it's no more exploitative than employing anyone else.
- daniel_iversen 8y ago> I guess it's no more exploitative than employing anyone else. I think it’s way more exploitative because you’re not leveraging a person’s (by average definition) “strengths” to your/the company’s benefits, you’re using their weaknesses (and weaknesses are relative, but I’d say the list of traits above most people will probably think might complicate or hinder the persons long term success or happiness - in fact it could easily lead to one sided exploitation).
- black-tea 8y agoThat list contained both weaknesses (no social skills) and strengths (doesn't engage in politics).
- tapland 8y agoWeakness: No social skills Strength: Gets trampled cause no social skills Sounds pretty horrible.
- rtpg 8y agoDoesn’t engage in politics (in that list) means that they will become a pawn for other people’s politics. Show me an office without politics and I’ll show you one with unlimited vacation time
- black-tea 8y agoNot necessarily. Like anything it could be good or bad in certain situations. I interpret it as meaning the person will be driven to do what's right according to logic and merit as opposed to politics. It's another way of saying they are a disagreeable employee which are known to be very valuable to companies.
- ericzawo 8y agoHow could anyone stand to work for someone who so swiftly limits the breadth and depth of a person via their mannerisms such as this? it's dehumanizing, full stop.
- selimthegrim 8y agoHis daughter disowned him.
- odessacubbage 8y agoit kinda came across as a tongue-in-cheek shitpost to me. is this guy known to be an unironically terrible individual or was he just taking the piss out of the semi-exploitative & work fetishising culture of the industry?
- ezrast 8y agoHere's the full context of that quote: http://web.archive.org/web/20170119234745/http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20170119234745/http://www.alexstj... (spoiler alert, it's the first one)
- anoncake 8y agoIronically shitposting about autists is a great idea. Theyre very good at recognizing irony.
- danbolt 8y agoI could understand saying something like this in private with an audience that understands the satire, but it strikes me as foolhardy to write/publish something like this as there’s no way of reading the room. If it’s a joke, it’s not smart in its delivery since anyone can assume it’s sincere. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” — Kurt Vonnegut [1] [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/379912-we-are-what-we-pretend-to-be-so-we-must https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/379912-we-are-what-we-prete...
- ndnxhs 8y agoWow, I used to work with someone who ticked every one of those boxes. Incredibly knowledgeable and spent all of their free time reading spec documents and programming. Unfortunately they could be emotionally unstable at times which was had to work around.
- chess93 8y agoIts not really relevant but the list seems to not actually describe Asbergers but some other collection of symptoms that results from being socially deprived. (However, this probably matches up with popular conception of Asbergers individuals.) I think the "key" is finding people who deal with their problems by diving deep in to technical tasks and becoming absorbed in minutiae. An unnaturally small interest set combined with a lack of interest in people.
- newnewpdro 8y agoAre you deliberately misspelling Asperger's in the South Park vernacular [1] to be offensive or something, or is it just a mistake? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ass_Burgers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ass_Burgers
- matt-snider 8y agoWouldn't they have then spelled it as you've written it and not halfway between? Seems to be a typo to me
- newnewpdro 8y agoIt's probably a mistake, but South Park has rendered that misspelling/mispronunciation into somewhat of a pejorative.
- chess93 8y agoSorry I was up all night and didn't even consider that I was spelling it wrong. My track pad is broken and so I can't right click to spell check. (I am waiting to start my new job to get a new laptop.)
- black-tea 8y agoThis perfectly describes a few of my friends.
- pvg 8y agoThis is about an employer making their employment process more accessible, the Alex St. John thing was mostly about the opposite and traded in (to put it charitably) dumb stereotypes. You're probably misreading something if you see this Dell program as a sign of some industry-wide adoption of Alex St. John's views.
- gaspoweredcat 8y agowell i hit 4 of 5 of those points (missing only no 2) so its not far wrong
- EnderWT 8y agoMicrosoft has a similar program. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/inside-microsoft/cross-disability/hiring.aspx#coreui-heading-sp7tqqo https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/inside-microsoft/c...
- zerr 8y agoI wonder if they sponsor visas as well.
- justinclift 8y agoUgh. It's a part of their disabilities website, even featuring "an engineer who has Asperger's syndrome". Wow. :(
- zerr 8y agoYou can officially get the document of having a "limited ability" with an Autism diagnosis in many countries.
- justinclift 8y agoInteresting. It's pretty insulting (of those countries, and Microsoft in this instance). Maybe that's just my viewpoint though. ;)
- alimhaq 8y agoJust curious, why exactly is it insulting? Would you not classify it as a disability? Why else would they have an autism hiring program if they weren't hindered in some way?
- justinclift 8y ago> Would you not classify it as a disability? Why would you classify Aspergers as a disability? It's like saying Superman's (yeah, fiction, but it's to highlight the point) x-ray vision is a disability, just because it's something most people don't have. X-ray vision is clearly not a disability. Aspergers isn't either.
- ReturnToVoid 8y agoI wish I was born in the first-world. You people seem to be having a lot of fun over there. In my (exploited by first-world for resources) country autists get bullied relentlessly and put to under-equipped mental asylums when they eventually break down. Can you see the hypocrisy? I see it everyday.
- danso 8y agoNo, what's the hypocrisy? It's a tragedy that mental health services and awareness are inadequate.
- ReturnToVoid 8y agoHypocrisy is that your biggest national export is suffering. Less there, more here.
- dang 8y agoI'm sorry for your suffering, but please don't take HN threads on tangents like this, so we don't have to ban you again. This is in the guidelines: "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ReturnToVoid 8y agoIf you have an alternative outlet to suggest then I'm all ears.
- IntelMiner 8y agoThe perceived validity of your opinions does not automatically mean they're welcome in unrelated places
- 8y ago
- BadassFractal 8y agoI'm curious to see what's going to happen when an employee, secretly part of a neurodiversity hiring program, says something that makes someone uncomfortable and that gets reported to HR. Will someone's comfort levels take precedence over the desire to employ someone with difficulty with social cues? Or will we visibly "tag" employees who are neurodiversity hires so that you know that if they somehow offend you, that might be because they're on a different wavelength compared to you, so you should give them a pass? Do neurodiversity hires get to keep their status secret, or will the company need to disclose it? On one hand, you don't want to fire them, that will look terrible for the company, but on the other hand, you don't want people to feel uncomfortable either, which creates legal vulnerabilities down the line. Curious how that conundrum gets solved.
- jedberg 8y agoImagine someone with an obvious physical disability. Like being in a wheelchair. They can't really hide that, and we (hopefully) make accommodations for them. People are generally pretty great if you know the accommodations necessary. And if they hit you with their wheelchair by accident, you probably will feel bad for getting in their way instead of reporting them to HR for workplace violence. So I imagine if you have a hidden disability, if you need accommodation, it's in your best interest for people to know that, so they can accommodate you. I can understand hiding it in the outside world because you never know how people will react, but at the workplace, people will figure it out, and if they treat you poorly because of it, then they get the boot, so it's probably a win all around to make it known.
- BadassFractal 8y agoIt's a little more nuanced than that, and it does depend on the condition in question. Autism in SV has a reasonably benign reputation, but other mental "abnormalities" not so much. An SO of many years had bipolar disorder, and it helped me get a deep appreciation for the amount of game theory that goes into disclosing one's condition to others, especially at work. Most of the "reaction" from people doesn't have to be explicit, nobody is going to call you "the crazy girl" to your face at work. BUT, given the reputation and stigma that something like bipolar disorder has, you're never sure how exactly you're implicitly (as in, implicit bias) being treated differently by your peers. Did your company pass on giving you a certain role because they're not sure you can handle the pressure with your condition? Are peers and managers looking at your behavior through the lens of someone who is not in control of their mental states? How many years will it take for you to establish a reputation of someone who's reliable and fight against the natural inclination of those around you to distrust your equanimity? Are people going to interpret your shortcomings through the lens of "she must be off her meds"? Will someone be able to use your condition as leverage over you in a competitive environment and how do you prove discrimination against you in that case?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- merrickread 8y agoWe're only beginning to really understand Autism, Asperger Syndrome, and countless other cognitive states. So programs of this nature are wonderful to see — they create the opportunity to learn from and work with people who think differently than the general population.
- agranig 8y agoIn Europe, there is http://specialisterne.com http://specialisterne.com helping to hire people with Asperger‘s. Pretty good experience so far, can certainly recommend. Edit: actually seems they’re on pretty much all continents.
- f2f 8y agofinally, the weaponized autism of 4chan can go mainstream! /s
- odessacubbage 8y agoi mean honestly after the hwndu spectacle, it's a surprise the nsa didn't start a shitposter hiring drive >https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/He_Will_Not_Divide_Us#March_9.2C_2017:_He_Will_Not_Divide_Us_3:_With_a_Vengeance https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/He_Will_Not_Divide_Us#March...
- leowoo91 8y agoRegardless this works or not, very kind of Dell.
- rsimmons 8y agoHewlett-Packard also fun one from Australia, and the package that unit up to their accounts as a service.
- anoncake 8y agoI dont understand this post.
- krn 8y agoSAP has a similar program[1], which has been profiled by CBSNews[2]. [1] https://www.sap.com/corporate/en/company/diversity/differently-abled.html https://www.sap.com/corporate/en/company/diversity/different... [2] https://www.cbsnews.com/video/hiring-autistic-workers/ https://www.cbsnews.com/video/hiring-autistic-workers/
- wrnr 8y agoThe way our industry treats neuro-diversity is autistic. I am very dyslexic, the other day I misspelled the word TAB as TAP when implementing an event listener in a codebase +100K lines. It took me half a day just to find this bug. At LastCo I heard the project manager and scrum master joke behind my back "we'll just have the autist with OCD do the programming" while referring to me. In their mind lacking a "theory of mind" also includes not having any peripheral hearing.
- zachruss92 8y agoThat is just sad. Even if you weren’t dyslexic everyone messes up by misspelling a word and spending much more time than they should debugging. As a manager I would spend my time trying to figure out how we can help you reduce the likelihood of this happening again and not make fun of you for a mistake that everyone makes. As an example, my first hire was an immigrant from Africa. He can speak English, but his spelling is not ideal - and because English is not his first language his naming structure for things like variable and classes needs improvement. To help with this I implemented specific standards for how naming should work and gave him a ton of concrete examples of how I would name something in a number of scenarios. Now that he’s been working for me for a while, I only actually have to give feedback on naming conventions maybe once a week. Edit: spelling.
- close04 8y agoThat kind of people will always find something to jab at. If it's not this it's that. They're very willing to throw such insults as "innocent jokes" but when they're at the wrong end of one they never find it acceptable and will complain till the end of time.
- ChuckNorris89 8y agoThat joke was a low blow form the PM & scrum master and not remotely funny. You'd think that as working adults they would know better. We always have cheeky banter in our office, but never behind one's back or on account of their difficulties.
- digestives 8y ago
- Sniffnoy 8y agoHere's what I'm wondering: if they think this separate process is more reliable than traditional interviewing... why keep it a separate process rather than using it for everyone?
- rtpg 8y agoProbably a cost issue? Cost being not just money but time involvement required
- CSMastermind 8y agoI've encountered this type of program before. The interviews often include tasks that traditional candidates would find boring and lots of repetition.
- lelf 8y agoExample?
- nvr219 8y agohttps://hireautism.org/resource-center/interviewing-your-applicant-with-autism https://hireautism.org/resource-center/interviewing-your-app... I like the "supply questions ahead of time" - everyone should do this!
- wolfgke 8y ago> The interviews often include tasks that traditional candidates would find boring and lots of repetition. Intuitively this sounds like many programming tasks (I still like programming, but admit that many tasks in programming are quite repetitive) - thus good questions for neurotypical candidates, too.
- lainon 8y agoThere's also auticon - https://auticon.com/ https://auticon.com/
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y agoA recent article posted on HN offering funding to women to study programming sparked a flamewar, with many users claiming that special hiring policies for women in the tech industry discriminate against men. The current article is about a special hiring policy for autistic persons in Dell. Luckily there doesn't seem to be a flamewar this time around. Of course, I wonder why. To be honest, I don't understand why so many users were upset about the former article but not this one. It just seems dissonant to me. I'm quite confident that the present comment will not start a new flamewar, btw.
- Shmebulock 8y agoBecause autism is a disability. Being a woman is not a disability.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y agoI don't understand. What does autism being a disability have to do with special hiring practices being discriminatory or not?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sabas123 8y agoWhile in a perfect world does not need to be one, couldn't you say that by just the way a large chunk of the tech community (not necessarily devs but also gamers ect) reacts to them they on average have more bad social experiences just like austic people do? (For totally different reasons ofcourse)
- mariuolo 8y ago> Of course, I wonder why. To be honest, I don't understand why so many users were upset about the former article but not this one. It just seems dissonant to me. Only a minority subscribes to the neurodiversity idea. Autism is considered a disability by most people, therefore this is not controversial. Quotas for women can be, because we are taught they're equal to men.
- jmkd 8y agoBy maintaining >50% engineering staff for so long, Google has inadvertently created a fascinating study of the interplay between two spectrums: autistic and psychopathic. More on the similarities and differences here, namely aspects related to empathy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826592/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826592/ It seems of no coincidence that so many of Google's social products have misfired - due in part to this interplay - influenced by the empathic dissonance found in managers from both sales and engineering departments. I suppose it is another way of saying that Google (insert other SV giants here) employees are not only demographically dissimilar to the customers they serve, but that they cannot hope to represent them faithfully due to this empathic dissonance at senior decision-making levels. Perhaps this is part of the fate that befalls most large and successful companies.
- IshKebab 8y agoThat has nothing to do with why Google+ failed. Or Allo. It's because everyone was already using Facebook and WhatsApp and those have extreme network effects, and Google+/Allo were basically the same thing just owned by a different company. You don't need to invoke autism to explain it.
- 4thaccount 8y agoI found Google+ to be great, but not nearly as many people used it. I'm not on any social network anymore though.
- jpindar 8y agoFYI many of the people who were an Google+ are moving to MeWe.
- jmkd 8y agoI'm not suggesting it as a primary cause, I'm offering it as an explanatory factor that is not coincidental. The network effects statement is both true and relatively unimportant, considering prior social and chat networks had periods of extreme dominance before Facebook and Whatsapp, and that others will in future. All despite network effects. Apologies if I came across somehow invoking autism as an explanation for business failure. I certainly applaud initiatives such as Dell's, and we can easily find examples of brilliantly successful products and services created by those on the spectrum. I mean to suggest that psychographic profile differences between the large tech workforce and their potential customers may be enough to contribute to product failure. This is particularly so if the products require empathic understanding, a known problematic for both the autistic and psychopathic spectrums.
- zeroauth 8y agospeaking of Dell and Autism can Dell please acknowledge their Bugcrowd bounty program at all?? It's dead...
- rcardo11 8y agoActually http://lacasadecarlota.com/ http://lacasadecarlota.com/ only hires peolple with some kind of autism. They are doing it from Medellin, Colombia and are one of the big players in the creative industry here.
- ziroshima 8y agoTangentially related, as someone who is almost certainly "on the spectrum", but has never been diagnosed, is there any benefit to having this diagnosis? Is there any point in seeing someone about it?
- MagicPropmaker 8y agoWell, it can help if you want a job at Dell.
- mcguire 8y agoYou know all those people who worry about sexual harassment overreactions? A diagnosis might help in those situations.
- soberhoff 8y agoYou're saying you should get diagnosed as a form of legal protection in case you accidentally have a weird interaction with the other sex?
- gizmo686 8y agoNot just legal. People are much more forgiving of innapropriatw behaviour if they can point to a disability outside of your control; as opposed to you just being a jerk. No one complain about a blind man staring at them if they know they are blind.
- Pharmakon 8y agoNot just legal. People are much more forgiving of innapropriatw behaviour if they can point to a disability outside of your control; as opposed to you just being a jerk. No one complain about a blind man staring at them if they know they are blind. Because they are literally not seeing you. If someone pinches your ass, but has autism they still pinched your ass. If someone is so disabled that they assault or harass people, that is a problem that won’t necessarily be forgiven. Instead it might lead to claims that the person is so disabled they require a more structured environment. ...And of course if it turns out that you lied about your disability or its role in your behavior, everyone will want your head on a pike.
- jstewartmobile 8y agoDell: Let's do something utterly self-serving and watch the plebes mistake it for a kindness.
- openloop 8y agoSo good.
- ai_ja_nai 8y agoInclusion has clearly gotten out of control
- who-knows95 8y agoI'm struggling ATM to explain to my employer that my ADHD makes me prone to being distracted by talking, and in a open office plan it's a everyday issue, we are allowed to listen to music, but my manager seems to be trying to catch me out, pretty demotivating.
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