I worked for a brief time at a small place where the next-cubicle team had an autistic female member who seemed gifted, outspoken, bit quirky and allistic (I le

I worked for a brief time at a small place where the next-cubicle team had an autistic female member who seemed gifted, outspoken, bit quirky and allistic (I learned that word from the post). The first time we met she didn't say hello but directly asked me a technical question which led to an interesting mental debugging session of a production issue she was facing. A few months later she outed herself as being autistic, gave a series of public talks and blogged about her condition and experience. The company was a bit heavy on the woke side, so they rode her public engagements mercilessly which accentuated her behaviour. It seemed to me that the attention made her think that she was expected to live up to the autistic stereotype. The situation became so bad that at some point she would refuse handshakes, repeating "autistic here, autistic here!" in a panic attack, real or imagined. I'm not even sure what my point here is, it was just a weird experience for which I wasn't prepared. Disclaimer: everything I wrote is subjective and biased. I'm omitting dilutants like "I think" or "could" for legibility. Factual statements are to be understood as subjective impressions. Edit: spelling