6 ms·

Before I laud SAP's efforts to hire those with autism, I'd like to hear what their compensation model is like. I understand that, based on the extent of the dis

by byuu 12y ago

Before I laud SAP's efforts to hire those with autism, I'd like to hear what their compensation model is like. I understand that, based on the extent of the disability they are willing to accept, that they will incur increased managerial costs. And possibly decreased output. But I can't help but have this nagging feeling that SAP might be using them as a very cheap labor force for certain tasks that other higher-paid developers don't want to do (eg extensive bug-testing.) It might be too easy to say, "well they wouldn't be working without us, so what's wrong with minimum wage?" Perhaps I'm too cynical. On the whole, the term "autism" has always bugged me. I know that it's always painted as a spectrum, but said spectrum is so wide as to render the definition alone almost completely meaningless. A person who can't live without constant, 24/7 supervision and is unable to communicate is in an entirely different category than a person who just has trouble maintaining eye contact in a conversation and is maybe a bit too passionate about some niche interest. Increasingly, I've seen it being used as a pejorative against software developers (as this profession does indeed require extreme dedication), usually by the types of people who have zero ambition of their own. Most likely as self-validation that their apathy is normal, and it's others who have the problem. I think this really does a disservice to the people who are genuinely suffering from an actual disorder. And it also pushes people toward the lighter end of the spectrum to play up how autism is really just a different mindset and not a disorder at all. In my personal opinion, (I don't publish any manuals on mental disorders,) if you are living on your own, earn a decent salary, have friends, and otherwise appear completely normal to others in person; then I don't care if you have a bit of trouble with social cues: you're not autistic. And it's insulting if you or others refer to yourself as such. Even worse is when I see them being used as excuses. I had some issues with social graces as a teenager, so I practiced and do pretty well now. It's disgusting for someone to play off issues that they could easily address with some effort on their part. Even if it's legitimately a problem, a disorder is not an excuse to give up on trying, and just expect everyone else to tolerate you. Yes, it sucks that you have to try harder than others. Welcome to life, it's not fair. I see this same situation with regards to the obsessive-compulsive label. People who simply have a perfectly sane desire to want an organized work desk, or to wash their hands before eating, or to double-check that they locked their door often identify or are identified as having OCD. That's a joke compared to the people who live in a constant state of intense anxiety, who can get stuck for hours turning a light switch on and off hundreds of times until it "feels right", or who end up driving around the neighborhood dozens of times, terrified that they ran someone over and need to go and make sure they didn't. Let's leave the "disorder" label for people who really are disabled in a significant, life-impairing way.

tfb 12y ago
> Increasingly, I've seen it being used as a pejorative against software developers (as this profession does indeed require extreme dedication), usually by the types of people who have zero ambition of their own. Most likely as self-validation that their apathy is normal, and it's others who have the problem. I see this on almost a weekly basis. It is really disheartening and almost infuriating. I feel like this outlook only serves to reduce diversity by alienating anyone who would rather spend their time building things than "shooting the shit" with other people for the majority of their days. It also seems like it might be a relatively new phenomenon? Maybe in the future the masses will be more accepting of different approaches to social interaction (or lack thereof) and living life in general. > I think this really does a disservice to the people who are genuinely suffering from an actual disorder. And it also pushes people toward the lighter end of the spectrum to play up how autism is really just a different mindset and not a disorder at all. > Let's leave the "disorder" label for people who really are disabled in a significant, life-impairing way. Very well said!
- byuu 12y ago
  > I see this on almost a weekly basis. It is really disheartening and almost infuriating. I think it's part of the broader anti-intellectualism movement. For whatever reason, people who strive to exceed in life offend those who don't. As if we are passing judgment on them. But they're only reaching that conclusion through their own self-reflection: I certainly don't think of myself as better than others; I am in fact quite envious of them. Being able to believe in a deity would mean freeing myself over the fear of death. Being able to tolerate crowds, sports and pop-culture would mean I'd have a network of local friends to hang out and have fun with. My dedication has extreme sacrifices: I work 40-50 hours a week, only to get home and spend another 6-8 hours a day working on my pet projects. The intense frustration it causes is hardly made up for by the moments of joy when I accomplish a difficult task. I'd love to go and grab a beer and talk "approaches and tradeoffs to supporting polymorphism in shared pointers" with a group of friends. But to find anyone who understands any of that requires such vast distance that we can only communicate online. Hell, my interests are becoming so niche that it's becoming difficult for me to maintain a network of people to converse with even online. I've been struggling to write software to create a list of deltas between two binary files (think Xdelta or bsdiff) in less than O(n^2) time for years now, and can find no one who shares an interest to discuss that with. I may be an intellectual, but if I had my way, I'd much rather be a creative artist. I wish that I could play an instrument, compose a song, write a story, draw artwork, cook great food, learn a foreign language, and so on. All I can do is string together raw, digital logic. And then bash at it until it does mostly what I want. Nothing I ever write ever feels complete, nor completable. There's always something to refactor, bugs to be fixed, features to be added, mutually exclusive tradeoffs to be made. I look at all of my past work and instead of being proud of it, go, "wow, I was really quite awful back then.", knowing I'll feel the same a few years from now even. But it's what I'm good at; it's what I relate to. So it is what it is. I'm not going to lie and pretend I'm just your average guy (tall poppy syndrome), but I'm also not so vain as to think raw critical thinking is the only important metric of worth in this world, nor even a particularly key metric. Happiness is much more important: which is why disparaging others seems so anathema to me. > It also seems like it might be a relatively new phenomenon? It probably has analogies to the past; but the computing movement really is a very recent development. In my childhood, it was very rare for a middle-income family to have a single computer. Nowadays, they are almost ubiquitous. > Maybe in the future the masses will be more accepting of different approaches to social interaction (or lack thereof) and living life in general. I think so, yet I'm not sure if it'll all be for the better. All I see at restaurants anymore is people looking at their smart phones, to see what was posted on their Facebook wall. It's almost disturbing anymore when someone you don't know and haven't engaged speaks to you in public, eg at a line in a store. I also see the internet as enabling new cliques of people over broader distances. Take for instance, fetish communities such as furries. I had certainly never heard of anything like this pre-internet. Although this can be great for personal acceptance, it can also lead to more stratification, and thus isolation, of groups. For instance, the culture of Hacker News is pretty much the polar opposite of 4chan. And that just leads to the kind of derision we were abhorring above. But maybe it's not all bad. Obviously people were just as unique and individual before, they just kept it all bottled up inside. The internet is letting people come out more and be themselves. Unfortunately, a lot of those people, deep down, are secretly raging assholes.

by byuu 12y ago

tfb 12y ago

> Increasingly, I've seen it being used as a pejorative against software developers (as this profession does indeed require extreme dedication), usually by the types of people who have zero ambition of their own. Most likely as self-validation that their apathy is normal, and it's others who have the problem. I see this on almost a weekly basis. It is really disheartening and almost infuriating. I feel like this outlook only serves to reduce diversity by alienating anyone who would rather spend their time building things than "shooting the shit" with other people for the majority of their days. It also seems like it might be a relatively new phenomenon? Maybe in the future the masses will be more accepting of different approaches to social interaction (or lack thereof) and living life in general. > I think this really does a disservice to the people who are genuinely suffering from an actual disorder. And it also pushes people toward the lighter end of the spectrum to play up how autism is really just a different mindset and not a disorder at all. > Let's leave the "disorder" label for people who really are disabled in a significant, life-impairing way. Very well said!

byuu 12y ago
> I see this on almost a weekly basis. It is really disheartening and almost infuriating. I think it's part of the broader anti-intellectualism movement. For whatever reason, people who strive to exceed in life offend those who don't. As if we are passing judgment on them. But they're only reaching that conclusion through their own self-reflection: I certainly don't think of myself as better than others; I am in fact quite envious of them. Being able to believe in a deity would mean freeing myself over the fear of death. Being able to tolerate crowds, sports and pop-culture would mean I'd have a network of local friends to hang out and have fun with. My dedication has extreme sacrifices: I work 40-50 hours a week, only to get home and spend another 6-8 hours a day working on my pet projects. The intense frustration it causes is hardly made up for by the moments of joy when I accomplish a difficult task. I'd love to go and grab a beer and talk "approaches and tradeoffs to supporting polymorphism in shared pointers" with a group of friends. But to find anyone who understands any of that requires such vast distance that we can only communicate online. Hell, my interests are becoming so niche that it's becoming difficult for me to maintain a network of people to converse with even online. I've been struggling to write software to create a list of deltas between two binary files (think Xdelta or bsdiff) in less than O(n^2) time for years now, and can find no one who shares an interest to discuss that with. I may be an intellectual, but if I had my way, I'd much rather be a creative artist. I wish that I could play an instrument, compose a song, write a story, draw artwork, cook great food, learn a foreign language, and so on. All I can do is string together raw, digital logic. And then bash at it until it does mostly what I want. Nothing I ever write ever feels complete, nor completable. There's always something to refactor, bugs to be fixed, features to be added, mutually exclusive tradeoffs to be made. I look at all of my past work and instead of being proud of it, go, "wow, I was really quite awful back then.", knowing I'll feel the same a few years from now even. But it's what I'm good at; it's what I relate to. So it is what it is. I'm not going to lie and pretend I'm just your average guy (tall poppy syndrome), but I'm also not so vain as to think raw critical thinking is the only important metric of worth in this world, nor even a particularly key metric. Happiness is much more important: which is why disparaging others seems so anathema to me. > It also seems like it might be a relatively new phenomenon? It probably has analogies to the past; but the computing movement really is a very recent development. In my childhood, it was very rare for a middle-income family to have a single computer. Nowadays, they are almost ubiquitous. > Maybe in the future the masses will be more accepting of different approaches to social interaction (or lack thereof) and living life in general. I think so, yet I'm not sure if it'll all be for the better. All I see at restaurants anymore is people looking at their smart phones, to see what was posted on their Facebook wall. It's almost disturbing anymore when someone you don't know and haven't engaged speaks to you in public, eg at a line in a store. I also see the internet as enabling new cliques of people over broader distances. Take for instance, fetish communities such as furries. I had certainly never heard of anything like this pre-internet. Although this can be great for personal acceptance, it can also lead to more stratification, and thus isolation, of groups. For instance, the culture of Hacker News is pretty much the polar opposite of 4chan. And that just leads to the kind of derision we were abhorring above. But maybe it's not all bad. Obviously people were just as unique and individual before, they just kept it all bottled up inside. The internet is letting people come out more and be themselves. Unfortunately, a lot of those people, deep down, are secretly raging assholes.