
Dispelling myths about the autistic programmer - Red_Tarsius
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/276428/Dispelling_some_myths_about_the_autistic_wunderkind_programmer.php
======
bjourne
With all the discrimination and bullying going around, I think it is good that
someone has something nice to say about autistic programmers. Like Ian Murdock
who founded Debian and recently committed suicide had Asperger's Syndrome.
Despite obvious impressive technical skills, life probably wasn't easy for
him.

Most companies favor hiring average programmers that fit the mold over "weird
people" even if they are amazing at their work. If Microsoft is doing the
opposite and targets autistic programmers, then good for them! I see no reason
to complain about that.

And for the record, the "myth" he is dispelling is a common misunderstanding
of statistics. I can say that almost all rapists are men. Obviously that
doesn't mean that all men are rapists, it means that the probability that a
given rapist is a man is very high. It also doesn't mean that females can't be
rapists.

In the same way, I can say that a "genius programmer" likely is on the
autistic spectrum, without saying that all autists are geniuses and without
saying that you can't be a genius programmer without being an autist.

~~~
jackmott
"Most companies favor hiring average programmers that fit the mold over "weird
people" even if they are amazing at their work."

Do they? At my company we half-seriously joke when programmers are too
socially well adjusted, that _they_ won't fit in. We prefer a bit of spergy.

I don't have any idea what 'most' companies think, or if large companies even
have consistent trends in their own thinking.

~~~
nommm-nommm
What's a "spergy"?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
"Sperg" is a derogatory term for people with Aspergers. Jackmott clearly means
well, but it's odd to use it in this context.

~~~
solotronics
I self identify as a sperg lord. The term is hilarious to me at least (wait..
not realizing something is offensive is a sign of Aspergers?)

~~~
PhasmaFelis
There's several things I self-identify as that I wouldn't want a stranger
calling me.

------
mads
I dont know if autistic people are better programmers, but what I feel that -
from 20 years making software - is that people with these personality traits
that fit into the spectrum of autism and who happen to end up in the software
industry are extremely vulnerable to being exploited by people with certain
other personality traits.

Put a narcissistic (or whatever you want to call this type of people - maybe
sociopathic? I am not a psychologist) CEO or a manager in a room with autistic
software developers and you will could have some great things churned out, but
there are probably going to be a couple of heart attacks and maybe worse, if
you are unlucky. For sure, there will be some very unhappy people.

~~~
nibs
We call this dynamic the nerd vs. nerd exploiter dynamic. Jobs and Woz or
Allen and Gates are good examples.

~~~
erichocean
Ironically, it's Jobs that has all of the typical Aspy traits, not Woz—right
down to deciding on one set of clothes and sticking to it.

If you actually read an S. Jobs bio and are familiar with Aspy traits, he's a
textbook case.

What confuses people (if they are confused) is that most people with Aspergers
are not artistic, don't like speaking in front of crowds, or running teams.

However, it makes a ton of sense if you understand what the underlying brain
differences are. People with Aspergers can be superior at artistic and group
endeavors because they can easily ignore human quirks and are able to instead
focus on the archetypal aspects. Certainly Jobs did.

A handful of extremely successful film writer/directors are also on the
spectrum, and I suspect, for similar reasons. All, like Jobs, are considered
to be "assholes" by some, and absolutely loved by others.

~~~
nibs
I have read SJobs bio(s). My father, brother and fiance have Aspergers. My
father and brother especially relate more to Woz and are scared of people like
Jobs. I relate more to Jobs than Woz, and I am more OCPD. If Jobs is
Aspergers, he is also very manic spectrum. My father/brother are strictly
unipolar. Here is more on the OCPD thing if you are curious:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/06/business_success_from_mental_illness_steve_jobs_henry_heinz_and_est_e_lauder.html)

~~~
erichocean
Oh for sure, I didn't mean to imply that Jobs was _only_ on the spectrum.

I work in film (in addition to tech) and know a lot of people on the spectrum
that I think people who only meet autistic programmers would have difficulty
recognizing.

Even in TFA, one of the descriptors is:

> _They generally marry the first girl they date_

Maybe, but in my experience, that's only one specific kind of person with
Aspergers (who I agree definitely exists). However, at least in film and other
artistic/people disciplines, that wouldn't describe the "typical" person on
the spectrum—I think you mainly see that type in tech/engineering circles. (To
be fair, that's what the article is focused on.)

In my experience, at least in the fields I work in, people with Aspergers are
"sigmas" (to use PUA terminology for a moment) and have no difficulty
whatsoever dating, meeting people, etc. Certainly they don't do it the
"normal" way, but they're very successful.

UDPATE: Thinking about it further, most people on the spectrum are not
intuitive feelers (in the Myers Briggs taxonomy), they're sensory thinkers.
When you find an Aspie who is an intuitive feeler, like Jobs, it's certainly
confusing to people: if he's an Aspie, how can he get up in front of crowds?
Lead a team? Negotiate? Etc. Unpossible.

It's really just "normals" applying their own biases on what a normal person
would/could do, without understanding what makes those on the
spectrum—especially those that are more emotional/intuitive—tick.

~~~
nibs
Completely agree with the Sigma thing. I found the PUA stuff (my interest was
more evo pysch) so frustratingly irrelevant and misguided until I read about
the Sigma reproductive model. I think the difference (clinically speaking)
between narcissists and aspergers is the need for admiration. No one I know
with aspergers wants any attention, basically ever. I think Jobs is more of an
INFJ narcissist. As opposed to more borderline INTJ (Aspergers).

~~~
erichocean
Thanks for the comments, I don't find many people who are into this stuff AND
don't have cartoonish views of people on the spectrum.

I wanted to share this next bit because you seem like you might appreciate it.
At least it took _me_ awhile to figure it out. :)

In my experience, Myers Briggs is most helpful if you think of all eight
attributes as independent capabilities each person can have, and then rate
each on a scale, say, from 1-10. From each pairing, the one with the highest
value determines their type, e.g. INFJ.

So, I would agree that Jobs is an INFJ (let's say that all are "10s"), but
that doesn't mean that his ESTP traits are all pegged at zero. Instead, you
might say Jobs has E=5, S=2, T=8, and P=6 in addition to I=10, N=10, F=10,
J=11.

Mostly what the dominant Myers Briggs type gets you is a way to determine a
person's typical problem solving pattern. NFs feel (and get excited) about a
solution first, then convince (think) themselves why it's right.

OTOH My wife is an ENTP, and she thinks things through first and _then_ gets
excited—the opposite of me. If I wasn't aware of the underlying dynamics, I'd
get super frustrated every time I brought her some exciting thing only to get
calm analysis and no excitement (at least, at first).

~~~
nibs
Interesting. That is actually quite helpful. My fiance is INFJ and Aspergers,
and I am ENTJ and not Aspergers. She gets excited and blurts things out, where
as my excitement builds as my mental model of something does.

------
bitwize
As they say, if you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic
person. It's not just that autistics are all different the same way allistics
are all different; compared to the breadth of the entire autism spectrum,
_allistics are all pretty much the same_. You never know what you're going to
get when picking from the autistic box of chocolates. Maybe a savant, maybe a
person of average intelligence but remarkable coping skills, maybe a person
with not much of either.

As for "autistic programmers": for those of us with the skill to program,
programming is a much better career choice than most, but even that is
changing. Since the internet bubble of the mid-late 90s, allistic people have
taken up programming in droves. The promise of easy money and prestige made
programming a much more palatable career choice for allistics than it had been
in the past, and now they've pretty much taken over. Programming is now a
social activity. Cubicles are a luxury; the boss insists that seating
everybody at long crowded tables with enough room for one laptop per seat,
where everybody can hear everybody else's noisy conversations, makes the
workplace more "collaborative". You are expected to be interruptible at any
moment. Meetings are more frequent. ("Stand-up meetings" have had the effect
of increasing the frequency of the weekly meeting to daily, while the original
promise that they be short is falling by the wayside.) Some shops have
enshrined the doctrine of Extreme Programming to such an extent that you are
not permitted to get any work done without another person very close at hand,
watching every move you make. Articles for employees state, in a very as-it-
should-be manner, that the relevant criterion for determining who gets hired,
commended, or promoted is not technical prowess but rather "soft skills",
which bears out in reality as the number of tech startups founded by bros and
hipsters who only hire "cultural fits" (autistics don't really fit in in any
culture) increases. And books and seminars tell the boss that the person who
prefers long stretches of working alone because that is how they get their
best thinking done, is a danger and a threat to the organization and must be
eliminated.

So in the modern workplace, hiring an autistic is indeed a very poor choice.
Unless you can tailor the environment to their needs -- which approaches
impossible unless you know them personally -- you're probably better off
hiring the "cultural fit".

~~~
wobbleblob
I like your comment about cubicles being a luxury. I don't know why they
became a funny cliche of office horror. You don't have to be autistic to be
driven mad by the constant interruptions enforced by office culture. When they
tried to make pair programming mandatory, most of us decided to ignore it.
Can't ignore the daily standup though. It just means I will not be able to
concentrate until 10:30 every day. If that's the way they want it, so be it

~~~
kosma
> You don't have to be autistic to be driven mad by the constant interruptions
> enforced by office culture.

There's a difference between finding something completely pointless and stupid
(an exaggerated "this is driving me mad!") and completely losing your ability
to concentrate ("my productivity is 10% of what it was when I had a quiet room
for myself"). I get so aggressive, hopeless and sad when overstimulated that I
had to quit the job because open space was too much to handle.

> Can't ignore the daily standup though. It just means I will not be able to
> concentrate until 10:30 every day.

I purposely miss the standup meetings and just mail my report in instead. No
one has complained, as my work still gets done and I still communicate with
the team (although by Slack, not in person).

------
stared
IMHO it is the problem of trying to make things black and white: either being
diseases (or worse: used as an insult) or a super-power (or: an excuse).
Usually it's a combination of special skills, and special needs (and things
which are just different). As with almost every other psychological
"deviation" from the norm. Hence "neurodiversity" not "neurosuperiority", or
the traditional medical distinction between "healthy" and "ill" (and nothing
beyond).

See e.g. [http://crastina.se/autistic-traits-science-and-the-nerd-
ster...](http://crastina.se/autistic-traits-science-and-the-nerd-stereotype),
especially its message:

> Yet, it is good to be aware of the neurodiversity and that other people can
> have different styles of thinking than ours, with their pros and cons. It’s
> not a challenge – it’s an opportunity to see word through various lenses!
> (As long as we respect other’s right to be different.)

~~~
lordleft
This is a healthy attitude I think. Like anything, autism comes with trade-
offs.

~~~
EliRivers
Trade-offs. The negatives of autism are pretty clear; what are the advantages?

~~~
wbl
I actually like flapping my hands, nerding out about things, and being me. I
wouldn't want to be someone different, even if that different person had an
easier time buying pants, and wouldn't have gotten bullied as much in
elementary school. Oh, and I read at rates beyond what is commonly cited as
the physical limit, after teaching myself to read before kindergarden.

Some people with very real impairments are against being cured, while some
people with mild ones want a cure. And yes, being able to have an opinion and
not constantly wanting to rip your skin off means you've avoided some bad
outcomes: they probably want a cure.

~~~
EliRivers
I can understand why one would enjoy the release of hand-flapping if one needs
it, but I can't really class it as a benefit of being autistic.

Likewise others things that you enjoy; other people enjoy other things. Having
preferences isn't some kind of benefit of autism.

------
salgernon
People with Asperger's are much more likely to have suicidal thoughts and act
upon them.

    
    
      http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(14)70248-2/abstract
    

An obsessive personality can lead to an individual working 80 hour weeks - not
by choice, but by default. They literally don't know any better and are not
necessarily competent to make a conscious decision not to this.

I've worked with two suicides, both of which would have scored as Asperger's
(a diagnosis in retrospect) and two others that completely broke down from the
stress of 80 hour a week software engineering jobs. They didn't need to be
taken advantage of, they needed an environment that didn't demand they live
under that kind of pressure, and an organization that was in tune to the
consequences of applying this kind of pressure to non-neurotypical employees.

I wonder if program's like Microsofts deal with this. These are special needs
employees - and its sick to read that business people want to exploit
someone's disability to further their own careers.

The social skills issue is often not for want of social connection, but a
frustrating inability to be able to participate. Again, this is a disability,
not a choice. The social isolation can easily turn to depression and an
unintentional withdrawal from society with co-morbid substance abuse problems.
Someone else in this discussion mentioned the recent medical examiner findings
about Ian Murdock's suicide.

~~~
kosma
> An obsessive personality can lead to an individual working 80 hour weeks -
> not by choice, but by default. They literally don't know any better and are
> not necessarily competent to make a conscious decision not to this.

It gets even worse. Once someone with Asperger's "clicks" into a specific
routine, it becomes a pretty challenging endeavor to change it without some
external influence. Same with bad eating/sleeping habits. I'm currently in the
"works overtime out of habits" phase and it's extremely hard to snap out of
it.

------
jesserayadkins2
I was diagnosed with Aspergers early on in life. For a long time, I tried to
ignore it. But there's parts that you can't. It's difficult to make friends
when you can't read people's intentions or read between the lines. I don't
have a great interest in hanging out with people because I often don't feel
like I fit in.

In my teenage years, it meant that I was a loner who went home at the end of a
school days, played games by myself, and that was it. In my adult years, it's
been much more difficult.

My background is a complete mess. I got a degree in Computer Networking
because programming wasn't available, and then later went on to work retail
for several years. In the meantime, I kept working on programming projects.

On the programming side, I have a 5 year project where I built everything
myself, and a handful of 1 year projects, most of which the source code has
been lost for.

Trying to get jobs in the industry is a joke. Take a look at the above, and
you'll see someone who isn't normal, isn't average. I send resumes off and I
get "We don't think you'll be a good fit" or ignored. That right there is what
hurts the most. I could accept getting interviews and failing them, but being
outright rejected before being given a chance, that flat hurts.

I've got a lot of traits that come from Aspergers too. I don't have an
interest in much besides computers, so I often spend entire days at home and
coding or thinking about coding problems. Doesn't bother me to spend 12+ hours
in a day just coding.

Horrible at eye contact, and don't know why. Monotone voice? Check. Sometimes
I'll mean to say one word and say another without realizing it, or focus on
someone's meaning in one part and miss the others. I don't have that rage
though. Used to when I was younger. But the computer doesn't care if you get
mad, and it's better to just let logic take over.

I've still got my fingers crossed that I'll find a place that will give me a
chance. But if I can't find that, then I'll shrug my shoulders and go back to
working retail.

~~~
digler999
can you (have you) put your projects on github ? maybe if you put 5+ non-
trivial projects on there people can see your breadth and depth of skills.

~~~
jesserayadkins2
I have a github account established, and it has a couple of projects on it.
One, a telnet client, is missing. I keep forgetting to add that in. I've been
meaning to, once the language is more established, to spread the packages out
into different repositories.

I know I should have more of a variety there, the trouble thus far has been
the 'what'.

~~~
jospoortvliet
Contribute to a project with one or more healthy companies behind it. From
Linux to Libreoffice or Nextcloud - good chance they will hire you.

------
lucio
What's the myth that's being "dispelled"?

I see the "Alex St. John's infamous PowerPoint" image, pasted in the article,
as more valuable than the entire article. St John is harsh an direct, and
seems to contain more objective true than the entire article.

Maybe another trait related to high-IQ+autism is a profound disregard for
political correctness. Is St.John diagnosed with autism?

Maybe the part of the brain dedicated to social-political "skills", in an
Aspergers-diagnosed brain is really dedicated to abstraction processing or
pattern recognition?

Of course that the lacking of social-political skill frees your mind to
concentrate long hours on complex abstractions. You shun the "social" world,
and then concentrate on the mathematical or algorithmic world, where the
"entities" have interesting and also predictable behaviour.

Thanks for pointing me to the St.John article, it looks like a good read.

~~~
Tobold
The funny thing is, all of my friends with autism are fiercely political. If
you asked me, I'd probably say people with autism were MORE political than
those without. Of course, none of my friends with autism work in software.

~~~
kosma
Are we talking about the same kind of politics? Because, from my experience,
autistics are more likely to hold strong views and discuss the "big" politics
(as in, people ruling the country) while allistics are more into the practical
"small" politics (like, say, typical office drama).

~~~
Tobold
Uh... that kind of "politics". I can't speak to that, I stay out of office
drama, so I don't know who's instigating xD

------
optimuspaul
I think some of the best programmers are very collaborative and not at all
introverted. It's just stupid to generalize like that though. When I'm putting
together teams I find I get the best results when I have a mix of nut jobs
from across the spectrum of programmer personalities... except brogrammers,
hate those guys ;)

~~~
rjbwork
I don't mind collaborating, and indeed enjoy it. But don't force it upon me by
an oppressive open office environment. I need quiet and an environment free
from distraction and other people to really dig into my code and produce my
best work.

Living in a constant state of interruptibility, observation, and distraction
will not get good code out of me, and indeed many other devs. I, like many
others, can make do, but why pay us so much money if you're going to put us in
an environment guaranteed to make us produce sub-par code and products? Seems
like a poor use of capital.

~~~
bpyne
Everything you said plus having a developer assigned to several concurrent
projects. Jumping between different project setups, PM's, software designs,
etc. is mentally taxing to an extreme. It leads me to make more mental
mistakes. Rapid task switching is not conducive to quality, detailed work.

------
alphonsegaston
The point at issue doesn't seem to me to be whether autism is conducive to
programming ability, but that someone is essentially arguing that a disability
is a great means by which to take advantage of someone in a notoriously
exploitative industry.

------
throw890
I think article is mixing up cause and effect. It is not that autistic people
are good developers, but software development is one of a few good jobs for
autistic people. There is zero barrier to enter, study materials are free and
it offers great flexibility.

Most developers would love to do some other jobs. But the amount of office
politics, backstabbing etc is not possible to handle for some people.

------
thedz
IMO, whether or not it's true that certain traits of autism make for better
programmers is actually irrelevant -- it's not useful for that kind of
generalization.

Not all high functioning autistics become great programmers, just as not all
introverts are necessarily great programmers. And saying that "all"
programmers share one or more of those things just becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy where you disenfranchise people who don't think they "fit".

------
afarrell
> "The internet has kind of killed my 'autistic pride,' so to speak," says
> Gillmer. "The constant use of it as an insult makes me want to hide it, so I
> tend to not bring it up unless it feels like I'm not communicating
> properly."

I cannot for the life of me understand why I see "aspie" or "spergy" used as
insults on both reddit and tumblr.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
As far as anti/pro SJWs are concerned, I've mostly seen it as an insult by pro
SJWs against white nerdy autistic gamergate basement dwellers.EDIT: which
annoys me, since I'm more on the Pro SJW side by default.

~~~
bitwize
Queasy nerds make SJWs uncomfortable because they are perceived as much more
likely to display shockingly inappropriate sexual behavior. Since women have
the right not to fear for their lives or chastity, the reasoning goes, they
have the right not to have any contact with queasy nerds, and so they must be
expunged from the places in society where they nest (computing, gaming) in
order to create "safe spaces" for women.

This is also a subtext in the upcoming 2016 _Ghostbusters_ film: the villain
is a queasy nerd who summons ghosts to Manhattan as revenge for getting the
mockery and rejection he deserved; so it is up to the Empowered Womyn
Ghostbusters to exorcise him so NYC can become a safe space again.

------
Paul_S
"work them "too hard" it's good for them and the only way they get seasoned"

Oh, games industry, never change. I'm sure people will think this is satire -
except the ones who worked in gamedev.

------
c3534l
We've done such a good job with autism awareness that at this point I'm
honestly not even sure that people know what autism actually is. Our idea of
"autism" has become less Temple Grandin and more the nerds from Revenge of the
Nerds. So, yeah. You should probably want to hire nerds as programmers.

------
kstenerud
I fail to see the fallacy in the St John's presentation. The Gamasutra
editorial seems to widen the discussion to ALL autistics, which is not what
the original presentation was talking about. It then goes on to say that not
all Autistics match the "holy grail". Well no shit, Sherlock.

~~~
pyrale
There is no fallacy, just a high level of bias towards a specific type of
workforce.

Also St John's attitude is quite telling of his manipulative tendencies.
That's not someone I would want to work with.

~~~
EliRivers
You're telling me. "Can't make eye contact". What is going on inside this
guy's head that his employees being unable to make eye contact is an advantage
to him?

~~~
jackmott
He is just a sociopath that fortunately is into making money instead of
cutting people up.

------
justin_vanw
As someone who perfectly fits the description of an "Aspergers Programmer" I
think this is all spot on. Maybe people don't like it, but I will take some
introverted geeks who love to code over all other possible applicants.

------
bluedino
Brahm Cohen (BitTorrent inventor) has asperger's or autism doesn't he?

------
maerF0x0
I'm not autistic, i just dont like you.

------
gravypod
The problem is that the criteria for autism is very loose. If you restricted
your search to only low functioning autistic savants then it might be harder
to find someone like this.

But that doesn't mean there isn't an autistic savant who is a great
programmer/computer scientist.

In the end this is a game for monkeys and typewriters.

------
intopieces
Given the rate that autism is showing up nowadays, it seems like spectrum
disorders are over-diagnosed. People who were once just odd-balls or non-
social are now being lumped in with people who have moderate to severe issues,
and it's to the detriment of both groups.

~~~
kosma
As someone on the spectrum I don't see it as a detriment. Despite a seemingly
vast difference between a high-functioning engineer and a low-functioning
child, the strategies for improving the quality of life are pretty much the
same. Routine, sensory stuff, avoiding meltdowns, recognizing emotions, all
that stuff - it's as real for a brilliant but eccentric programmer as it's
real for a non-verbal kid with no particular talents.

Because in the end, it's about improving the quality of life.

I'm on the "eccentric" end of spectrum; for 27 years I've been told that
nothing is wrong with me, that I'm just "too smart". I can tell you I was
pretty close to joining the 27 club; the piling problems ended up being too
much to handle. I came upon the description of Asperger's purely by accident;
no mental health professional would even suspect it because I "seemed normal".
Finally being able to understand why I'm losing my ability to speak once in a
while or getting violent whenever overstimulated wasn't just a relief. It was
a life-saver.

If I didn't realize it's ASD, ignorance and stereotypes could have killed me.

PS. Yes, some people will claim they are "a little bit autistic" out of
ignorance or attention seeking. Others will lump clinical cases with weirdos.
Both don't change the validity of a proper diagnosis.

~~~
intopieces
I'm glad to hear you disagree! My concern is that people who might be
borderline-or-not-really-spectrum (if that makes sense) will cause people to
look at ASD individuals and say, 'well _he_ gets along alright, you're
obviously just not trying hard enough.' Despite our best efforts, mental
health is a tough topic to educate people on. I still hear 'she's just
sulking' to refer to people with severe depression, and it makes me quite sad.

------
nikdaheratik
Found a link to this paper yesterday on the topic and it's very interesting:
[http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2016.00...](http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2016.00300/full).
Not close to the final word on Autism, but it does a good job of showing how
both the causes, and the way the syndrome plays out in individuals, are much
more complicated than media portrayals.

------
gbersac
I still believe that programmers are closer to the autist personae type than
the average.

Doesn't mean that being a real autist mean you are a good programmer.

------
endzone
some real abuse of psychological terminology here. most clinically autistic
people don't hold down jobs, certainly not professional roles, even if they
have a high IQ

~~~
kosma
This used to be a really damaging stereotype and a de facto standpoint of
psychology (and psychiatry) for years. I've personally met experts who
wouldn't diagnose ASD in people who managed to get married or get a job. I've
personally been dismissed because I "look normal" (whatever that means). I've
been given several bogus diagnoses because ASD has been repeatedly ruled out
based on nothing but presumptions and prejudices.

There are no family, job, or looks criteria in DSM-IV. I know ASD folks who
hold jobs, have families and are more than successful in life. From the
outside, they seem pretty normal, maybe a bit quirky or eccentric. From the
inside? The way they arranged their lives to work around the social/sensory
problems is something to applaud.

The important part? They don't "look" autistic, so most laypeople don't
correlate autism with "a possibility for a successful life". Just because you
don't see it doesn't mean it's not there.

------
xrikt
> States that people on the autism spectrum are not more suitable for
> engineering type jobs than people without it.

> Proceeds to turn institution that works for people with autism into a game
> development company staffed by people with autism

------
cloudjacker
Dispelling the myth that the autistic programmer is much better than more
balanced people.

Not dispelling the myth about their existence or character traits, because we
all work with at least one!

------
thesimpsons1022
autistic programmers can be great but they can also be a liability. I am not
saying this to be mean, it is just my experience. We had a situation once
where an autistic person repeatedly did extremely inappropriate things both to
people within our company and outside. It got to the point that it wasn't
clear whether it was a result of his autism or if he wanted the company to
fire him so he could sue for discrimination.

------
dschiptsov
Tell that to guys like Igor Sysoev, who outperformed averages by an order of
magnitude due to autisticly intense attention to details.

Hint: a mild form of autism, what casuals call Asperger, given that one
survived childhood constant bullying and confusion about its causes, is
actually good to have.

~~~
adrusi
_Maybe_ its neutral or slightly better in adulthood, but only if the autism
isn't accompanied by other problems that frequently accompany autism, such as
language disabilities and anxiety.

~~~
dschiptsov
Asperger is nothing like Forrest Gump or the Rainman characters, BTW.

It is like Holden Caulfield or Travis the Taxi Driver, or the Deer Hunter, or
Rocky the Bum.

~~~
Squarel
Or like the people who are unable to have jobs, even programming ones, despite
being very skilled at it, because their aspergers causes them so many problems
that they cannot work in an environment with other people or to deadlines, so,
instead they are stuck unemployed, living at home, and terrified about what
happens when their parents die and how they will cope, while people make fun
of them for being basement dwellers.

~~~
dschiptsov
Hell is other people. And yes, it is difficult to hold a programmer job in a
circus, among self-obsessed, cosplaying sophisticated individualty, bearded
and tattooed clowns.

But there are many niches for those who can't stand narcissistic cosplaying
mediocrity in charge - craftsmanship of any kind, not necessarily digital.
Making good sandwiches will do.

One could be a self-employed, paid open source contributor, a freelancer, a
subcontractor, etc. Yes, one probably will never "succeed" in one of valleys
sweatshops, but there are always other, less traveled pathways..

Again, Igor Sysoev, who have bootstrapped the project alone, according to his
tastes and preferences, and then went back into shadow, leaving all the
singing and dancing to those who liked it, is a classic example.

There is also Pirsig's book, Atlas, and a few other good ones.

