
Dell Autism Hiring Program - ra7
https://jobs.dell.com/neurodiversity
======
owldimoon
Thank 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.

------
jmkd
By 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
That 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
I found Google+ to be great, but not nearly as many people used it. I'm not on
any social network anymore though.

~~~
jpindar
FYI many of the people who were an Google+ are moving to MeWe.

------
Sniffnoy
Here'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?

~~~
CSMastermind
I've encountered this type of program before. The interviews often include
tasks that traditional candidates would find boring and lots of repetition.

~~~
lelf
Example?

~~~
nvr219
[https://hireautism.org/resource-center/interviewing-your-
app...](https://hireautism.org/resource-center/interviewing-your-applicant-
with-autism)

I like the "supply questions ahead of time" \- everyone should do this!

~~~
Sniffnoy
How does this demonstrate the claim?

~~~
nvr219
i don't remember sorry

------
newnewpdro
Wow, 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-...](https://www.geek.com/news/developer-bro-alex-st-john-want-a-great-
coder-hire-someone-autistic-1652730/)

~~~
ericzawo
How 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.

~~~
odessacubbage
it 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
Here's the full context of that quote:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20170119234745/http://www.alexstj...](http://web.archive.org/web/20170119234745/http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/download/Recruiting%20Giants.pdf)

(spoiler alert, it's the first one)

------
krn
SAP has a similar program[1], which has been profiled by CBSNews[2].

[1]
[https://www.sap.com/corporate/en/company/diversity/different...](https://www.sap.com/corporate/en/company/diversity/differently-
abled.html)

[2] [https://www.cbsnews.com/video/hiring-autistic-
workers/](https://www.cbsnews.com/video/hiring-autistic-workers/)

------
wrnr
The 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
That 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
That 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.

------
merrickread
We'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.

------
EnderWT
Microsoft has a similar program. [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/diversity/inside-microsoft/c...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/diversity/inside-microsoft/cross-disability/hiring.aspx#coreui-heading-
sp7tqqo)

~~~
ThrowawayP
> _Microsoft has a similar program_

My, um, psychic powers for predicting the future tells me anybody with autism
issues or even just introversion who goes there will be penalized heavily in
the stack rankings (which they no longer formally do, but informally...) at
performance review time for lack of "visiblity" year after year and eventually
be washed out of MS as "good attrition".

~~~
m_sahaf
It might help that Microsoft has already abandoned the stack ranking
process[0].

[0] [https://hbr.org/2013/11/dont-rate-your-employees-on-a-
curve](https://hbr.org/2013/11/dont-rate-your-employees-on-a-curve)

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
It still exists for the purposes of bonus and raise distribution (“rewards”) -
and while the mandatory rank-and-yank policy has been removed, there’s still
pressure within management to eliminate lower-performers.

A huge problem with Microsoft’s employee evaluation system (“//connect”) is
the fact it’s still self-evaluation. If you’re too honest or self-critical
regardless of actual performance then you will be pseudo-ranked lower than
someone who knows how to bullshit their way through self-evaluations.

Let’s just say I learned the hard way. Being (constructively) self-critical in
self-evaluations was drilled into me in Catholic school and it actually really
helped me in university, but no-one told me it’s career self-sabotage when you
enter the workforce.

I have ASD as well.

------
BadassFractal
I'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
Imagine 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.

~~~
ThrowawayP
> _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._

In my experience, even if it is made known, people are less forgiving of non-
visible disabilities and some that interact with the disabled individual less
frequently may even forget that it exists. One may have to actively "display"
their disability, even if they'd rather appear to be as normal as possible.

~~~
CM30
Yeah, there's definitely less 'leeway'/sympathy given to those whose
disabilities are invisible/mostly invisible.

Honestly, I'd say it's probably an uncanny valley effect of sorts (as
depressing as that sounds) where those who look 'normal' but don't act it put
people on edge and arouse suspicion.

------
agranig
In 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.

------
ziroshima
Tangentially 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?

~~~
booleandilemma
Is there an objective test for autism or is it just a matter of convincing an
expert that you’re autistic?

I’m asking because, if society provides enough benefits for people “on the
spectrum” how do we prevent people from gaming the system?

When benefits are involved at all, people act funny. I’m reminded of people
misusing handicapped parking placards, for instance.

I’ve also known people with perfect vision to wear eyeglasses because they
found them fashionable.

~~~
mamcx
Exist some "light" autism (that maybe I have?) and CAPITAL Autism (that my
twin have). The second? It impair life so hard is impossible to live without
constant help.

The kind of autism most people talk, like the one that is so "good" that you
could actually have a nice Job on Dell and others, maybe is hard to diagnose.
That is the reason to say is a "spectrum"

But autism that is in the hard side of this spectrum? Is impossible to miss
it.

------
harianus
This is a great move Dell. Hope others will follow.

------
who-knows95
I'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.

------
lainon
There's also auticon - [https://auticon.com/](https://auticon.com/)

------
rcardo11
Actually [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.

------
ai_ja_nai
Inclusion has clearly gotten out of control

------
YeGoblynQueenne
A 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
Because autism is a disability. Being a woman is not a disability.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I don't understand. What does autism being a disability have to do with
special hiring practices being discriminatory or not?

------
leowoo91
Regardless this works or not, very kind of Dell.

------
jstewartmobile
Dell: Let's do something utterly self-serving and watch the plebes mistake it
for a kindness.

------
rsimmons
Hewlett-Packard also fun one from Australia, and the package that unit up to
their accounts as a service.

~~~
anoncake
I dont understand this post.

