
Microsoft seeks to recruit autistic workers - yitchelle
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32204999
======
nickhuh
I think what Microsoft is trying to say, and what the article is doing a poor
job of communicating, is that the company believes that there are some
autistic people who have much to contribute to Microsoft, but they are
currently disadvantaged by current hiring processes which rely so heavily upon
interviews. The idea of trying to find alternative ways to assess candidates
that don't rely so completely on interviews/high pressure social situations
seems laudable to me, even if in this article it was poorly expressed.

~~~
VLM
"don't rely so completely on interviews/high pressure social situations seems
laudable to me"

There is an obvious competitive advantage to any company that removes
arbitrary and unnecessary barriers, aside from whats being discussed. If
almost no jobs actually require that arbitrary barrier, the pool of applicants
on the other side of the barrier will inherently have individuals better at
the job than the pool who made it over the artificial meaningless barrier.
Given a big pond, a small random sample of pond water will always have a
smaller "biggest fish" than a larger random sample from the same pond, and if
the sample size expands to the size of the whole pond, that fisherman will get
the biggest possible fish.

The fact that this doesn't happen historically or currently despite the
obvious financial advantage, shows that hiring and general office culture is
obviously more influenced by primate dominance rituals than economic reasons.
When you throw in some additional dominance rituals to compensate or
rationalize away the reduced hazing rituals and membership rituals to "even
things up", its going to be a hellish working environment for the folks who do
get in.

Mix the above paragraph with the observation of corporate communication always
indicates the opposite of what it explicitly claims. So a company that feels
the need to say quality is job one actually prioritizes quality dead last
after production goals and profit and pretty much everything else. Or a
company that issues elaborate press releases about its diversity program
invariably actually closes management ranks to all but old white men. You can
handle an issue by "doing things" or you can dispose of it by "issue human
interest press releases" so press releases mean it was decided nothing will
actually be done. So you can assume a corporate communication of opening
hiring to autistic people actually means it was completely and utterly closed
to them and it'll remain that way but we'll talk nicely about it and issue
press releases for the human interest spin on the news. We won't hire them but
we'll talk really nicely about them instead.

So its kind of a "one step forward two steps back" story. Its actually
signalling that autistic people would be better off working anywhere else.
Which is a useful observation. And fitting in with the first paragraph, it
means MS competitors have an inherent advantage over MS in having superior
hiring policies instead of the MS strategy of instead talking about superior
hiring policies.

~~~
Mathnerd314
"corporate communication always indicates the opposite of what it explicitly
claims"

Do you have evidence for this? If Apple announces that their new iWatch with
features XYZ will go on sale, I expect the watch to go on sale and to have
features XYZ. Similarly, if a business mentions quality, then since qualities
are the "characteristics or features that someone or something has", I expect
them to focus on adding features to their product and incorporating more
jargon into their business processes.

------
Lorento
I think MS is making a good move in our current society. Popular culture isn't
mature enough that we all feel we should treat people well by default - we are
happy to abuse autistic spectrum people because they're not clearly labelled
as being a member of a disadvantaged group. We know we shouldn't abuse people
for being black, handicapped, gay, female, etc. But we can still abuse people
who don't "understand the unwritten rules of the workplace". So at least this
may benefit people who can be labelled as autistic to get protection from that
abuse and discrimination. That's going to happen at a job interview, where an
otherwise qualified candidate can be discriminated against because they
wouldn't be a "good fit for our team". Members of many other disadvantaged
groups already get some protection from this - you can't refuse to hire
someone because they're a woman and thus wouldn't be a good fit for your all-
male team, but you can refuse someone for being unable to understand complex
social interactions even when they aren't essential for performing the job.

It's not ideal however. Ideally we wouldn't ostracize someone for
misunderstanding jokes, trying unsuccessfully to mimic the likable behavior of
neurotypicals or failing to make eye contact at the right moments. But our
society is still at that level of intolerance where we need some kind of
labeling of disadvantaged people to help everyone else stop and think "Oh, I'm
not supposed to be mean to him for that, he can't help it".

------
dataker
I'm autistic and I feel disgusted by such announcement. I have worked hard,
gained a PhD and that's why I'd be recruited into one of these companies.

If Microsoft could do anything, it should just understand an autistic
perspective in the workplace and its often eccentric behavior.

~~~
cheatsheet
I'm disgusted by your disgust. I wanted a PhD more than anything, but I didn't
understand my disorder at the time, and I didn't have the care nor coping
skills I needed to get through life on top of achieving what I wanted to in
the PhD program. That was three years ago and I still cry almost every other
night or so over it, but I am living a much healthier and more understood
life, instead of every day being almost constant confusion and stress (on top
of difficult school work, being a teaching assistant and a research
assistant).

It helps when the work environment understands explicitly. I experience
heightened stress and chaotic thought patterns in overtly social situations
that ripple across months when the situations only last days or hours, and I
need to learn to engage in them very slowly at my own pace and be comfortable.

If my former school understood this instead of having my professors call me
'aspie', maybe I would have a PhD by now. The one thing I learned from this is
that I should not be forced into any situation that makes me experience
distress, and I do not care if you think it's ridiculous. I have spent far too
much of my life in difficult mental places, and I do not want to live like
that anymore, and I won't. I don't force people around me to do graduate level
math simply so they can talk to me in a language I understand.

We are not always clever and eccentric, 100% of the time. It would help if
people stopped looking at us like computers and started remembering we are
human too.

------
M8
_"...understand the 'unwritten rules' of the workplace..."_

I guess everyone would benefit from writing them down.

~~~
visakanv
The thing about unwritten rules that govern social behaviour is– even if you
write down a set of rules, a new set of unwritten rules will emerge.

~~~
M8
More importantly writing down all the unwritten rules would make the
corporation actionable.

------
ThomPete
There are already a couple of companies hiring purely autistic people as they
seem to be amazingly accomplished QA people.

~~~
dghf
Some doubtless are, but you can't really generalise. Attention to detail and
patience for, indeed enjoyment of, repetitive tasks may be traits widely found
in people with autism, but they're not universal: surprisingly little is.

~~~
ThomPete
Generalizations aren't universal claims.

------
nervousvarun
Someone obviously didn't read:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_Dark](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_Dark)

------
NicoJuicy
The autism advantage (from 2012):
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/the-autism-
advant...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/the-autism-
advantage.html?_r=0)

------
goldenkey
What about those of us with asspergers? We need jobs too...

~~~
dtech
Aspergers is an outdated diagnosis that nowadays falls under Autism Spectrum
Disorder (ASD).

~~~
thret
I really liked Parenthood though. I think it did a lot for ASD.

------
tudorw
[http://specialisterne.com/](http://specialisterne.com/)

~~~
Rafert
Or a Dutch company: [http://specialisterren.nl/](http://specialisterren.nl/)

------
nickysielicki
What they said:

> "Each individual is different, some have an amazing ability to retain
> information, think at a level of detail and depth or excel in math or code."

What they mean:

> Each autist we're interested in is exactly the same, they have an amazing
> ability to be really fucking nerdy and make computers do magic shit. But
> they're hard to deal with, so we also need to make this a PR move.

Seriously. I'm very uncomfortable with this article. There are probably people
on the autism spectrum already working at all the big tech places. Why single
them out like this?

Newsflash: Not all people with autism are genius programmers. Not all genius
programmers are people with autism. Treat everyone with respect. Treat
everyone as an equal human being. This article doesn't seem to get that.

> "just 15% of adults with autism in the UK are in full-time employment."

No shit. That's because for every 100 individuals with autism, ~55 are
considered mentally disabled (IQ<70) and only ~3 of them turn out to be
geniuses (IQ>130). [1] Coupled with social challenges, this means very few
individuals with autism are able to be independent into adulthood. [2]

This article irritates me.

[1]:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21272389](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21272389)

[2]:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14982237](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14982237)

~~~
gunter
I'm diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum, with an IQ of > 140, and
early in my career I worked at Microsoft.

This is a PR stunt, but I'm comfortable with it if it helps align people's
optics to the idea that autistic traits can indeed be harnessed into a super
valuable role in society. You'd be surprised how many people don't think
that's the case.

~~~
emodendroket
Maybe this is too much to ask but it would be nice if the choices weren't
"simpleton unable to function" or "Rainman."

~~~
Perdition
I know what you mean. I have a friend who is autistic and he is probably about
average in intelligence.

That is a bad place to be for someone with autism as the behavioral issues
means he has trouble finding work, but he can't get any government support
because he isn't disabled enough.

------
littletimmy
What a repulsive idea.

Just hire people based on how well they can do a job. You don't have to
pigeonhole people into one of your shitty mental categories and _then_ hire
them.

~~~
Lorento
I used to hold the same opinion about positive discrimination for women and
ethnic minorities, but now I realize that it's necessary to overcome people's
instinctive prejudice. Most companies don't hire on how well you can do the
job, they hire on how well they like you, and that encompasses all their
prejudices. People can't just switch off their prejudice but if they're
conscious of what it is, they can at least try to look past it.

------
mathgeek
So, honest question: how is this not discrimination?

Not that I feel discriminated against personally, but it seems like they'd be
opening themselves up to a HUGE legal liability. You can't hire someone based
on their gender identity or the color of their skin, but you can hire based on
a physical difference in the brain?

~~~
emodendroket
"People who do not have a disability" are not a protected class, while people
with disabilities are. This seems intuitive enough to me...

~~~
mathgeek
The problem with this statement is that you need to define "a disability." You
will immediately have to deal with the problem of classifying clinical
depression, for example.

~~~
jacalata
You know this has already been done, and clinical depression is indeed
considered a disabling condition, right? Check out the ADA and SSDI.

~~~
mathgeek
Yes, I'm aware of it. I was making sure that the respondant was, as it's the
classic example of why you can't simply say "has a disability" as a way of
classifying individuals. Plenty of people have disabilities that you cannot
easily identify, let alone require them to disclose.

------
ArekDymalski
I've got only one issue with this article. It should be published in 2016 and
state something like "After 1-year pilot program, MS announced that their
recruitment process has been redesigned to prevent discrimination against
autism and resulted in hiring 1000 new employees which could be otherwise
rejected. It all started in 2015 with a small 10 person trial ..."

In case of a company with 128k employees, a pilot program for 10 people just
isn't news-worthy.

