Thorkil Sonne: Recruit Autistics(wired.com)

17 pointsby edw51917 anni fa9 comments

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist_sonne

4 comments

jeff1817 anni fa

One of my pet peeves is articles that idolize autism like this. Most people with autism are severely developmentally delayed. Autistic savants that you often hear about in the media are extremely rare.

"As a general view, they have excellent memory and strong attention to detail. They are persistent and good at following structures and routines."

Bullshit. Anyone who actually works with autistic people would cringe at that line.

It's like making an unqualified statement "amputees are the best runners" because a small handful use those awesome prosthetics to run super fast.

biohacker4217 anni fa

Articles like this is as good as it gets from Wired. To be fair, that's not worse then you'd get from almost any other publication. But crap is still crap. And Wired is kinda crappy even when it comes to their alleged core competency - tech. And it is total crap on any other subject.

Yet we keep seeing Wired articles ever higher on HN, ever more often. At least for now the comments rebuking them are good.

Devilboy17 anni fa

Well obviously he's not hiring people at the extreme end of the autism spectrum - and he has actual data to back up his statements so I don't see why you should criticize him by taking one or two statements out of context like that.

jeff1817 anni fa

I didn't take it out of context. The entire article puts autism on a pedestal.

KevinMS17 anni fa

"As a general view, they have excellent memory and strong attention to detail. They are persistent and good at following structures and routines," he says. In other words, they're born software engineers."

Wrong, completely totally backwards!

Good software engineers need to be good at communicating. They need to be good writers. It also helps if they have terrible memories, because if they forget easily then they are forced to write code thats easy for them to follow and understand days or years later, and consequently the same for the rest of us working with them.

dasil00317 anni fa

This also made me cringe. The thing that drove me to programming is how much I hate routine. All these traits are strengths of computers which we then program so we don't have to do those repetitive things ourselves. I suppose to the laymen writers at Wired us software engineers are just extensions of the computers we are seated at.

iens17 anni fa

They don't write software, they test it.

They type in endless amounts of test data, and manually test all sorts of applications.

GiraffeNecktie17 anni fa

There are some people who would send your typical HR bunny screaming from the interview in panic, yet would perform very well if you could just lock them in a room and push food and energy drinks under the door. Take my father-in-law (please!!), the Asperger's poster child. Here's a guy who can fix any kind of mechanical or electrical device (making his own parts and tools if necessary) and can explain in horrifically painful detail how just about everything in the universe works, but talks and talks and talks (mostly about himself) from the moment he wakes up till the moment he falls asleep. A great guy in many ways. A genius even. But a complete failure (and a real nuisance) in social interactions. In the right setting he'd be a high value employee, in the wrong setting he could destroy an organization.

Devilboy17 anni fa

I'd love to work in an environment where my personality (or lack thereof :p ) is not seen as problem that needs fixing. Currently I'm forced to work in an open-plan environment with no privacy, no noise barriers, nothing stopping random people from interrupting me. It's a disaster for me. I need a quiet space free from people looking over my shoulder and I can do amazing things. Instead I get lectured on punctuality and 'teamwork' by our MD. Rage.