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Autism Traits Prove Valuable for Software Testing

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-got-99-problems-but-a-glitch-aint-one dept.

Back in 2009 we ran a story about a Chicago based non-profit company that trained high-functioning autistic people to be software testers. Two years later Aspiritech has grown to offer services in Belgium, Japan and Israel. Autistic debuggers are used by large clients like Oracle and Microsoft and have proven to be so good in fact that companies are now recruiting to meet demand. From the article: "Aspiritech's board of directors includes social service providers, therapists, a vocational expert and a software engineer. The nonprofit also received start-up advice and consultation from Keita Suzuki, who has co-founded a similar company, called Kaien, in Japan. Aspiritech has hired and trained seven recruits with Asperger's syndrome. These recruits have since worked on software-testing projects for smartphone and cloud-computing applications. Aspiritech now offers functional-, compatibility- and regression-testing, as well as test-case development, with experience in cloud-computing platforms including Salesforce."

6 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Properly traine software testers by geekoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    do well at software testing. That's really the story here. Autism is irreverent. This very idea is based upon a lot of wrong information about people with Autism.

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    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    1. Re:Properly traine software testers by Diamonddavej · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Autism is not irrelevant. Cognitive style of autism can be positively used in employment, once a workplace understands autism's specific strengths. The most salient features are Weak Central Coherence and Need for Routine. If workplace adapts to the autistic cognitive style, everyone will benefit. There is too much focus on deficits rather then splinter skills and cognitive strengths.

      Weak Central Coherence - means autistic people are detail obsessed, they observe smallest parts and elements of the environment, and construct the overall picture from individual parts. This is ideal for identifying and spotting anomalies in software, identifying mistakes, dealing with information. For example, it's been known for years that autistic people are far superior in locating hidden features in the Embedded Figures Test.

      Need for Routine - repetitive and otherwise boring tasks are soothing, enjoyed and relaxing. Furthermore, attention is not lost nor mistakes made, when autistic person is engaged in repetitive tasks.

  2. Re:And.... by Sarten-X · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Science only very rarely shows that some hypothesis is correct. More often, it shows that every other tested hypothesis is wrong, and that the one that's left is just the most likely.

    The "vaccines cause autism" hypothesis has been tested, and is shown to most likely be wrong. The "magic space fairy causes autism" hypothesis hasn't yet been tested, or the "too many hard sneezes while pregnant causes autism" hypothesis, nor a few hundred others. We have such a long way to go...

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    You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
  3. Pham Nuwen Would Not Approve by Flere+Imsaho · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe it's just me, but this reminds me of focus from Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky.

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    It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
  4. Re:And.... by gregfortune · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The actual statement that you make is that "x is UNLIKELY to case y" along with a degree of confidence. artor3's comment is stated as an absolute so don't bother tossing stats into the discussion. Stats deals with estimation, likelyhood, probability, forecasting, etc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_intervals and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance

    artor3's comment is also stated without citation. Not a good start :(

  5. Re:sure.. dismiss the uniqueness of aspergers by Sparx139 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Online essays don't necessarily point either way -- my text messages often span over 3 messages (diagnosed nearly 5 years ago, had plenty of time to deal with the symptoms), and I've read about a high-functioning autistic guy who's one of the best speechwriters in America (Send in the Idiots, a short book if anyone is interested). Check out some of the posts over at wrongplanet some time if you don't believe me; sitting behind a screen makes it a lot easier to communicate, as one can think about what they want to say and take their time with it. Also, there's nothing like body language to compound the difficulty of communicating.

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    Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.