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Workers On Autism Spectrum Finding Careers In Software Testing
rjmarvin writes According to Autism Speaks, about 85% of people who have autism in the United States are currently unemployed or underemployed, but a social enterprise organization called Meticulon is training autistic individuals for highly skilled jobs in software testing. According to Meticulon, autistic people often possess sharp memory and pattern matching skills as well as attention to detail, making them ideal candidates for software testing jobs. Each year's crop of autistic students or Meticulon Consultants is tested and evaluated to develop their MindMap, a unique profile of skills and ideal work environment ultimately used to find these trained software testers an ideal job.
Or being an Apple consumer.
I got autisim, give job me please?
And on a related note, the interpersonal skills and social awareness of many IT workers place them squarely within the Autism spectrum.
Exploiting the vulnerable.
But to some degree, I guess that describes all jobs.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
If you want real info on Autism, ignore autism speaks and listen to autistic people.
Folks on the autism spectrum may well be better at testing than folks who aren't.
But they may also find the repetitive or tedious parts of testing less painful than folks who aren't.
I know software testing is a big field, encompassing a wide range of activities, and that every job has its monotonous and unrewarding parts. But, from what I've seen -- working with SW development, working with testers, working with kids (and maybe some adults) on the spectrum -- the things that "most of us" find monotonous and tedious are frequently rewarding and reassuring for them.
To the extent that this is true, it's a terrific win/win/win scenario. Companies get people particularly well-suited for the job. People well-suited for the job get work that they enjoy. People not well-suited for the job don't have to stick with drudgery because "nobody likes to do it but somebody has to".
ISTR a very similar story on /. regarding ASD and s/w QA from a few years ago.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I wonder if they work cheaper than H1Bs.
The hard part is finding what that "thing" is and being able to integrate it into your life in a beneficial way.
As much as I sympathize with those a bit higher than average on the autism spectrum disorder scale, I know that they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a dialog box, a set of command line parameters, and please, please don't let them choose the names of anything. Regular programmers who can't bring themselves to use the word "filter" are bad enough.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I have spent some time in software testing. Making sure the Primary Flight Computers of the Boeing 777 worked as expected for example.
So, you start from the Software Requirements Specification a pile of paper two meters high if you print it out. Then you start designing and writing tests. You have to understand what the system should do and what it should not do. Your tests should be designed to check the system does everything it is designed to do and find out what it does when pushed out of its limits. Etc, etc.
This is a very long and intensive lot of work and there will be more lines of code in the tests than the code you are testing.
All in all it requires the same skills as designing and writing the code to the specs in the first place.
I fail to see how one would target the suffers of autism to testing as opposed to writing the code itself.
The expression "MindMap" already exists and it means something else.
Not that aspieloontards would ever grok that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
IMHO, automated tests work much better and can replace a good portion (if not all) of all needed human tests if management would figure out that they have value.
Management has long looked away from such auto-test robots because they can't be talked down to nor considered an FTE that can be managed to help out annual evaluations.
In an unrelated issue, in an interview with Rain Man (Raymond Babbitt), an auto-test robot costs about $100...
Workers On Autism Spectrum...
Everyone is on the autism spectrum. That's why they call it a spectrum.
Alternative post: No thanks, I'll wait for the Autism Amiga.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
This reminds me of the SciFi novel "Speed of Dark" by Elizabeth Moon. Highly recommended.
I wouldn't necessarily say we're better suited, but rather that we're predisposed toward it. It greatly depends on the autistic traits that the individual has, along with their intelligence, whether they're good at it or not. As one who is autistic spectrum, software testing is easy for me, I've even gotten into software development because I could reverse engineer parts of most programs into pseudo-code based on what I saw the program doing.
That being said, to my knowledge, one cannot really put that they're autistic on their resume if they have any hope of hiding it (as i do) lest they be rejected from the job for it (unless that's illegal, which i don't think it is). This would change if a company stated that it was explicitly looking for those who are Autistic spectrum.
Elizabeth Moon. Someone's apparently been reading it.
Good book, by the way.
Referring to the following article, SAP has done this since April of 2014. My understanding is the program has been successful for both the company and the employees.
I have close friends who have an autistic child, and programs like these give them hope. I admire companies that follow Sun Tzu's philosophy that all people can be useful if you look for their strengths.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
And I hate everything to do with the office environment: the social dynamics and back biting grow really tiresome. I found highly satisfying work as a long haul truck driver. My boss is often at least 500 miles away although he is cool, I can take a nap during the day, and I can listen to audio books. Best of all, no one to bug me. I never thought for a second that I would ever find such a great career. I came from IT and it's in the rear view mirror.
.. And this seems to be news every few months.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
That charity does NOT have the best intentions in the world and in no way speaks for me, they are in it for the money, nothing more.
They are pro cure / pro eugenics and wish to develop a pre natal test to wipe autistic/aspie people out.
We are not broken, we do not need fixing. We most certainly do not need eliminating with such vile technology.
If you wish to learn about Autism you can try these sites.
http://www.wrongplanet.net/ - largest autistic forum on the internet
http://www.kupo.be/ - irc web chat for the above (chat.freenode.net #wrongplanet in your irc client)
http://autismfriendsnetwork.bi... - forum for those who are against these pro cure ideologies. (successor to aspies for freedom)
I know that this is off topic but why does underemployment have to be seen as such a negative thing. I am on the spectrum, I have a masters degree in Information Systems, and I drive a truck. I love my job! I don't consider it being underemployed at all. I have precious solitude, books on tape, the ability to take a nap during the day, and a boss who I communicate over text message. The office requires some really strong social skills and savvy personalities. Forget all of that noise and stress. I'm far happier and more successful as a truck driver than I ever was administering windows and unix systems. I gave up trying to get any kind of accommodation from a workplace, instead I chose a career to suite my temperament and interests. The bottom line is that society places too much emphasis on a very saccharine, one dimensional definition of success and happiness. I now see success and happiness as holding down a job I like and living below my means. If I could do my professional live over, I never would've gone to college - I would've gone right to tractor trailer training school. Instead, I got caught up in society's expectation for me to make it big in some bullshit white collar gig and lead a miserable daily life. Yeah sure, I don't make high five figure salary anymore but no amount of toys that that money could buy me gave me any happiness whatsoever. This is just my 0.02 cents but I feel a sense of freedom in the past six months that I've never felt in my adult, professional life. Choose a career based on your temperament, aptitude, and interests - not on how much money you can make or what society expects of you.
Makes for easy job interviews as well. Find out where the pain is, talk a lot about the issues they're encountering, and you give people the impression you are the solution to their pain.
Getting to the point where you're allowed to talk to someone who even has the pain is the problem.
This doesn't surprise me. Some of the HFA people I've known take naturally to this kind of detail-oriented work that might seem tedious to other people.
I wonder how much of a market there is for high quality software testers. Based on what I've seen, software vendors care a lot about time-to-market, but not so much about software quality.
The ones that do care about quality don't test much beyond functional tests, and the QA folks they pay to break their software are marginalized.
There's a simple survey to take that tells you if your answers correspond to an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Reading the questions gives you an idea of what ASDs are about, at least for people who are high-functioning: http://psychology-tools.com/au...
Note that: None of this is an excuse to get you out of having to debug your code!!! 8-P
8-)