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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.
As the parent of someone with Autism and likely someone who is undiagnosed himself, I hate that group. They blame Autism on vaccines and want to find a "cure" for Autism. My son and I don't have a disease. We don't need to be cured. We need assistance in dealing with the neurotypical (non-Autistic) world. If you were to "cure" every Autistic person, you'd eliminate a lot of people looking at things differently. I'd wager that a lot of the eccentric geniuses throughout history had Autism. Imagine where we'd be without them.
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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.