Slashdot Mirror
Tech Giant SAP Seeks To Hire More Autistic Adults (cio.com)
itwbennett writes: In May 2013, SAP launched its Autism at Work program, with the goal of recruiting and hiring 'hundreds of people' with autism worldwide. Now the company is expanding the program, and is looking to have people on the autism spectrum make up 1 percent of its total workforce (~650 people) by 2020, says José Velasco, head of the Autism at Work program at SAP. So far, autistic workers fulfill all kinds of roles in IT — from software testing, data analysis, quality assurance to IT project management, graphic design, finance administration and human resources, Velasco says, and the potential for new roles is expanding rapidly.
If you're looking for peeps on the spectrum, you came to the right place.
http://archive.wired.com/wired...
http://spectrum.ieee.org/biome...
I read this as, "Let's hire first-world developers, and give them non-stop coding work for 100 hour weeks. They love this sort of thing, so it's a win-win! And, we don't even have to pay them as much since they're just working constantly!"
Actually, if it's not an exploitative relationship, why not encourage autistic hiring in development? It's a good counter-point to the recent hyper-social brogrammer style startup environment, where autistic tendencies would be frowned upon. SAP's a perfect test case for this as well -- anyone who has worked even on the periphery of an SAP implementation can attest to the insane system architecture and massive tower of layered code that's built up.
I'm "normal" but tend toward the introverted side, like most "classical" IT guys and developers. It is nice to see some effort to cater to people who aren't natural-born communicators.
This program by SAP seems to be very similar to the very successful program that has been used by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citibank, RBS, Credit Suisse etc. The only variation seems to be, SAP is seeking people with autism related disorders. The pioneering companies mentioned earlier exclusively recruited people with psychopathy, narcissistic disorders, extreme apathy and similar disorders. It has been going on for so long the top management consists entirely of people with these afflictions, often multiple afflictions. Their "alumni" who have left for other companies have created similar hiring and promotion programs in other companies that the entire top echelon of Fortune 500 companies consists of these psychopaths.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As someone who grew up with a diagnosis, and has worked as a software developer/team lead for 15 years, getting paid well, and even promoted into architect roles... I am super lucky that I focused on being able to "pass" early on.
Though I am hired and paid and valued based on the skills that I have which are related directly to my diagnosis, I would never tell a perspective employer that I have the dreaded 'tism. Passing is much more lucrative, and even when I have a lower technical skill level than other members of my repressed class, I manage to make more money than them, because I can talk to management.
I highly recommend "business" books such as "Hug your customers" and other trendy MBA type books. Business interaction isn't nearly as hard as say high school, or social gatherings, because business interactions have specific enumerated rules, that have been written down, and are generally agreed upon. This is a boon for Autistic people trying to have successful careers because that means we don't have to rely on an instinct that is present in others but not us. Business interactions are already scripted, and working a script is significantly easier than navigating unspoken social protocol.
I applaud SAP for this initiative, but I urge working autistic adults to eliminate their own need for such programs by spending time learning the protocols of business, it is similar in scale to learning the rules to Magic the Gathering, but way more financially rewarding.
Also hiring people because of their handicap regardless of whether they're as suitable as another normal candicate is not only patronising to all concerned but is doing the austistic a disservice as they'll more than likely struggle in the role and reinforce the stereotype.
Wow. How about you treat autistic people like human beings and accept that if they tell you they can do a job and appear qualified and make a good impression at the interview, maybe they are not lying?
I have a disability. If I tell someone I can do a job it's not because I'm lying to get the job. That would be pointless, I'd switch to their company, be found out and end up unemployed. In fact I'd make damn sure that I could do the job and they would be accommodating before even accepting it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
...they're going to be responsible for the user interface.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I thought this was a huge error in the Matrix- they should have been using the people's brains as 'cores' to actually run the matrix in which they were trapped. Could of added a lot of interest instead of the idiotic human battery thing....
love is just extroverted narcissism
Here is what you should do. Get off your arse, start eating right and exercising and find a way to make new friends in the "real world". For me, that was by going to church and becoming involved in the Alpha course. Through that course, I learned more about the faith, met some great new people and I was able to completely surrender the portion of my life that should be a source of strength but was the source of my hurt and weakness to God. He removed my fear and replaced it with a spirit (holy spirit) of boldness.
After years of bullying by schoolmates, my alcoholic father and other things, my psyche was pretty much shredded. I needed to surrender that last part of my life that I was holding back from god which was my relationships and hopes for relationships.
After I did that, my social anxiety went away, I made friend after friend and I might even end up finding a soulmate now. I went from a wallflower who hardly knew anyone at my church after attending for years to someone who worked the room going from table to table greeting people I had met at a retreat at a recent party.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Because after you perform enough, the act isn't rehearsal, it's natural.
Bullshit. I have to consciously remind myself to ask about someone's poorly child. I frequently think, "I'd better say because that's expected now" even though it's pissing me off by extending the conversation in a direction I just don't give a shit about. I put a lot of effort into almost every single conversation in the office - indeed, the only easy conversations are the ones with people that exhibit severe symptoms for Aspergers.
It looks like the Americans with Disabilities Act only prohibits discriminating against people with disabilities, and not discriminating for them. I didn't see any mention of outlawing discriminating for people with disabilities (see Sec. 12112. Discrimination, here.)
Near one end of the autism spectrum, it doesn't necessarily cause negative effects on the whole. It's possible for a high-functioning autistic to learn social skills, but it tends to be explicit learning rather than implicit. High-functioning people with ASD also do better at some tasks and worse at others.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes