Glad to see them taking the initiative to make interviews more accommodating for people on the spectrum.
As someone on the spectrum myself, I always dreaded job interviews. I would try to get as much information on what the interview would entail as well as the atmosphere and other specifics so I could mentally prepare myself beforehand and give myself a better chance to show my best side. The example they provided of performing an interview in text through a google doc rather than over the phone really hits home for me, I feel like I am much better able to communicate my ideas through written mediums than verbally.
I feel overall there is a lot of untapped talent in the neurodiverse community that is passed over due to some of these barriers in effective communication, so I'm always glad to see companies take initiatives like this.
> As someone on the spectrum myself, I always dreaded job interviews. I would try to get as much information on what the interview would entail as well as the atmosphere and other specifics so I could mentally prepare myself beforehand and give myself a better chance to show my best side
I’m on the spectrum as well and interviews are a bit of a mixed bag for me. I hate everything around it, going to a new, unknown location, not knowing exactly where you end up, meeting new people, etc.
The interviews themselves, however, are fine. I basically get to talk about my special interest with people who are presumably equally knowledgable about the subject as I am. I usually enjoy them.
As someone on the spectrum as well, I have a question, if you don't like meeting new people, how are you supposed to collaborate with others? At Google at least, we need to work with people across teams all the time. Or you are hoping for a forever-remote gig?
I choose to work for small companies/startups. Preferably around 10-15 people.
As small companies tend to grow, the trick is to get out in time. At a previous job the company grew to over 150 and that wasn’t healthy for me. I should have bailed at around 75.
Interestingly, 150 people is a natural size where most people can maintain cognitive and social relationships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number (though it seems to vary in practice up to 500+, depending on the person)
I have to mentally prepare for “every” non-personal conversation I have. I speak in a controlled speech cadence so that I can think about what I’m about to say. I speak with confidence and authority because I’m acting. It’s also exhausting and can really burn you out.
It’s common in neurodivergent people and people of different classes. It’s a defense mechanism to appear to be normal. I started doing it in middle school because I was tired of being bullied and getting into fights.
A friend once pinged me about how I'd handle a request from a candidate to do text-only interviewing. He was outraged. The candidate said it would be easier for them to do a better job text-only, and his first thought was "Clearly they're scamming us." I told him, my first task would be contacting HR to ask if they needed some form of accommodation, to more elegantly address the "Why are you asking us to do this" concern he had, but also that if the candidate needed a legitimate accommodation I thought it would be great of them to accommodate. My friend had never considered that there are people that might need accommodation, and that it was a good point.
The bummer is, I think, most companies just do not give a shit about accommodating anyone. If you cannot fit their mold, they'll just find someone who can. I'm hopeful that more companies will deploy interview processes to bring out the best in their candidates, rather than processes that will specifically weed out everyone but the specific archetype of person a given interview accommodates.
One of HR's principal responsibilities is risk mitigation, and different/novel situations present unknown risks, so it is rational to avoid those situations. Most people are not mean (or even inconsiderate, just wary.
I'm not totally understanding. I suggested HR only because I thought they would be better equipped to ask sensitive questions about interview accommodations than my dev-friend.
Person-to-person interaction is an important component of most jobs. If a candidate could not conduct a verbal conversation as part of an interview, I would have a lot of trouble fitting them on any of my teams. Siloing with independent projects is an option, but I think would only be sustainable in larger orgs.
I think your post (and unless I misunderstand, your intent) kind of assumes far far too much context to be helpful. A job interview is a very specific set of conversations, whereas the function of a job at a company can have a very wide array of responsibilities that may or may not be related. If a person has a speech impediment/stutter/something like tourettes syndrome, that problem may only impede one's ability during a high pressure, synchronous conversation. Those symptoms may be totally mitigated by lowered pressure or asynchronous communication. To categorically say that someone that has difficulty communicating in high pressure, synchronous communication situations is unfit for "most jobs" is, to me, a huge miss. Especially now, where remote work is such a big deal, and so many conversations are just-Slack or just-email. If you can have a disagreement over Slack without causing adversarialism or frustration, you're far more valuable to a remote employer than someone that can communicate well over Zoom but poorly in text (I think).
I would say, if a person is able to write clearly and thoughtfully, and is competent at their role, they're very well suited for lots of jobs that aren't sales related. The meritocracy that gets touted so frequently (but is actually never upheld) should reward those that are competent at their advertised skills, right? If you're a really good programmer you should be able to find employment as a programmer, right?
I was only speaking about my work environment, and was trying to avoid making broad generalizations, but it seems I didn't try hard enough. I'm sure there are other work environments where verbal collaboration isn't so important.
I think the "Most jobs require" comment was what made it seem to broad. There are lots of jobs that require interview-style communication, I totally agree. For my friend's specific case, it was a dev at a remote company that specifically prioritized working alone and not communicating with teammates 99% of the time, to which I thought it kind of a perfect fit for someone with verbal communication difficulties.
Understandable. At the same time, if you have a deaf candidate apply, you and your coworkers have the opportunity to learn some of their non-verbal communication strategies for collaboration.
I think you mean face-to-face communication? Because written text is person-to-person communication. In my experience, and on the jobs I've worked, writing has been a much more important skill than talking.
I'd personally be more than fine with someone who didn't want to ever verbally communicate, as long as they had excellent written communication skills. Especially if it's a remote job. For example, I'm sure there are many deaf people that excel in software engineering roles.
I can see how it'd be a major challenge to be deaf or bad at speaking at an in-person job where everyone else is speaking, though.
I'm much better at writing than speaking, myself, and find it much easier to convey complex ideas in writing (real-time or asynchronously). Especially writing vs. speaking through a conference app like Teams, where the latency can sometimes make things awkward.
Might want to consider broadening your horizons a bit. I'm sure this is a good description of some software jobs (especially remote), but certainly not any that I've ever held or managed.
>there is a lot of untapped talent in the neurodiverse community
There is going to be a huge advantage for companies that realize this. Massive untapped demand for jobs that recognize different ways of getting work done.
That goes for most things about ADHD - it's a collection of symptoms which everyone experiences to different extents (which is why so many people claim that ADHD doesn't exist and everyone has it)
The distinction comes when you experience those symptoms constantly and to such an extreme that it becomes debilitating - to such an extreme that in order to cope, you have to structure your whole life around it.
In the context of that blog post, it goes from "yes this sounds like me" to "I need almost everything on this list or I will burnout and quit within 6 months".
It is more that there are only positive points, very much like Myers-Briggs personality types or horoscopes. I get that this is basically a sales pitch, but since as you said everything here applies to everyone this feels just "oh, look at us Wildcards(tm) we are so good for your company!"
That's very fair. As you say it's a sales pitch, so they're downplaying the negatives. They do talk about them, but the downsides they list are just a lot more serious than they suggest. I'll talk about them though!
- Unlikely to finish things, especially to a high standard
- Unpredictable, jumping between being a 10x developer and a detriment to the team for unknown reasons
- Forgetful, won't follow through on things and won't even remember it was a thing they were meant to be doing
- Generally quite susceptible to mood swings
However, I will say that many of the things that those downsides will be far more prevalent in a traditional workplace than in one that read this post and took it on board. If you're providing varied work, consistent feedback, and low expectations (in terms of quality, not volume), then you won't really see those issues arise much.
Fascinating. An interesting consequence of Google’s search ads business’s rampant success is that they get to run experiments like this at low risk to themselves. The advantage they have over the government is that they have a vested interest in making it succeed - access to an additional labour force - and a vested interest in letting go if it fails - they are still subject to fiduciary duty.
If they open up this stuff, it’ll be a win-win for Google and sufficiently neurodivergent people.
Reminds me of that old joke about Bill Gates deciding that the best way to help humanity was to impose a corporate tax via MS Office and then use that to build toilets in Africa.
This is great, but I don't see anything that's done specifically for autism. What's described[1] would benefit everyone across the neuro-spectrum, and that's great. My question would be why they weren't already doing these things? Better late than never, they say.
[1] - coaching, ongoing support for them and teammates once joining, offer extended time, provide questions in advance, conduct interview in writing
One thing people always forget is that these sort of accommodations exist in the beginning for one group, but everyone benefits and that's how we move forward. Perfect example of this are ramps, which originally existed for those who were physically handicapped.
I'm not at Google, but I'd like to see their support system for post-recruitment and post-hiring.
I currently have one neurodiverse (more than one condition) employee who has remained at the same career level for nearly a decade because they don't meet the criteria for the next level. They have expressed interest in advancing though. I don't know how to handle it. I can't promote them, as the next level role has much more responsibility and accountability, and they just aren't there yet. I just give them nice bonuses and salary bumps, but eventually it'll hit a limit for their job level and a higher-up will need to be involved.
I've reached out to internal resources I was pointed to, but it's all very informal and difficult to find someone qualified to answer fairly specific questions. I've pointed the employee to resources as well, but one of their conditions kind of hampers their ability following through on vague directions.
I feel frustrated because they're a good employee, but I've yet to find useful guidance on helping them get to where they want to be.
Hitting this kind of wall/ceiling in my own career. It sucks. I know there are certain types of responsibilities I just can't or shouldn't take on as I can't guarantee consistent enough performance. By the same token, I also know what it is I'm unreasonably good at. I'd very much like to just be allowed to operate purely to my strengths dipping in and out particular streams of work when I have bandwidth to do it. When and where I've been able to do that it's always been really, really good. When and where something is lumped on me that I can't handle on an indefinite basis it always eventually ends in non-linear behavior due to straying too far outside my safe operating envelope.
There is a lot of this that seems poorly thought through.
Asking for an employee's medical records is forbidden. Asking an employee to undergo a medical exam is forbidden. Asking questions about the employee's health or disabilities during the interview process is forbidden. See https://www.eeoc.gov/pre-employment-inquiries-and-medical-qu....
With all that said, what prevents anybody from saying "I don't feel comfortable taking a phone call" or "I need extra time for this" without actually being autistic? Then the disadvantage they claim to be removing hasn't actually gone anywhere.
It does help with the interview process. A lot of communication lies in body language and tone of voice. Taking that out of the equation, absent a good reason, is going to eliminate useful information.
Some people might exhibit behaviors that are problematic in a professional environment. To go into a hiring decision without that information would be a mistake, in my opinion.
I think that's very true in the context of sales jobs, or more generally anything that requires the same action of frequent, mission-critical person-to-person communication.
I'm not so sure it applies in the context of a remote SWE.
(When you have to attack something as tone-deaf, it's useful to ask whether their comment was mistaken. In this case, I don't think your reply offers a counterargument.)
I don't see how those allegations are related to voice/face-to-face interviews or what's tone-deaf about the parent comment.
I'm very skeptical that someone who's likely to sexually harass people will be any more likely to exhibit those signs in a voice or in-person conversation than in a written conversation. Someone trying to hide it will probably successfully hide it across all three forms of communication.
It's well established that tone of voice conveys a lot of information when communicating.
If a candidate says something during a phone call that makes the interviewer uncomfortable or have reservations, that's absolutely a legitimate reason not to hire someone.
Yes, tone provides a lot of information, but can someone accurately ascertain whether that tone will lead to problematic behaviour? I don't know. I would want to see some sort of research before accepting that this does what you say it does.
Certainly, if someone were to say something sexist or racist in an interview, that would be a red flag. But I doubt most people would do that. So maybe you are able to weed some people out, but probably not very effectively, and you will likely still have to have other mitigations in place. In additions, you will have "false positives" in the form of people being misread. For example, they could be saying something genuinely and the interviewer thinks they are lying or being sarcastic. Are the false positives worth the true positives? I don't know. That's why I would want to see actual evidence.
I think the most useful context for tone would be to weed out people who display anger, irritation, or snark. Especially when the situation doesn't call for it.
> In additions, you will have "false positives" in the form of people being misread. For example, they could be saying something genuinely and the interviewer thinks they are lying or being sarcastic.
Text alone makes this far more ambiguous. You're going to have _way_ more trouble gauging someone's actual intent via words alone than vs words + tone of voice.
That's the point I was making. Tone of voice is a ton of information. Don't take my word for it, feel free to Google it and you will find pages and pages outlining just how important it is.
This sounds analogous to phrenology. The tone of someone's voice when they answer a question about web application architecture will convey information about the likelihood that they may sexually harass people?
I don't think it'd make sense to ask a question like "how do you feel about sexual harassment in the workplace?", but if hypothetically such a question were asked, I also doubt even in that case that tone of voice would uncover a sexual harasser in a way that writing wouldn't.
Voice tone does provide a lot of information, but I don't see how it's related to these points.
It’s stupid to rule out accommodations because people might cheat. You shouldn’t punish the innocent majority for the transgressions of the guilty minority.
> You shouldn’t punish the innocent majority for the transgressions of the guilty minority.
Have you stopped to think about just how much stuff we have to do and put up with as a society because a small number of people are dishonest?
We have to have IDs, because people might lie about who they are.
We have to have an entire (very expensive) criminal justice system because people might commit crimes.
We have to have locks on the doors to our homes and vehicles, because people might trespass.
We have to have cashiers and overly-complicated automated registers (with someone watching) because people might not want to pay for everything that they are taking out of a store.
You show up at a closing for a new home, they want a cashier's check, not your personal one. Why? You might not actually be good for the money. Plus they do all the title work.
Every bank has a giant safe. Every country has some weapons of war.
It's very idealistic to say "well only a few people will cheat so it's fine." It isn't, and it never has been.
>We have to have locks on the doors to our homes and vehicles, because people might trespass.
But most of us don't have metal bars over our homes' windows. There's a middle ground of making bad behavior mildly inconvenient.
Also, all of your examples are precautions born from experience. There have been burglars and shoplifters for centuries, so it makes sense to have some preventions. When deciding whether to try something new, it can be counterproductive to focus a lot on preventing cheating. I'd suggest seeing if it ever becomes a problem worth addressing.
At a certain point you just have to accept it happens, and build systems the deal with it in a reasonable way.
With some imagination you can build systems that handle it without punishing minorities. To do otherwise just shows a lack of imagination and compassion.
Personally I think we can do better, and that is enough of a reason.
I remember taking some online test for a freelance job site that stated they had mechanisms in place to detect cheating. So I googled a bunch of stuff in Javascript then translated it into a different programming language (they wanted Python, I think.) This cheating was not detected. I didn't want the job anyway, so I bailed out after I "passed" the test.
The cost benefit ratio would show it would be wasteful to throw out 20% more diverse candidates for 5% false positives. Much cheaper to deal with those 5%.
> We have to have IDs, because people might lie about who they are.
Not every country makes these mandatory. Additionally there usage is usually directly tied to risk associated with someone lying. I don’t need to prove who I am every time I sign up to a new service.
I would argue the risk of large numbers of people cheating this specific interview step is quite low.
> We have to have an entire (very expensive) criminal justice system because people might commit crimes.
Yes, a system designed to deliver justice, not punishment. In most countries that means a systems that takes extreme measures to avoid punishing the innocent, even if it means allowing some guilty to go free. A perfect example of what I mean about not punishing the innocent minority.
> We have to have locks on the doors to our homes and vehicles, because people might trespass.
People can choose not to use these. No one compels me to lock my front door, it might be unwise, but I’m not going to be denied employment because of it.
> We have to have cashiers and overly-complicated automated registers (with someone watching) because people might not want to pay for everything that they are taking out of a store.
How do these systems punish the innocent? Apart from the occasional complaint about the wrong item in the bagging area? They’ve certainly never prevented me from buying groceries.
> You show up at a closing for a new home, they want a cashier's check, not your personal one. Why? You might not actually be good for the money. Plus they do all the title work.
Again risk weighted. Also in my country we just do instant bank transfers. None of this old fashioned paper gubbins.
> Every bank has a giant safe. Every country has some weapons of war.
Again all of these things are heavily risk weighted, and cause little to no impediment to innocent parties. I’ve certainly never needed to manually open the vault at my local bank. As for war, the US is the king of defence spending.
> It's very idealistic to say "well only a few people will cheat so it's fine." It isn't, and it never has been.
It’s perfectly fine to say this. The entire world is built in the premises that a small amount of crime will always happen, and systems should be robust to it. There’s no point spending ludicrous resources trying to prevent a minuscule amount of crime. Everything is, and should be, risk weighted.
Just like when you build a distributed system you expect parts to misbehave or fail. Why would you expect any human based system to be any different?
It would be just as easy to take your entire argument and frame it as such:
If we have an interview system that works for the vast majority of people, why do we need to introduce risk by substantially changing it to help very few people?
If cheating becomes possible to do easily, your system has disadvantaged people who are honest and refuse to cheat. What are you going to do to ensure that people who are honest are not discriminated against for their honesty?
Information technology is already home to a bunch of neurodivergent people. You run into them _way_ more often in IT than you do in just about any other line of work. Do they really need more help getting tech jobs?
That's not exactly the cheating that I was thinking about. I meant either hiring/getting someone to do the interview for you, or to do it together with you.
Sure, they do benefit everyone, but you missed the point I was making. The point is that they claim it is to level a playing field, but they're not actually doing that if those accommodations are open to everybody.
Your comparison also comes off a bit disingenuous. They're talking about interview accommodations like "providing questions in advance" and "extended interview time".
Well, for one thing, if you have "normal" employees who can conduct a regular interview process, they might raise some red flags in how they conduct themselves in person that wouldn't be apparent in a remote setting.
One example could be that an interviewee inappropriately stares at a woman or makes an inappropriate remark while on-campus. You wouldn't see that if the entire interview were conducted only via Google Docs.
I assume most of those types of people are probably able to be on best behaviour for a day. I imagine most of them can pass an interview and then be creepy later.
Your making the assumption that the accommodations are meant to provide some sort of “advantage” to compensate for some other “disadvantage”. Like dealing with disabilities is some sort of arithmetic problem.
Accommodations just provide optionality, and let’s people choose the approach that suites them best. Rather than assuming that you can fairly apply some rigid standardised test on people, and expect it to accurately measure individuals. There’s plenty of data, and some pretty basic stats, which show this doesn’t work.
Proving extra time provides almost no advantage to anyone. Either you can answer the questions well, or you can’t. The amount of time it takes to do isn’t very relevant, so taking more time isn’t an advantage.
Providing questions in advance also isn’t an advantage. Again you can either answer them well or not. If you’re worried about people cheating by passing the questions around, then only provide them an hour or two in advanced, or only once they’re onsite.
If you’re interview process can be fooled by giving people more time, or advanced notice, then quite frankly it’s not a very good interview process.
Do you have an example of a question or interview process that you think fits your description? I think a standard tech-company interview has a lot of time pressure, and providing more time would help many candidates considerably.
> I think a standard tech-company interview has a lot of time pressure, and providing more time would help many candidates considerably.
... and? A office that's accessable only by ladder has a lot of leg pressure, and providing wheelchair ramps would help many employees considerably too, regardless of whether they're wheelchair-bound.
Well, internal deadlines can be adjusted and accommodations can be requested for external deadlines, right? It would be kinda unfair if one's own workplace had to absorb any negative externalities of one's accommodations. That doesn't make sense. Customers aren't immune to the ADA.
Deadlines across hours or days are very different than deadlines across minutes. Many strategies like going for a walk can help you solve difficult problems, but that’s not an option on a 1 minute per question interview.
Which means tight interview deadlines artificially constrain your applicant pool, forcing you to pay higher wages. Beyond legal requirements, that’s why it’s a good idea to only care about what matters for the actual job.
> that’s not an option on a 1 minute per question interview.
Why do you assume that all interviews are structured that way? They aren't. I have interviewed with Google and that was not how most of my interview process was conducted.
It doesn’t matter the percentage of time devoted to short term problem solving. If it’s a requirement for applicants to go through that process successfully then it’s a requirement to get the job.
The core argument is really simple. Ideal teams don’t consist of 10 identical clones of the ideal worker allowing the team to work 10x as fast. They consist of multiple different skills that allow teams to finish complex tasks more than 10x as efficiently as any one person on the team could. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
> Sometimes, stuff breaks and wouldn't it be great if it got fixed in half an hour instead of four hours?
If that's happening constantly, you should find a new job. That's a major red flag. Incidents should be rare at any well run org.
Sure sometimes incidents happen and someone has to deal with them. At most companies that is a pretty rare occurance (unless you're on some incident team). When it does happen, different team members have different skills dealing with them - and that's ok for a rare part of the job. Additionally, for longer incidents, often the person with a slow ramp up but better understanding is more useful than the person who jumps right in without understanding. A sure way to make things worse is to panic and try to fix things without understanding what happened well enough.
(Speaking as someone who has been involved in incident response in various jobs)
There is time pressure, but you are also not expected to come up with a perfect, flawless solution. That is often not even interesting. The point of a good interview question is to see how a candidate works through a problem, not to see if they know the answer to an arbitrary quiz question.
Giving more time doesn't give you an advantage, because the correct answer isn't what gets you points.
I don't know why you would want to make time pressure a feature in your interview process. Normally it only happens because there's a fixed number of questions that people want to ask, but they're unprepared to allocate more an a hour to do so.
I fail to see how creating artificial time pressure makes your interview process better at finding good candidates. It results in an environment that isn't even vaguely like actual work conditions.
If I allocate more time to each interview question, then how am I supposed to judge between a candidate that completes it in half the allotted time vs one that completes it using all the time?
Whether the time pressure is explicitly mentioned, it is clear (to me) that there is an implicit expectation that the faster you answer the question, the better, all other things being equal.
I don't want to give the impression that I think the current standard of software engineering interviews are perfect, so if you think it can be improved, please tell me how.
> If I allocate more time to each interview question, then how am I supposed to judge between a candidate that completes it in half the allotted time vs one that completes it using all the time?
How about you judge them on the quality of their answers? Is giving a long more detailed and nuanced answer a bad thing?
Why would time not be highly relevant to job performance? Productivity is defined as an amount of work output (whatever that is for the job in question), divided by time. So time is in fact central, and a team member who can do more in a unit of time should be more desirable, no?
All else being equal, productivity might drop. But by hiring some less productive people as well, there are likely some non-productivity-related benefits to be enjoyed, such as broader brainstorming about how to make the product/service work well for a more diverse set of customers, and whatever value might be created by the morale boost (people generally like to do good) along the way.
Of course it is that simple. A quarter is made up of a bunch of hours.
Nobody is asking an interviewee to have a full product prototype ready for demo inside an hour. What they do is present some problem to you and ask you to reason through it.
Being able to work out pitfalls in a design early, rather than several weeks in, saves a lot of time and money.
And a sandpile is made up of a bunch of grains of sand. [0] It's identically disingenuous to suggest that such a difference in quantity does not manifest a difference in quality.
I don't think your point is necessarily a bad one, but you're leaving a lot of opportunity for people to dismis it.
Well, you only quoted and responded to one part of my argument.
> It's identically disingenuous to suggest that such a difference in quantity does not manifest a difference in quality.
Huh? I specifically addressed that when I stated that "Nobody is asking an interviewee to have a full product prototype ready for demo inside an hour."
Are we assuming that the interviewer is an idiot who has no concept of time? That the interviewee only has some small amount of time to work through the problem they have posed, or answer questions?
If your interview process is an hour, then you're comparing a bunch of candidates who all had an hour. It's demonstrative of what knowledge you are bringing to the table and how you can work through problems. It's all extrapolation.
No, it isn't perfect. But if you find me a system that is, I've got a billion dollars for you in my pocket.
> you're leaving a lot of opportunity for people to dismis it.
Frankly, I don't care if people dismiss it. The people who dismiss are not here to engage in thoughtful conversation and aren't my target audience, anyway.
> Productivity is defined as an amount of work output (whatever that is for the job in question), divided by time.
Maybe in a widget factory. Programmers have various skill levels. I'd prefer to hire somebody who takes twice as long to complete a task, if they're taking that time to ensure that it won't cause problems downstream or in edge cases. Fast & sloppy programmers who maximize a commits per hour metric are the worst.
> I'd prefer to hire somebody who takes twice as long to complete a task, if they're taking that time to ensure that it won't cause problems downstream or in edge cases. Fast & sloppy programmers who maximize a commits per hour metric are the worst.
That's a strawman. You metric of "job done" is "ensuring that it won't cause problems downstream or in edge case". Fast & sloppy programmers are not fast, as they didn't achieve your metric of job done. Thus you actually prefer fast programmers to slower ones.
Why do you think that performance of an individual in a one hour interview is going to be representative of the average performance of the individual over a much longer period of time (months to years).
Just because someone can have high productivity for a short burst doesn't mean they can sustain it, or that they can even sustain moderate productivity over a long period of time.
It's a bit like concluding that a drag car is clearly the best car because it can cover 1km the quickest, and ignoring the fact that it would take hours for it cover 3km because its engine needs to be rebuilt every 1km.
> If you’re worried about people cheating by passing the questions around
I think the worry is candidates can quickly look up answers and build up a conversation around it right before the interview.
Even if they couldn't get to the complete answer ahead of time, enough grok'ing on the specific problem statement and possible solutioning could show an interview enough signal to give them a pass.
I can speak to this as someone with a disability and social work degree. It's not a popular sentiment but IDGAF at this point.
Yes, this will largely be abused by people who don't need it. Just look at how many students malinger for Adderall scripts or extra time on exams -- it's practically endemic at ivy leagues now.
Disability parking permits are another one that have shocked me at how common abuse of them is in large cities like Toronto. Essentially anytime resources are constrained and an environment is high pressure, these services inevitably see widespread misuse.
High priority low income housing is another area that genuinely shocked me. I had so many clients desperate for housing that they would falsely claim to be high-priority (victims of abuse or terminally ill) it was terrible to see.
The unpopular truth is that these systems are vulnerable to fraud and it absolutely harms people who need them most. HOWEVER, what is the alternative?
Would you suggest we medically validate and police applications?
I've seen that approach taken and it's also a hot mess. It presents barriers not just for people defrauding the system, but the disabled that struggle to navigate the system as well.
I don't know the solution to these issues and it's one of the reasons I got the fuck out of social work as soon as I could.
All of those examples have real, non-trivial costs for employers though. If in order to adopt any of them I need to provide them to everybody I'll just provide the accommodations to no one
If I'm good at conveying my thoughts verbally and then you take that away, now you have thus created a detrimental system for me. ADA compliance is good and bad in the sense that it helps people who need it so they can function on their own, but also is a burden on everyone else for the simple sake that in case someone who needs that benefit can use it, even though 99.9% of the time it will be used by people who don't. I mean we don't exactly see ADA compliance for parks. So short of essential buildings, I think it's unreasonably excessive.
Part of accommodating people who have a disability is introducing equity and equality into the process, and making it possible for all candidates to use those options. There might be a perception that one route is easier than another, and if that’s the case, it’s a failure on the part of the interview process.
Options provided for equality and equity are not supposed to ease requirements for a subset of people, but ensure that their evaluation doesn’t punish or discount them.
Do the accommodations as stated not make you think that cheating an interview will become very easy?
"I need extra time for my interview" and "I'm uncomfortable with a phone call" sounds like a very easy way to get third party help without anybody being the wiser.
And again, that flies in the face of their attempt to actually level the playing field.
Except all of those with a disability know from experience the sometimes gut-wrenching emotions that go along with the decision to tick the box "yes", "no", or "prefer not to say" as we weigh up a mental calculus of, despite how inclusive an organization appears to be, how that will affect our chances of something given inherent bias present in society. So... that's a sort of natural counter weight.
Well, for one thing it's hiring people who may not be the stereotypical "cultural fit". I've always been a massive proponent of hiring based on "cultural fit", but have recently started to realize it can get really toxic that way.
Hiring people who are good at their jobs, but may be different in a social setting can be a way of indirectly hiring people on the spectrum. If you have many extroverted employees, hiring more introverted people will inevitably lead to hiring people on the spectrum.
How do you judge this? Well, personality tests are pretty common already, they can absolutely show traits that are more common in people with autism. Also, an interview can tell you a lot about a person.
You raise good points and I am of the mind that this is a difficult problem without silver bullets.
I don't believe there is any way to create and vet a "100% bias-free guaranteed" interview process.
That said, our industry does have a reputation for being especially unwelcoming to women. It would be a shame if a candidate raised red flags and those flags went undetected or ignored in an attempt to be "inclusive".
I’ve always thought “cultural fit” was an odd thing to prioritize when we have research showing that (actual) diversity is more helpful for avoiding groupthink. Especially when this term is just begging for bias to creep in.
One lesson that stuck with me was the Houston Rockets GM putting some barriers around how emotional judgments were allowed to influence decisions. Small rules like “don’t give players nicknames” or just giving less weight to personal interviews were good experiments in how to keep screenings more objective. We don’t have the granularity or measurability of new hire data as NBA offices do, but I think these concepts are still useful.
> I’ve always thought “cultural fit” was an odd thing to prioritize when we have research showing that (actual) diversity is more helpful for avoiding groupthink.
Astronaut 1: You mean... our work culture is conducive to groupthink?
> I’ve always thought “cultural fit” was an odd thing to prioritize when we have research showing that (actual) diversity is more helpful for avoiding groupthink. Especially when this term is just begging for bias to creep in.
Were these studies ever replicated? I think diversity is useful if you have diverse clients, but if clients have a monoculture, then trying to mirror that with your team makes sense.
The new trend is hiring for "culture add" rather than "culture fit." In other words, not trying to determine whether a person fits in with everybody else, but trying to determine whether what they bring to the table is something new and beneficial.
My own engineering team still uses the term "culture fit," but I recently helped refine our interviewing guidelines to make it more clear what we mean:
"We are assessing the candidate's comfort level with our processes, priorities, frequency of change, etc. Assessments should never reflect an interviewer's comfort level with any candidate's culture, personal attributes, etc."
Regardless of what you aim for regarding culture, culture itself seems like the sort of thing that people can't readily change about themselves (just like you can't expect people to change their religion, even though technically they're free to do so in many cases), and for that reason, culture seems like it should be among the protected classes that shouldn't be used for hiring decisions. Sticking to whether they can get the job done, as cold as that sounds, seems most equal-opportunity IMHO.
Culture is such a vague word, though, isn't it? In some cases it identifies a regional association (like Mexican culture). In some cases it's religious or social (like Catholic culture or Deaf culture). In other cases it has to do with socioeconomic status (like uncultured country bumpkins vs. cultured Ivy League grads), the arts (low-culture gossip mags vs. high-culture literary mags), or business practices (like a culture of secrecy or a culture of inclusion within an organization).
Fortunately, the law already bans discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity, and national origin, so that covers a lot of the legitimate cases where an attribute that has no bearing on a person's ability to perform the job cannot be factored into hiring decisions.
But there is certainly a sense in which culture absolutely can have bearing on job performance. A company might have a culture of "move fast and break things," and if a candidate is not comfortable with that culture, then it would be to their (and the employer's) benefit to know ahead of time whether the job would be a good fit for them.
I agree that the notion of culture has all these facets, and that we should only be examining the business sense in an interview. But I think of "move fast and break things" (and its kin) as needing quite trivial assimilation, so if a hiring decision cites a culture issue, it must be the type of thing that can't be trivially overcome, which is a situation that often contributes toward being protected (like the religion example) for reasons of equity.
Whether it could impact performance is an interesting thing I hadn't considered, though. I suppose if a thing is out of one's control (i.e., the luck of what you're born into), we make it off-limits unless it affects job performance?
I'm thinking in terms of how the law ought to be, not interpreting how it currently is. It's tough to reason about. "You theoretically could have gotten yourself qualified for this job, but you chose not to" is how I view the ideal rationale for not giving someone a chance, but even that is very problematic to deduce.
I like that framing of culture fit, and I think it is incredibly important as a candidate one should also try to answer determine that fit (rather than leave that up to an employer).
I really like Randall Koutnik's list[0] of questions to ask your interviewer, as a good way for a candidate to assess the engineering culture of a company.
> With all that said, what prevents anybody from saying "I don't feel comfortable taking a phone call" or "I need extra time for this" without actually being autistic? Then the disadvantage they claim to be removing hasn't actually gone anywhere.
Nothing. A small minority of people gaming the system shouldn't necessarily mean you get rid of accommodations.
It doesn't mean you have to get rid of them, but you should probably think about what the pitfalls are and how best to address them. I have written about those elsewhere in this thread, so I won't repeat them here.
What's the problem with that? If someone has trouble with phone interviews why should a diagnosis be a barrier to being able to give the best performance they can?
I am not an expert on the American legal system, but it seems like that would be fraud and thus a criminal matter. Companies could report suspected cases to the authorities. This here seems to be a case from the educational system where similar issues can arise: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/3/14/18265874/college-...
Seriously? The charges in the admissions scandal had to do with mail fraud and bribery. Do you really think the American judicial system is going to get involved because some Google employees skipped a meeting by claiming they were Autistic?
The article talks about students getting extra time on exams by falsely claiming disability accomodations. This seems somewhat equivalent to asking for accomodations on a job interview to me.
I suspect that you may need to actively request these as an accommodation, and I suspect a lot of these restrictions go out the window then. [1] says "When an applicant asks for an accommodation for the job interview, the employer can require medical documentation."
That also means that depending on how this is implemented, people who aren't aware of it, too shy, undiagnosed, or don't want their diagnosis on the record everywhere may not benefit from this at all. OTOH, some of the training may improve the situation in general, even when no accommodation has been requested.
> what prevents anybody from saying "I don't feel comfortable taking a phone call" or "I need extra time for this" without actually being autistic? Then the disadvantage they claim to be removing hasn't actually gone anywhere.
I don't see how supporting the individual needs of others is a problem in any context. At the end of the day a candidate still needs to pass the interview.
The point is to focus on their ability to do the actual work.
> extended interview time, providing questions in advance, or conducting the interview in writing in a Google Doc rather than verbally on a call
Like, i dont think having these things would give an advantage to most people, so why not let them have it?
Ext time - if you're doing a test in an interview that heavily depends on time you are doing it wrong imo. Lots of people get nervous and flustered during timed tests, and its totally contrived. Yes there are deadlines at work, but they're of the form you have to get this done by next week, not you have to read this document really fast and type this thing up really fast because you only have 20 min.
Doing over google doc - i think there are a lot of people who are good at social cues who would be significantly disadvantaged by this. You just cut off a major source of info on what the interviewer is looking for, as well as preventing you from making a good impression via social means (being well spoken and funny is a major advantage in most interviews).
Knowing the questions ahead of time - yeah, that might give an advantage. Sure interviewers should never ask questions that are googleable, but having time to think about it prior to the high stakes interview would probably help a lot of people. That said,why not just do this for everyone? It probably would make the interview less contrived and more like the real job.
This is an old article, but it came to mind when I saw this. A software testing company discovered that high-functioning people with autism make good testers.
Anything about making their workplace less coder hostile?
Open plan office - great for sales, HR, marketing and reassuring insecure managers/leaders/CEOs they have worth - not so great for people who need to concentrate hard to solve hard problems and write good code.
I think the fact that this field is skill based keeps them out. I've known a lot of kids who entered in our CS program thinking they'd get rich only to drop out or go into Info Sci cause CS was too hard...at a generic state school with some of the most lenient instructors.
Frankly I think it's fine. It weeds out the sociopaths just in it to advance their careers seeing as they need to put in the effort. I've had a few jocks even try to mooch off me to basically give them answers.
"We will offer candidates in this program reasonable accommodations like extended interview time, providing questions in advance, or conducting the interview in writing in a Google Doc rather than verbally on a call."
These would great practices for any job interview, whether the interviewee is on the spectrum or not.
Providing questions in advance (behavioral at least) would make the interview process a lot better for everybody.
The possibility to answer the more involved questions in writing would also be a great plus overall.
Yeah, it would be great if those things were offered as options.
Personally, I am terrible at studying and getting assignments done, so I like that interviews are usually self-contained and relatively short. I also really appreciate the encouragement and sense of cooperation I get from doing an interview in person rather than in text, I think it makes me perform better. Obviously not as much with zoom interviews.
But I recognize my privilege here, that my brain happens to fit the current shape of interviews! It would be great if there were other types of interviews available that fit other people as well.
Aren't 'neurodiverse' people over-represented in IT/Computer Science, compared to their fraction of the population? Is trying to increase their share even further the correct way path to take?
If we're talking about the general workforce, instead of specifically tech fields, that would make sense.
Yes, they're already a large share, and they hate the existing interviewing process, as well as most office environments (and the politics that go along with it).
Over-representation assumes that there's an objective taxonomy by which representation can be factored. I find it very amusing that no one thinks of this, and/or can't bring this 'obvious' fact to light. "Imagined Communities" is a good book on some of this, if anyone cares to read more. I suspect that there's a lot of civil religion at work, that causes these taxonomies to not immediately appear assumptive. I would guess that we'll lose these components of the civil religion, over time, as a consequence to these initiatives.
A more reasonable metric to use seems to be whether a group is over/underrepresented in a company compared to the available workforce (not overall population), and I'm not sure whether neurodiverse people are overrepresented by that metric.
Since neurodiversity isn't one of the "popular" diversity/social justice topics, I suspect the main motivation here is to avoid missing applicants that are technically skilled and suitable, but may not do well in the interview process due to their neurodiversity.
What is the issue with certain groups being over or under represented? Physically fit people are over-represented in sport. Attractive people are over-represented in modelling. High IQ people are over represented in rocket science. Who cares? We need to stop sacrificing everything on the altar of diversity.
I don't really see why targeting the company is useful other than for political practicality because it's rather easy to hold entire companies accountable than some manager hiring for some specific IT role in small enough numbers its harder to not give them the benefit of the doubt. For starters, if you don't care about what job role a diverse group lands up in, does that mean it's okay if they don't get any upper level well compensated jobs so long as they're staffed in many lower paying jobs?
In regards to avoiding discrimination, and giving everybody a fair chance, I don't see a system that accomplishes this besides a lottery. The job interview is fundamentally a ritual of discrimination. The entire fixation on increasing employment for a small number of "diverse" groups is mostly driven by the political strength of said groups rather than any sort of consistent moral principles.
How do you define over-represented? What's the ideal representation? Do you base it on the global population? Within the US? People with an engineering/CS degree?
Over represented how? From the total world population? Most definitely.
From the population that gets a CS degree? I may be biased but think neurodiverse people prefer staying at academia if they can and would like that balance to tip off a little.
The idea that each category we can come up with to lump people into should be totally evenly distributed across all streams of work or else something must be wrong has always seemed weird to me.
If there is something actively preventing you from being in or sticking around in a profession you want to be a part of, I'm all for breaking down those barriers, but the idea of "over-representation" seems to go in the opposite direction. It seems aimed at keeping or kicking people out.
These are real people with hopes and dreams. They should have every opportunity everyone else has regardless of if people think they are over-quota or whatever.
Lots of discrimination in the past was justified with the argument that a minority group was over-represented in some field. E.g. some north american universities restricting jewish applicants all the way up until the 60s.
And somehow, this dissonance meshes fine with allowing/encouraging their management chain to run roughshod over [neuro and other]diverse employees. Eyeroll at best.
I'd say I'm a solid developer (at least that's what my employers have always said!), but I've always really bombed in-person/live interviews. I think it was probably a personality thing, as I'm pretty all-over-the-place when speaking in person. In text though, I can polish my thoughts before sending them!
Automattic had (and still has) an interview process that was fully text-based via a combination of Slack, p2, and GitHub, and it really worked well for me. I didn't even speak to a person (on video) until a couple weeks into starting the job!
A completely text-based interview process works great for a variety of people: neurodiverse, people with accents/ESL, fidgety people, etc. Especially for remote companies where everyone communicates using text 90%+ of the time! I'm glad it's catching on, and I hope to see it expanded to more companies.
Autism refers to Autism Spectrum Disorder. There is nothing wrong with using "on the spectrum" for people with ASD. There are also several usages of "Autism" by itself, so I don't know where you got the idea that it is being treated as a bad word.
There's a bit of nomenclatural history here. There was autism, which usually manifested as a severe disorder that significantly impaired functioning. People with a social deficit like autism, but who were otherwise fine, were usually diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, which was considered like autism but not quite autism. Then there was high-functioning autism, which wasn't the same as Asperger's syndrome, a major distinguishing characteristic being that people with HFA had a speech deficit in early childhood while people with AS did not.
That was where things stood as of the DSM IV. Then the DSM V came along and lumped all of the above into a single classification of "autism spectrum disorder".
What things are considered "neurodiverse" and what things are considered mental illness? Genuine question. A case could be made that schizophrenia or psychopathy or any other condition is simply another example of diverse neural make-ups. Where is the line drawn? If there is no line, then Google would obviously still be making a call about which types of neurodiversity they want, and which they don't. Which puts us right back to square one anyway. This is just another way for them to fit the "Diversity" buzzword into marketing material.
As an ADHD person I tend to be suspicious of progressive sounding ideas around things like neurodiversity because they usually get tied in with attitudes that culimate in telling me I shouldn't need my medication. Even amongst the academics I know it's very popular to argue I only need my meds because of x societal factor. I'd much rather not be forced to trust society and just have my medication to deal with the problem.
This is really difficult and quite a grey area. Just to make a point, is gender dysphoria an acceptable neural diversity, but bipolar affective disorder is not?
N=1, but I had my most successful group project ever with someone who was dealing with bipolar disorder.
The solution? He was a master communicator. He would tell me when he was having a manic streak and took on more work. When he was going back down, he communicated that and I took on more. If he started going unresponsive, I reached out and asked, and he told me where he was and what support he needed.
Now he's doing better and found the right medication, but crivens, I've been in a lot of other group projects, and I really miss him.
I’m sorry to be that guy, but the myth of bipolar people being super productive during mania needs to die and posts like yours reinforce it. Some bipolar type 2 people may be slightly more productive while hypomanic. For serious cases, mania is much, much more dangerous than depression and if someone tells you they’re manic you should rush them to the hospital, not give them more work.
There is no line. But unfortunately, I think Google only wants to hire people who they can accommodate easy (easy enough for the "diversity" points).
Have awkward social skills and prefer working away from other people? If you're a good programmer Google won't care. Have trouble following any instructions whatsoever? You're probably out of luck.
Honestly I think it would be nice for people with schizophrenia and more serious conditions to get employment. Even if it's hard to get them to actually contribute something, for their own self-worth. But I doubt companies like Google will do much for those people without an external incentive.
I don't think it's just about diversity points. There's a real competitive advantage to building a workplace that can accommodate smart but different people.
My impression is that despite the perception of Google as having a very progressive and liberal culture, they are actually pretty ruthlessly capitalist and won't go out of their way to accommodate people who are ultimately detrimental. They are just being open-minded about what kinds of people they can put to use.
I agree on the smart but different line. When you serve the entire world, your average Google worker might miss a lot of important use cases. I've been the colourblind guy in meetings, sitting next to the guy with kids and the girl from a country without steady electricity, to name a few.
Can I ask you if non-neurotyptical people would fit in this picture? Aside from being capable employees, are there perhaps moments when a non-neurotyptical person could chip in with design changes?
(I’m Autistic) I think folks on the spectrum would have a particularly keen eye for spotting ambiguous UI design details and text copy. As a person particularly prone to information overload, it nudges me towards smaller and more modular code functions.
We’re not superheroes or mutants, and everyone is different, but Autistic people can help to balance out designs in subtle ways because we are atypically balanced ourselves.
There's no clear boundary but one criteria for some mental illnesses is that it causes problems for the person's life. So a high functioning autist could be perfectly healthy in a world without informal human interaction. Pedophilia is not a mental illness unless it gets you into trouble, then it is.
I'd guess the reason for targeting autism is there would be a disproportionate number of highly capable workers hidden in that group which would be missed by normal hiring practices. You wouldn't expect that from, say, schizophrenia or most other neurodiversities.
The line is drawn at the point that someone's mental condition would negatively impact their coworkers.
Someone slightly on the spectrum who's somewhat awkward in conversation but an otherwise great developer? Probably a pass, unless their conversational awkwardness makes communication difficult.
Someone further on the spectrum who has a meltdown if their daily routine is even slightly disrupted? Probably not a pass, unless that routine never crosses the path of a coworker.
Someone with untreated bipolar disorder who lashes out with little provocation at their coworkers? Fail.
Someone with an IQ of 80 who's literally incapable of coding, and would thus be total dead weight on the team? Fail.
I’m very skeptical that someone with an IQ of 80 could be employed as a software developer. I think other explanations are more likely. Your coworker could be joking or lying. He could be mistaken (eg: interpreting a percentile as an IQ score). The test could have been mis-graded. Or maybe he was just having a really bad day. If he took an IQ test again, I seriously doubt he’d get such a low result.
A person with an IQ of 80 usually has trouble functioning in society. It can be difficult to teach them concepts like alphabetization or hypotheticals. For someone with such cognitive impairments to become a software developer beggars belief.
It could also be a partial IQ score of 80. IQ tests are divided in 4 key areas each scored separately. If all 4 scores are similar they can be averaged to get the final tested score. If they are not it’s called a “gap” and the average score is meaningless.
With gap results it’s not uncommon to see 2 low areas scoring 80s and 2 high areas 120 or even 130+.
“A developer declaring a tested IQ of 80” could be a gap case and somewhere along the way the nuance got lost in translation.
Come on, IQ 85 is only one standard deviation below the average, and correlates at around .4 with job performance. That means you'd expect someone with IQ 85 to be on average less than a standard deviation under the average at job performance.
It's definitely possible for someone with IQ85 or IQ80 to be better at programming than the average IQ100 programmer, and it's not even that unlikely. Let's not overstate this.
The average software developer does not have an average IQ. Look at the figures at the end of this paper[1]. Even professions like nursing have IQs averaging close to 110. "Science and engineering occupations" are around 115 average, with nobody below 90. If you look at college majors, you'll get similar results.
Our occupations and interests cause us to self-segregate into cognitive strata. For the same reason you don't know many Trump voters or young earth creationists (despite the fact that they're 1/3rd of the US population), you probably don't know many dumb people (or many super-geniuses). Individual differences in cognitive ability are far greater than our personal experience indicates.
According to the paper you linked, right around 20% of people in IT, materials engineers, and even people in the natural sciences have an IQ in the 80s or lower. (under 90).
Wouldn't you believe that, that's only slightly less than the general population which is at 25%, or right around what I predicted above :)
The median IQ difference between college professors and service workers is not even a full standard deviation.
Beyond that, I said average IQ100 programmer, of which there are many that can do a perfectly serviceable job in many sectors.
Individual differences in cognitive ability are great, yes, but they are not even close to being perfectly represented in IQ.
I don't know many Trump voters or young earth creationists because of where I live, but I know quite a bit of their relative equivalent where I am right now. Yes, there are a lot of differences, but I know enough young-earth-creationist and far-right engineers/stem people to know that it's not that simple.
Anyways, I think I made my point clear, IQ is not a very good predictor of job performance, you can definitely be a programmer with IQ85, and a great many are.
You misread the figures. The bottom of each bar is the 10th percentile. If you draw a horizontal line, "Natural science - physical, life, and math" has its 10th percentile around 92.
It seems my vision is skewed. Opening it in paint, that is correct. Still, 85 is within the bottom tenth percentile for programmers/technicians and material scientists, and the median for farmers and say engineers is only around a standard deviation.
People with an IQ of 80 mostly can't learn algebra, and by algebra I mean solve a linear equation with one unknown. If your colleague can do fizzbuzz the person who tested them did a crap job.
There's plenty of people with IQ80 that can do fizzbuzz and solve linear equations.
IQ is not the metric that people think it is. You could be above average at doing mental math and finding ways to push data, yet be under average and spatial problems, language problems, etc..., and get an IQ of 75.
It's also not that good of a test and not that predictive of actual programming ability, even if you're not being dragged down by other tests.
If the test of a person being employable is that they keep their condition to themselves, then it's mental illness. You can't ask for accommodations for mental illness, is my definition. No matter what the rules on paper.
Different workplaces have different tolerances for people who seem unstable; for instance, if someone bursts into tears, are they pressured out? It varies.
Schizophrenia has nothing to do with psychopathy, sociopathy, multiple personalities, or anything you've seen in the movies, by the way.
I'm probably not in disagreement with you about any facts regarding mental illness and tolerance thereof in the workplace. It's more about definitions of words.
I think it's useful to define mental illness as those conditions where you can't take advantage of your rights on paper; where the proof that you are coping adequately is always and forever that you are not sharing much if anything - mostly coping with symptoms while at work is not enough.
Schizophrenia, bipolar, etc.
It's very clearly shown in this thread why these are different from conditions people are free to talk about. Most people can't imagine that someone with the above conditions can be employable, especially as a knowledge worker, whereas Aspergers/autism has become a cliche used to stereotype programmers in general.
There is no way to enforce a law that says people shall trust others regardless of their personal judgement. So there is no equalizing the privileges that some "neurodiverse" people have and others do not.
I'm building a job board for the ADHD version of this. Not quite 100% ready but I received more interest in this than anything else I've ever built (1,300 candidate signups in 48hrs). It's to the point that I'm scrambling to supply enough jobs because they keep getting filled.
Calling it "Wildcard People" removed the gatekeeping/"medical" aspect while maintaining expectations of how these candidates end up doing their work.
This is excellent! I love the branding. There's such a niche for this sort of thing. I used to feel like I didn't "fit it" at most companies, because I tend to be such a generalist and resist being typecast. I can see this as super empowering for many folks.
Thank you! Not going to lie - I got very emotional when I found out the first person got hired to be exactly who they are from my site. The most rewarding thing I've ever worked on.
Oh wow is this a trait? I had an adult ADHD diagnosis a few years ago, but not much has come of it since (still struggling with "typical" work arrangements).
In fact I just interviewed with a company today where I expressed my resistance being pigeonholed in my own words.
Speaking of being a generalist, the book "Range" by David Epstein gave me some hope.
I'm hesitant to say it's a trait, but he pattern is pretty consistent amongst the dozens of ADHDers I've spoken to. Will read that book, thanks for the recommendation.
I'm only asking because this looks like a great initiative, and it's something I care about: how do you plan to keep yourself accountable in the process?
I have seen a lot of job boards catering to various niches popping up in recently years, and they all eventually become just a regular job board that generates passive income for the creator without much curation.
That's a good question. The real answer is I don't really know.
Right now I've been able to speak directly with hiring managers/CEOs who are instantly on-board and "get it" after reading the blog post. My hope is that the clear messaging is actively driving away people who want to hire non-Wildcards. I make it clear on the Job Creation page that you will only receive applicants of a certain type. But that's just what I'm hoping happens. If it starts to drift away from that, I'll have to figure out how to vet employers better. I don't want people like me getting jobs that cause suffering.
I'd rather make 10x less money than compromise on the mission.
Thank you very much for taking the time to address my question! I feel that the system you already have at the moment actually works quite well, and investing the time to "speak directly with hiring managers/CEOs" is, I guess, something that most people don't do because it doesn't scale (?).
If nothing else:
> I don't want people like me getting jobs that cause suffering.
> I'd rather make 10x less money than compromise on the mission.
I feel that by saying those you have answered my questions already! :) It's quite possible that your answer is somewhere in there, too! All the best with it!
P.S. The "Why you shouldn't" section for the Pallet role is great. At least it makes me feel like it's a frank conversation about what both sides want.
Damn, I had this idea recently but failed to execute on it for some reason ;)
ADHD people, from what I've read, are some of the most chronically underemployed, including myself. I think it's been a massive uphill battle for me as someone in programming, but who burns out easily, shows up late, and has crazy gaps on their resume. I hope you find success with this and will keep an eye on it.
I was a bit worried about this too, but evidently people love it. Personally, it just describes me so perfectly and for whatever reason people agree.
ADHD is different for everyone, but basically an ADHD-friendly job is one where "maintenance" or "routine" tasks are not an expectation. I.e. keeping API documentation up-to-date every week is not a good Wildcard task. If you need someone to do that work, don't hire a Wildcard. If you need someone to do a little bit of everything (i.e. Chief of Staff type role) then it's a better fit.
Reading the definition of a wildcard on your site, I’m not sure how that workplace behavior (ie being a jack of all trades) would fit adhd people specifically.
One of the core issues with ADHD is that the things that motivate you are different to a neurotypical person:
> First, neurotypical people (those without ADHD) make decisions based on three factors: Importance, Rewards, and Consequences. (e.g. I think it's important. Someone I [love, like, fear or respect] thinks it's important. Or, there are consequences and rewards
> People with ADHD, rarely, if ever, make decisions based on these things. Dodson says (and I agree wholeheartedly), that people with ADHD make decisions based on different criteria: Interest, Challenge, Novelty, Urgency (ICNU).
That difference in motivators makes it likely that people with ADHD will constantly jump between different tasks, which over time builds up into becoming an expert at learning new things, and a broad knowledge about many things within their domain.
After reading through some of the job descriptions, I get an impression that there's a disconnect between what job posters want and what an actual wildcard might be. Can't quite put my finger on it, but the following doesn't really feel like they're looking for someone potentially chaotic.
> Manage products from concept to design, requirements, testing, pricing, promotion, and support.
> Prioritize thousands of bugs and feature requests using a ruthless focus on both quantitative and qualitative criteria towards defined goals
> 5+ years of SaaS product management experience working within the financial sector
I get that's for a Senior position, but let's be real, they're looking for someone with specific skills in a specific domain that have been applied in a somewhat linear fashion for years. Is my impression off?
Your FAQ describes someone who might be doing a tradeshow one week, while probably not also being responsible for programming some feature, nor do they have unlimited time and energy. But those job postings read like they just want someone to be responsible for everything all the time, because everything is arbitrarily urgent, and manage it well.
I don't know quite what I'd expect to see, maybe I'm just too far gone from being in a job, but I feel like just short term contracting might be the thing to do.
Absolutely, I didn't mean to be insulting, just provide some feedback as someone who could really find it useful. On the surface, it just seems like a job board with a checkbox for wildcard and an Faq, but how do you model what a wildcard job is exactly?
This semester I had the opportunity to work with a classmate with Asperger's syndrome.
It has been a very bad experience to say the least. In meetings he screams and berates us, gets very angry and easily frustrated when things are not done the way he wants to do them, even when the rest of the group has unanimously decided to do them a certain way. One time he started watching a video in the middle of the meeting and screamed at us to shut up every time we tried to talk because he couldn't listen to his video.
My university or department has had absolutely no contact with me or any member of my group to guide us on how to work with a neurodivergent classmate, on how to make the group and project work. It has been a very tiring experience. Can anybody give me any advice on how to try to better the situation? How to make the environment better for him and my group?
Let me preface this comment... I have worked a number of years with autistic and "nEuRoDiVeRsE pEoPle". All considered: Fuck them and their antics. If I could send them to a concentration camp..... they would already be gassed. I'm not fucking kidding.
(I'm on the spectrum as well) We do well with rules. If you have a concrete set of rules of conduct, give it to him, and warn him when he violates them. If he keeps screaming, watching videos during meetings, etc. then loop in HR to get him fired. Being autistic isn't an excuse to be an asshole, it just means we need help on social cues and stuff.
I would send an email to the disability service at your university highlighting his likely need for support. He isn't going to be able to complete university without it.
This is true only if the school administrators are cowards. The law doesn't say that people on the spectrum can behave abusively to their peers. It doesn't say they can't be fired or expelled or otherwise removed for such behavior. It certainly doesn't say that they can't have the rules explained to them as a gentler step prior to removal. School administrators being afraid to do anything involving someone like this is cowardice that we shouldn't excuse.
Fortunately it's easy to deal with cowards. You just have to make them as afraid of you as they are of him. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know the laws for a classroom situation, but in a workplace I think you'd have grounds to sue. This other student is creating a hostile environment, and they are perpetuating that by forcing you to work with him without taking corrective action. If I'm remembering my workplace harassment training correctly, not only can the company be liable but also the manager in question individually. They can't afford to ignore such complaints.
I think as a first step, I would take the grandparent's suggestions for dealing directly with the other student. If that doesn't work—promptly—get your complaints to the school in writing with the complete history. If they don't address the problem promptly, threaten to sue. They'll back down. It probably doesn't even matter what the law actually says. Just a remotely plausible, explicit threat of a lawsuit will win over the implicit threat they feel when dealing with someone in a protected class and motivate them to find a solution that avoids anyone suing them.
> This is true only if the school administrators are cowards. The law doesn't say...
It doesn't matter what the law says.
"Autism-spectrum student sues [college] for discrimination" is a bad headline, even if the school was 100% justified.
It's also expensive to fight in court.
> School administrators being afraid to do anything involving someone like this is cowardice that we shouldn't excuse.
It's more an issue with the massive and insane costs of litigation.
> I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know the laws for a classroom situation, but in a workplace I think you'd have grounds to sue.
Workplaces have different protections than classrooms do.
Also, no one is saying the other students can't sue the student who's on the spectrum. But it's not something the university is likely to push themselves.
You're making my point with every sentence. The University doesn't want headlines like "U of WTF condones classroom screaming" or "Student Sues U for Abusive Workgroup". When it comes down to it, the other student's parents likely don't want his name and behavior in any of these stories either. Bad for job prospects. The person acting with integrity is the one with the least to fear from press or the legal system.
Again, I'd first try explaining the rules to the other student as another commenter suggested. But the University has a responsibility to step in if that doesn't work. I would remind them they have more to fear from failing to act than from acting properly. I likely wouldn't actually sue—as another commenter said, students don't want to deal with that. A private threat is likely enough, and certainly a story in the press would do it.
No, I'm not. You're treating your own ethics as being universal and absolute. I don't agree with all of your implied premises.
In a vacuum, defending the harassed students would be ethical. But it isn't a vacuum, and the university has a responsibility not to burn cash (or brand value) on lengthy legal battles that only affect a small minority of students. A large public school in the US could harm literally 100,000+ people (with degrees completed or in progress) just to spare a few students from an unpleasant project.
> But the University has a responsibility to step in if that doesn't work.
Yes, they do. That's a much milder assertion than your original one. "Stepping in" does not immediately mean a lawsuit, disciplinary action, or expulsion. It probably means the professor would just ask the student to complete the project alone.
Please don't put words in my mouth. I made the point that they are not legally prevented from even expulsion, but I never said that should be their first step. There are plenty of ways of solving the problem. Their current approach, denial, isn't one of them.
Rule #1: To reinforce group cohesion and identify who is truly "one of us" and who is an interloper, the rules are subject to change at any time without prior notice or approval.
(Also on the spectrum) Rules might help, but the behaviour op described sounds like something much more complex. Almost as if they have experienced some trauma.
With guidance and learning we can cooperate and work well with people.
If you really want to continue working with him (as opposed to just leaving) you'll probably just have to stop being sensitive to the screaming and berating. He has a condition, you can either excuse yourself or just have a stronger personality. You can have fun with it, yell back but don't bully.
Some people believe their presence on the spectrum makes them superior to people who are not on the spectrum. They feel entitled to a social standing that lets them abuse others without consequence.
I can't leave. The groups were formed at the start of the semester by the professor so those are the groups that are going to last until the end of it. That's why I'm asking for advice on how to better deal with the situation.
Have you talked to your professor about it at all? That is your first avenue. Had to do this multiple times in my degree, simply because some group mates are shitty.
Tell him that behaviour is unacceptable. Don’t mince your words, be explicit and direct. Loop in HR/advisor/whichever higher ups and let them know if the behaviour continues. You don’t have to tolerate yelling, berating, mid-meeting video watching from anyone.
If he’s unwilling to stop that behaviour or unwilling to try cooperate, make sure higher ups know. There’s not much you can do if he just refuses to cooperate (just like anyone else).
If he IS willing to try cooperate, asking him directly (or asking HR/advisors/etc to mediate a discussion) about what he needs to effectively cooperate/what isn’t working could help you find ways of working together. For example, if he’s feeling that his ideas aren’t being heard/discussed because he doesn’t quite know how to interject/take part in a group discussion could be alleviated by making sure to ask him for input explicitly during group discussions. Not saying that’s the case or a perfect solution, and that frustration certainly doesn’t justify unacceptable behaviour, but yeah that kind of thing might help?
Hope that gives you some ideas. Shitty group members of all stripes are a frustrating experience. Good luck!
Thank you for your advice. I agree that group dynamics are most likely very hard and can be super frustrating for him, and maybe that causes his disruptive behaviour.
As an Autistic person, thanks for going to the effort of trying to understand this dude and find a solution. It mostly sounds like he’s just an arsehole, and it shouldn’t be your responsibility to teach him how to work in a group or communicate needs he might have, so yeah, thanks for making the effort.
Someone on the team needs to be the leader (not them) and set ground rules. Be stern and direct. If they act out like that, don’t get upset and calmly ask them to either corporate or you’ll need them to leave. Ask their input often, but don’t let them steer the meetings. If they have an issue with how things are done look for a middle ground or explain why your method is the method you’re using without belittling their opinion. Be direct, don’t sugar coat things, don’t assume they will read between the lines, and try to understand that they are different than you.
I am neurodivergent and I have been on both sides of this. It’s hard for everyone involved.
From the start it seems that they felt unheard and unwanted so they are frustrated and feel stuck. Doing what I mentioned above can help repair this relationship.
Thank you for your input. I'll be more direct when issues arise and have a set of rules for conduct ready. Hopefuly you're right about repairing the relationship.
It is bizarre that our society now seems to reject entirely the concept of standards. If you scream at people like a crazy person then you can't go to college, full stop. Sorry, you're severely disabled and you need help you don't belong in college. Colleges are happy to collect the government subsidized tuition I guess.
If I became so disabled that I couldn't function in a social setting then please just end me. I don't want to be some vegetable that someone else needs to look after 24/7. I want to be productive, I want to be liked, I want to be free.
Whatever you are describing does not fill any of those fields. At that point I'd be complete burden and I wouldn't want that on anyone.
The attitude of wanting to be charge of your life and not a burden to others around you? Or did I just completely misunderstand what you tried to say? Because that doesn't make any sense at all.
You didn't say you want to be in charge of your life and not a burden. You said you'd rather want to be dead than a "burden" to others.
The way relationships especially with family works is that they'd usually rather have you be "a burden" than dead.
Also it is very hard not to project that attitude on other people who would be "a burden to others". It is hard for them not to think you want them dead or at least find them extremely worthless.
As someone who recently had to watch a family member completely deteriorate I am comfortable that mixed in with the grief was relief. Of course I would rather have them back, but knowing the condition they were in my selfishness isn't fair towards them and if anything their passing showed me that if possible I want to go out on my own terms from my two standing feet instead of bed ridden and hospitalized.
So I hope what you are saying is that this "deterioration" was genuine suffering like disease and pain, and not just some behavior or social state you believed to be burdensome on you.
But that just isn't the same. Wishing somebody to die - because of intense and hopeless suffering - is in my opinion neither something to be judged nor to be enthusiastically welcomed. I think we should ideally neither wish suffering nor death to anyone. These can become conflicting goals, when death seems to be the only relief from the suffering. As a veterinary student I have killed animals to relieve them from suffering. Veterinary professionals have some of the highest suicide rates in many countries, one suspected reason being compassion fatigue. The only way I see to avoid the emotional consequences is to try and not "wish" either death nor prolonged suffering.
There are a lot of reasons for "being a burden" that don't involve nearly as much suffering and don't instill a will to die in people. Accepting that you sometimes (and almost inevitably, with age) you become a burden to society is hard. But the perception of "burden" often ignores intangible aspects. Not everyone who "is a burden" feels depressed about it, and I don't believe all of them to be selfish.
That is why I believe "I'd rather die than be a burden" is a burden to oneself and others.
I can understand this and I respect your opinion. In my view, "not communicating and needing help 24/7" would imply a suffering distinct from just the feeling of helplessness or the desire not to be a burden. Such suffering does often lead to a wish to die, and one which may be distinct from the more psychotic wish to die ("suicidal ideation"). The latter is unfortunately much more common, and research shows it is not caused by circumstances but rather by psychiatric condition like depression. Unemployment for example, does not seem to cause suicide attempts, statistically, even though one might think there should be a correlation.
Also, I'd be careful to assume to know what I'd be feeling when I would be in such a situation. I'd be hesitant of my ability to judge for others if they'd rather have me dead, and I'd hope I would have serious misgivings in asking or wishing them to take steps in that direction.
In these things I like to apply concepts from Buddhist philosophy. Desire leads to suffering, where "desire" is more precisely defined as "wishing something that is wouldn't". Also, causing suffering or death does damage to the Karma, in Buddhist teachings. For me, this is reflected in personal experience and even some scientific findings that hurting people or even animals, does some damage to the psyche, if only in the process of getting numb to such feelings.
With the amount of effort and condescension you put into these comments picking apart a simple sentiment of "that would totally suck," it seems apparent that one thing you absolutely do not do is respect their opinion.
I've met plenty of NT people who have got too drunk or emotional in social settings and need support from others to stop making a scene. Is that functional behavior? Should they end themselves?
Your comment is very nearsighted and for some reason compares inability to "function" in a social setting with being "some vegetable" who is in a coma? What are you even talking about?
It's funny how some of those things are just relative. I've been in a group at university where everyone else began a meeting by talking about the latest sports updates while I just waited. Nobody gave me any guidance on how to deal with sports fans as teammates. I've also been shouted at and sworn at by otherwise normal classmates. This stuff is usually treated as acceptable when the higher social status people approve of it and not acceptable when they don't.
I've had similar experiences. It's exhausting. Can't treat them the same way they treat us because of power differences. We're okay as long as we're accomodating them, if we try to do things differently we get excluded. Really easy to get frustrated and adversarial in situations like these.
Yeah, it sucks. We're supposed to make an effort to like the stuff they like. Not only do they not do the same for us, we're excluded if we don't nurture this common touch.
That's an interesting point, and I agree. But the difference is, I have experience working with difficult and disrespectful people in group projects who are neurotypical. I know how to deal with them and how to resolve the issues that most commonly arise.
But in this case I have absolutely zero knowledge or experience dealing with a similar situation but with a neurodivergent person. It's a completely new thing that I've never had to deal with. That's why I'm asking for advice.
Sure. You're used to being able to manage people so it's a probably a bit of a shock when you can't. My personal perspective is more of the opposite and your complaint may have touched a bit of a nerve. Your experience is fairly normal to me but I see it as my own lack of ability, not anybody else's responsibility for helping me to manage those angry/selfish/etc. people. I would like it if there was some authority that managed them for me, but that never works in practice because people can outsmart the system.
It does sound a bit like ass-perger syndrome, pardon the pun. While that condition certainly isn't fun for him, either, I think this is not just an issue with group dynamics or interpersonal issues, but rather involves self regulation and a general attitude. Even people on the spectrum can somewhat improve those.
Maybe he behaves the way he does because there are no consequences? Like if he watches a video and screams at you to be silent, maybe snatch his device away? And then if he screams at you you all scream back at him. And if he gets violent trying to get his device back you get violent back (but only as much as needed to counteract his aggression).
But you probably want to plan this out with the other people in the group.
This is fantastic. Some of those accommodations are great. I’m really hopeful that this program can be a success for all involved.
However, I wish google would partner with Autistic self-advocacy orgs or orgs that don’t support harming us, like ASAN (Autistic Self Advocacy Network) or any of the bigger orgs ASAN recommend. No, the Autistic community doesn’t always agree on things, but I think we can agree that as the saying goes, nothing about us without us.
The Els org mentioned has a couple of Autistic advisory board members, which is just slightly better than none, so I’ll give them that. However, they base their schools on the inherently harmful ABA, they use the puzzle piece and “person first” language to remind each other Autistic people are in fact people, and some of their staff work with eugenics org Autism Speaks. All of those things are the antithesis of understanding and advocating for Autistic people imo. (NB: some Autistics like the puzzle piece or pf language, as is their right)
I can’t find any useful information on the Stanford program. I want to know if there are any Autistic or otherwise neurodiverse people involved and what the org supports.
I find it interesting that google partnered with this Els org. It’s like they did enough research to know that Autism Speaks is unequivocally evil (and are of the belief that Autistic folks should either be warehoused, or should be ‘fixed’ by ABA abuse thus require no supports/accommodations at all as adults, so they wouldn’t want to be part of this program anyway, but I digress) so google found an org just inoffensive enough at first glance to use instead. I might be reading too much into it, but I’m really curious why they chose that org.
I know google and other companies with similar programs aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. I just hope that the Autistic people involved really benefit and don’t end up more exploited than their allistic (not Autistic) colleagues. Starting to address some of the complex issues why most of us don’t/can’t work is a great start and could really improve some people’s lives.
I get it, but I am wary of this brewing corporate FETISHISATION of 'neurodivergence'. The UK government held a similar recruitment scheme a year ago[1] - headed by Dominic Cummings - which is no surprise since he is very much in touch with this culture. Of course, he uses SFW synonyms of mental ailments: weirdos, oddballs, wild-cards, etc. It's almost as if these people recently watched Rain Man (1988).
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 277 ms ] threadAs someone on the spectrum myself, I always dreaded job interviews. I would try to get as much information on what the interview would entail as well as the atmosphere and other specifics so I could mentally prepare myself beforehand and give myself a better chance to show my best side. The example they provided of performing an interview in text through a google doc rather than over the phone really hits home for me, I feel like I am much better able to communicate my ideas through written mediums than verbally.
I feel overall there is a lot of untapped talent in the neurodiverse community that is passed over due to some of these barriers in effective communication, so I'm always glad to see companies take initiatives like this.
I’m on the spectrum as well and interviews are a bit of a mixed bag for me. I hate everything around it, going to a new, unknown location, not knowing exactly where you end up, meeting new people, etc.
The interviews themselves, however, are fine. I basically get to talk about my special interest with people who are presumably equally knowledgable about the subject as I am. I usually enjoy them.
As small companies tend to grow, the trick is to get out in time. At a previous job the company grew to over 150 and that wasn’t healthy for me. I should have bailed at around 75.
(no offence intended!)
The bummer is, I think, most companies just do not give a shit about accommodating anyone. If you cannot fit their mold, they'll just find someone who can. I'm hopeful that more companies will deploy interview processes to bring out the best in their candidates, rather than processes that will specifically weed out everyone but the specific archetype of person a given interview accommodates.
I would say, if a person is able to write clearly and thoughtfully, and is competent at their role, they're very well suited for lots of jobs that aren't sales related. The meritocracy that gets touted so frequently (but is actually never upheld) should reward those that are competent at their advertised skills, right? If you're a really good programmer you should be able to find employment as a programmer, right?
Thanks for clarifying!
I can see how it'd be a major challenge to be deaf or bad at speaking at an in-person job where everyone else is speaking, though.
I'm much better at writing than speaking, myself, and find it much easier to convey complex ideas in writing (real-time or asynchronously). Especially writing vs. speaking through a conference app like Teams, where the latency can sometimes make things awkward.
There is going to be a huge advantage for companies that realize this. Massive untapped demand for jobs that recognize different ways of getting work done.
I wrote a blog post (https://beta.wildcardpeople.com/what-is-a-wildcard-person) about how people with ADHD tend to do work, and I'm finding random people on LinkedIn putting it right in their bio.
The distinction comes when you experience those symptoms constantly and to such an extreme that it becomes debilitating - to such an extreme that in order to cope, you have to structure your whole life around it.
In the context of that blog post, it goes from "yes this sounds like me" to "I need almost everything on this list or I will burnout and quit within 6 months".
- Unlikely to finish things, especially to a high standard
- Unpredictable, jumping between being a 10x developer and a detriment to the team for unknown reasons
- Forgetful, won't follow through on things and won't even remember it was a thing they were meant to be doing
- Generally quite susceptible to mood swings
However, I will say that many of the things that those downsides will be far more prevalent in a traditional workplace than in one that read this post and took it on board. If you're providing varied work, consistent feedback, and low expectations (in terms of quality, not volume), then you won't really see those issues arise much.
If they open up this stuff, it’ll be a win-win for Google and sufficiently neurodivergent people.
Reminds me of that old joke about Bill Gates deciding that the best way to help humanity was to impose a corporate tax via MS Office and then use that to build toilets in Africa.
[1] - coaching, ongoing support for them and teammates once joining, offer extended time, provide questions in advance, conduct interview in writing
One thing people always forget is that these sort of accommodations exist in the beginning for one group, but everyone benefits and that's how we move forward. Perfect example of this are ramps, which originally existed for those who were physically handicapped.
I currently have one neurodiverse (more than one condition) employee who has remained at the same career level for nearly a decade because they don't meet the criteria for the next level. They have expressed interest in advancing though. I don't know how to handle it. I can't promote them, as the next level role has much more responsibility and accountability, and they just aren't there yet. I just give them nice bonuses and salary bumps, but eventually it'll hit a limit for their job level and a higher-up will need to be involved.
I've reached out to internal resources I was pointed to, but it's all very informal and difficult to find someone qualified to answer fairly specific questions. I've pointed the employee to resources as well, but one of their conditions kind of hampers their ability following through on vague directions.
I feel frustrated because they're a good employee, but I've yet to find useful guidance on helping them get to where they want to be.
Demotion is always an option if things don't work out.
Asking for an employee's medical records is forbidden. Asking an employee to undergo a medical exam is forbidden. Asking questions about the employee's health or disabilities during the interview process is forbidden. See https://www.eeoc.gov/pre-employment-inquiries-and-medical-qu....
With all that said, what prevents anybody from saying "I don't feel comfortable taking a phone call" or "I need extra time for this" without actually being autistic? Then the disadvantage they claim to be removing hasn't actually gone anywhere.
Some people might exhibit behaviors that are problematic in a professional environment. To go into a hiring decision without that information would be a mistake, in my opinion.
I'm not so sure it applies in the context of a remote SWE.
It absolutely applies and is important.
I'm very skeptical that someone who's likely to sexually harass people will be any more likely to exhibit those signs in a voice or in-person conversation than in a written conversation. Someone trying to hide it will probably successfully hide it across all three forms of communication.
If a candidate says something during a phone call that makes the interviewer uncomfortable or have reservations, that's absolutely a legitimate reason not to hire someone.
Certainly, if someone were to say something sexist or racist in an interview, that would be a red flag. But I doubt most people would do that. So maybe you are able to weed some people out, but probably not very effectively, and you will likely still have to have other mitigations in place. In additions, you will have "false positives" in the form of people being misread. For example, they could be saying something genuinely and the interviewer thinks they are lying or being sarcastic. Are the false positives worth the true positives? I don't know. That's why I would want to see actual evidence.
> In additions, you will have "false positives" in the form of people being misread. For example, they could be saying something genuinely and the interviewer thinks they are lying or being sarcastic.
Text alone makes this far more ambiguous. You're going to have _way_ more trouble gauging someone's actual intent via words alone than vs words + tone of voice.
That's the point I was making. Tone of voice is a ton of information. Don't take my word for it, feel free to Google it and you will find pages and pages outlining just how important it is.
I don't think it'd make sense to ask a question like "how do you feel about sexual harassment in the workplace?", but if hypothetically such a question were asked, I also doubt even in that case that tone of voice would uncover a sexual harasser in a way that writing wouldn't.
Voice tone does provide a lot of information, but I don't see how it's related to these points.
Ramps instead of stairs? Necessary for wheelchairs, but good for elderly knees and people temporarily on crutches or roller scooters.
Keyboard of your choice? Necessary if you have low motor control, still good for preventing people from getting RSIs.
Interview in writing instead of via voice? Guess what: benefits Deaf people, those who are hard of hearing, and people who have difficulty speaking.
It’s stupid to rule out accommodations because people might cheat. You shouldn’t punish the innocent majority for the transgressions of the guilty minority.
Have you stopped to think about just how much stuff we have to do and put up with as a society because a small number of people are dishonest?
We have to have IDs, because people might lie about who they are.
We have to have an entire (very expensive) criminal justice system because people might commit crimes.
We have to have locks on the doors to our homes and vehicles, because people might trespass.
We have to have cashiers and overly-complicated automated registers (with someone watching) because people might not want to pay for everything that they are taking out of a store.
You show up at a closing for a new home, they want a cashier's check, not your personal one. Why? You might not actually be good for the money. Plus they do all the title work.
Every bank has a giant safe. Every country has some weapons of war.
It's very idealistic to say "well only a few people will cheat so it's fine." It isn't, and it never has been.
But most of us don't have metal bars over our homes' windows. There's a middle ground of making bad behavior mildly inconvenient.
Also, all of your examples are precautions born from experience. There have been burglars and shoplifters for centuries, so it makes sense to have some preventions. When deciding whether to try something new, it can be counterproductive to focus a lot on preventing cheating. I'd suggest seeing if it ever becomes a problem worth addressing.
You haven't made any compelling argument to support why a job interview would be different in that regard.
With some imagination you can build systems that handle it without punishing minorities. To do otherwise just shows a lack of imagination and compassion.
Personally I think we can do better, and that is enough of a reason.
> We have to have IDs, because people might lie about who they are.
Not every country makes these mandatory. Additionally there usage is usually directly tied to risk associated with someone lying. I don’t need to prove who I am every time I sign up to a new service.
I would argue the risk of large numbers of people cheating this specific interview step is quite low.
> We have to have an entire (very expensive) criminal justice system because people might commit crimes.
Yes, a system designed to deliver justice, not punishment. In most countries that means a systems that takes extreme measures to avoid punishing the innocent, even if it means allowing some guilty to go free. A perfect example of what I mean about not punishing the innocent minority.
> We have to have locks on the doors to our homes and vehicles, because people might trespass.
People can choose not to use these. No one compels me to lock my front door, it might be unwise, but I’m not going to be denied employment because of it.
> We have to have cashiers and overly-complicated automated registers (with someone watching) because people might not want to pay for everything that they are taking out of a store.
How do these systems punish the innocent? Apart from the occasional complaint about the wrong item in the bagging area? They’ve certainly never prevented me from buying groceries.
> You show up at a closing for a new home, they want a cashier's check, not your personal one. Why? You might not actually be good for the money. Plus they do all the title work.
Again risk weighted. Also in my country we just do instant bank transfers. None of this old fashioned paper gubbins.
> Every bank has a giant safe. Every country has some weapons of war.
Again all of these things are heavily risk weighted, and cause little to no impediment to innocent parties. I’ve certainly never needed to manually open the vault at my local bank. As for war, the US is the king of defence spending.
> It's very idealistic to say "well only a few people will cheat so it's fine." It isn't, and it never has been.
It’s perfectly fine to say this. The entire world is built in the premises that a small amount of crime will always happen, and systems should be robust to it. There’s no point spending ludicrous resources trying to prevent a minuscule amount of crime. Everything is, and should be, risk weighted.
Just like when you build a distributed system you expect parts to misbehave or fail. Why would you expect any human based system to be any different?
If we have an interview system that works for the vast majority of people, why do we need to introduce risk by substantially changing it to help very few people?
If cheating becomes possible to do easily, your system has disadvantaged people who are honest and refuse to cheat. What are you going to do to ensure that people who are honest are not discriminated against for their honesty?
Information technology is already home to a bunch of neurodivergent people. You run into them _way_ more often in IT than you do in just about any other line of work. Do they really need more help getting tech jobs?
I suppose at some point, cheaters will find a way to cheat, and if they pass the interview but suck you just have to fire them.
Your comparison also comes off a bit disingenuous. They're talking about interview accommodations like "providing questions in advance" and "extended interview time".
One example could be that an interviewee inappropriately stares at a woman or makes an inappropriate remark while on-campus. You wouldn't see that if the entire interview were conducted only via Google Docs.
How many interviews pass or fail because of that situation vs failing because of running out of time? 0
Males and females will apply. Holding back women because you fear men will look the wrong way seems unfair and needless.
I assume most of those types of people are probably able to be on best behaviour for a day. I imagine most of them can pass an interview and then be creepy later.
Accommodations just provide optionality, and let’s people choose the approach that suites them best. Rather than assuming that you can fairly apply some rigid standardised test on people, and expect it to accurately measure individuals. There’s plenty of data, and some pretty basic stats, which show this doesn’t work.
Proving extra time provides almost no advantage to anyone. Either you can answer the questions well, or you can’t. The amount of time it takes to do isn’t very relevant, so taking more time isn’t an advantage.
Providing questions in advance also isn’t an advantage. Again you can either answer them well or not. If you’re worried about people cheating by passing the questions around, then only provide them an hour or two in advanced, or only once they’re onsite.
If you’re interview process can be fooled by giving people more time, or advanced notice, then quite frankly it’s not a very good interview process.
... and? A office that's accessable only by ladder has a lot of leg pressure, and providing wheelchair ramps would help many employees considerably too, regardless of whether they're wheelchair-bound.
Time pressure is directly tied to performance.
Sometimes, stuff breaks and wouldn't it be great if it got fixed in half an hour instead of four hours?
Projects sometimes have deadlines.
You are not talking about an accommodation made for something unrelated to the job, here. This is some gold-level mental gymnastics.
Which means tight interview deadlines artificially constrain your applicant pool, forcing you to pay higher wages. Beyond legal requirements, that’s why it’s a good idea to only care about what matters for the actual job.
Why do you assume that all interviews are structured that way? They aren't. I have interviewed with Google and that was not how most of my interview process was conducted.
The core argument is really simple. Ideal teams don’t consist of 10 identical clones of the ideal worker allowing the team to work 10x as fast. They consist of multiple different skills that allow teams to finish complex tasks more than 10x as efficiently as any one person on the team could. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
If that's happening constantly, you should find a new job. That's a major red flag. Incidents should be rare at any well run org.
Sure sometimes incidents happen and someone has to deal with them. At most companies that is a pretty rare occurance (unless you're on some incident team). When it does happen, different team members have different skills dealing with them - and that's ok for a rare part of the job. Additionally, for longer incidents, often the person with a slow ramp up but better understanding is more useful than the person who jumps right in without understanding. A sure way to make things worse is to panic and try to fix things without understanding what happened well enough.
(Speaking as someone who has been involved in incident response in various jobs)
Giving more time doesn't give you an advantage, because the correct answer isn't what gets you points.
I fail to see how creating artificial time pressure makes your interview process better at finding good candidates. It results in an environment that isn't even vaguely like actual work conditions.
Whether the time pressure is explicitly mentioned, it is clear (to me) that there is an implicit expectation that the faster you answer the question, the better, all other things being equal.
I don't want to give the impression that I think the current standard of software engineering interviews are perfect, so if you think it can be improved, please tell me how.
How about you judge them on the quality of their answers? Is giving a long more detailed and nuanced answer a bad thing?
Nobody is asking an interviewee to have a full product prototype ready for demo inside an hour. What they do is present some problem to you and ask you to reason through it.
Being able to work out pitfalls in a design early, rather than several weeks in, saves a lot of time and money.
So in short, yes. It is that simple.
And a sandpile is made up of a bunch of grains of sand. [0] It's identically disingenuous to suggest that such a difference in quantity does not manifest a difference in quality.
I don't think your point is necessarily a bad one, but you're leaving a lot of opportunity for people to dismis it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox
> It's identically disingenuous to suggest that such a difference in quantity does not manifest a difference in quality.
Huh? I specifically addressed that when I stated that "Nobody is asking an interviewee to have a full product prototype ready for demo inside an hour."
Are we assuming that the interviewer is an idiot who has no concept of time? That the interviewee only has some small amount of time to work through the problem they have posed, or answer questions?
If your interview process is an hour, then you're comparing a bunch of candidates who all had an hour. It's demonstrative of what knowledge you are bringing to the table and how you can work through problems. It's all extrapolation.
No, it isn't perfect. But if you find me a system that is, I've got a billion dollars for you in my pocket.
> you're leaving a lot of opportunity for people to dismis it.
Frankly, I don't care if people dismiss it. The people who dismiss are not here to engage in thoughtful conversation and aren't my target audience, anyway.
Maybe in a widget factory. Programmers have various skill levels. I'd prefer to hire somebody who takes twice as long to complete a task, if they're taking that time to ensure that it won't cause problems downstream or in edge cases. Fast & sloppy programmers who maximize a commits per hour metric are the worst.
That's a strawman. You metric of "job done" is "ensuring that it won't cause problems downstream or in edge case". Fast & sloppy programmers are not fast, as they didn't achieve your metric of job done. Thus you actually prefer fast programmers to slower ones.
Just because someone can have high productivity for a short burst doesn't mean they can sustain it, or that they can even sustain moderate productivity over a long period of time.
It's a bit like concluding that a drag car is clearly the best car because it can cover 1km the quickest, and ignoring the fact that it would take hours for it cover 3km because its engine needs to be rebuilt every 1km.
I think the worry is candidates can quickly look up answers and build up a conversation around it right before the interview. Even if they couldn't get to the complete answer ahead of time, enough grok'ing on the specific problem statement and possible solutioning could show an interview enough signal to give them a pass.
Yes, this will largely be abused by people who don't need it. Just look at how many students malinger for Adderall scripts or extra time on exams -- it's practically endemic at ivy leagues now.
Disability parking permits are another one that have shocked me at how common abuse of them is in large cities like Toronto. Essentially anytime resources are constrained and an environment is high pressure, these services inevitably see widespread misuse.
High priority low income housing is another area that genuinely shocked me. I had so many clients desperate for housing that they would falsely claim to be high-priority (victims of abuse or terminally ill) it was terrible to see.
The unpopular truth is that these systems are vulnerable to fraud and it absolutely harms people who need them most. HOWEVER, what is the alternative?
Would you suggest we medically validate and police applications?
I've seen that approach taken and it's also a hot mess. It presents barriers not just for people defrauding the system, but the disabled that struggle to navigate the system as well.
I don't know the solution to these issues and it's one of the reasons I got the fuck out of social work as soon as I could.
Options provided for equality and equity are not supposed to ease requirements for a subset of people, but ensure that their evaluation doesn’t punish or discount them.
"I need extra time for my interview" and "I'm uncomfortable with a phone call" sounds like a very easy way to get third party help without anybody being the wiser.
And again, that flies in the face of their attempt to actually level the playing field.
Hiring people who are good at their jobs, but may be different in a social setting can be a way of indirectly hiring people on the spectrum. If you have many extroverted employees, hiring more introverted people will inevitably lead to hiring people on the spectrum.
How do you judge this? Well, personality tests are pretty common already, they can absolutely show traits that are more common in people with autism. Also, an interview can tell you a lot about a person.
I don't believe there is any way to create and vet a "100% bias-free guaranteed" interview process.
That said, our industry does have a reputation for being especially unwelcoming to women. It would be a shame if a candidate raised red flags and those flags went undetected or ignored in an attempt to be "inclusive".
One lesson that stuck with me was the Houston Rockets GM putting some barriers around how emotional judgments were allowed to influence decisions. Small rules like “don’t give players nicknames” or just giving less weight to personal interviews were good experiments in how to keep screenings more objective. We don’t have the granularity or measurability of new hire data as NBA offices do, but I think these concepts are still useful.
Astronaut 1: You mean... our work culture is conducive to groupthink?
Astronaut 2: * points gun * Always has been...
Were these studies ever replicated? I think diversity is useful if you have diverse clients, but if clients have a monoculture, then trying to mirror that with your team makes sense.
My own engineering team still uses the term "culture fit," but I recently helped refine our interviewing guidelines to make it more clear what we mean:
"We are assessing the candidate's comfort level with our processes, priorities, frequency of change, etc. Assessments should never reflect an interviewer's comfort level with any candidate's culture, personal attributes, etc."
Fortunately, the law already bans discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity, and national origin, so that covers a lot of the legitimate cases where an attribute that has no bearing on a person's ability to perform the job cannot be factored into hiring decisions.
But there is certainly a sense in which culture absolutely can have bearing on job performance. A company might have a culture of "move fast and break things," and if a candidate is not comfortable with that culture, then it would be to their (and the employer's) benefit to know ahead of time whether the job would be a good fit for them.
Whether it could impact performance is an interesting thing I hadn't considered, though. I suppose if a thing is out of one's control (i.e., the luck of what you're born into), we make it off-limits unless it affects job performance?
I'm thinking in terms of how the law ought to be, not interpreting how it currently is. It's tough to reason about. "You theoretically could have gotten yourself qualified for this job, but you chose not to" is how I view the ideal rationale for not giving someone a chance, but even that is very problematic to deduce.
I really like Randall Koutnik's list[0] of questions to ask your interviewer, as a good way for a candidate to assess the engineering culture of a company.
[0]https://rkoutnik.com/articles/Questions-to-ask-your-intervie...
Nothing. A small minority of people gaming the system shouldn't necessarily mean you get rid of accommodations.
That also means that depending on how this is implemented, people who aren't aware of it, too shy, undiagnosed, or don't want their diagnosis on the record everywhere may not benefit from this at all. OTOH, some of the training may improve the situation in general, even when no accommodation has been requested.
[1] https://askjan.org/articles/Job-Application-Interview-Stage-...
I don't see how supporting the individual needs of others is a problem in any context. At the end of the day a candidate still needs to pass the interview.
The point is to focus on their ability to do the actual work.
> extended interview time, providing questions in advance, or conducting the interview in writing in a Google Doc rather than verbally on a call
Like, i dont think having these things would give an advantage to most people, so why not let them have it?
Ext time - if you're doing a test in an interview that heavily depends on time you are doing it wrong imo. Lots of people get nervous and flustered during timed tests, and its totally contrived. Yes there are deadlines at work, but they're of the form you have to get this done by next week, not you have to read this document really fast and type this thing up really fast because you only have 20 min.
Doing over google doc - i think there are a lot of people who are good at social cues who would be significantly disadvantaged by this. You just cut off a major source of info on what the interviewer is looking for, as well as preventing you from making a good impression via social means (being well spoken and funny is a major advantage in most interviews).
Knowing the questions ahead of time - yeah, that might give an advantage. Sure interviewers should never ask questions that are googleable, but having time to think about it prior to the high stakes interview would probably help a lot of people. That said,why not just do this for everyone? It probably would make the interview less contrived and more like the real job.
https://blogthinkbig.com/autistic-people-software-testers
https://i.imgur.com/lMz297U.png
Open plan office - great for sales, HR, marketing and reassuring insecure managers/leaders/CEOs they have worth - not so great for people who need to concentrate hard to solve hard problems and write good code.
Maybe the workforce needs to be more inclusive of normies…
Frankly I think it's fine. It weeds out the sociopaths just in it to advance their careers seeing as they need to put in the effort. I've had a few jocks even try to mooch off me to basically give them answers.
These would great practices for any job interview, whether the interviewee is on the spectrum or not.
Providing questions in advance (behavioral at least) would make the interview process a lot better for everybody.
The possibility to answer the more involved questions in writing would also be a great plus overall.
Personally, I am terrible at studying and getting assignments done, so I like that interviews are usually self-contained and relatively short. I also really appreciate the encouragement and sense of cooperation I get from doing an interview in person rather than in text, I think it makes me perform better. Obviously not as much with zoom interviews.
But I recognize my privilege here, that my brain happens to fit the current shape of interviews! It would be great if there were other types of interviews available that fit other people as well.
If we're talking about the general workforce, instead of specifically tech fields, that would make sense.
However, even more important would be to try to give everyone a fair chance, as opposed to trying to meet some metrics which can often lead to discrimination (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/02/590346891...).
Since neurodiversity isn't one of the "popular" diversity/social justice topics, I suspect the main motivation here is to avoid missing applicants that are technically skilled and suitable, but may not do well in the interview process due to their neurodiversity.
Note can, not always does, which seems to be how it's treated.
In regards to avoiding discrimination, and giving everybody a fair chance, I don't see a system that accomplishes this besides a lottery. The job interview is fundamentally a ritual of discrimination. The entire fixation on increasing employment for a small number of "diverse" groups is mostly driven by the political strength of said groups rather than any sort of consistent moral principles.
From the population that gets a CS degree? I may be biased but think neurodiverse people prefer staying at academia if they can and would like that balance to tip off a little.
If there is something actively preventing you from being in or sticking around in a profession you want to be a part of, I'm all for breaking down those barriers, but the idea of "over-representation" seems to go in the opposite direction. It seems aimed at keeping or kicking people out.
Lots of discrimination in the past was justified with the argument that a minority group was over-represented in some field. E.g. some north american universities restricting jewish applicants all the way up until the 60s.
Automattic had (and still has) an interview process that was fully text-based via a combination of Slack, p2, and GitHub, and it really worked well for me. I didn't even speak to a person (on video) until a couple weeks into starting the job!
A completely text-based interview process works great for a variety of people: neurodiverse, people with accents/ESL, fidgety people, etc. Especially for remote companies where everyone communicates using text 90%+ of the time! I'm glad it's catching on, and I hope to see it expanded to more companies.
That was where things stood as of the DSM IV. Then the DSM V came along and lumped all of the above into a single classification of "autism spectrum disorder".
The solution? He was a master communicator. He would tell me when he was having a manic streak and took on more work. When he was going back down, he communicated that and I took on more. If he started going unresponsive, I reached out and asked, and he told me where he was and what support he needed.
Now he's doing better and found the right medication, but crivens, I've been in a lot of other group projects, and I really miss him.
Have awkward social skills and prefer working away from other people? If you're a good programmer Google won't care. Have trouble following any instructions whatsoever? You're probably out of luck.
Honestly I think it would be nice for people with schizophrenia and more serious conditions to get employment. Even if it's hard to get them to actually contribute something, for their own self-worth. But I doubt companies like Google will do much for those people without an external incentive.
My impression is that despite the perception of Google as having a very progressive and liberal culture, they are actually pretty ruthlessly capitalist and won't go out of their way to accommodate people who are ultimately detrimental. They are just being open-minded about what kinds of people they can put to use.
Can I ask you if non-neurotyptical people would fit in this picture? Aside from being capable employees, are there perhaps moments when a non-neurotyptical person could chip in with design changes?
We’re not superheroes or mutants, and everyone is different, but Autistic people can help to balance out designs in subtle ways because we are atypically balanced ourselves.
I'd guess the reason for targeting autism is there would be a disproportionate number of highly capable workers hidden in that group which would be missed by normal hiring practices. You wouldn't expect that from, say, schizophrenia or most other neurodiversities.
Someone slightly on the spectrum who's somewhat awkward in conversation but an otherwise great developer? Probably a pass, unless their conversational awkwardness makes communication difficult.
Someone further on the spectrum who has a meltdown if their daily routine is even slightly disrupted? Probably not a pass, unless that routine never crosses the path of a coworker.
Someone with untreated bipolar disorder who lashes out with little provocation at their coworkers? Fail.
Someone with an IQ of 80 who's literally incapable of coding, and would thus be total dead weight on the team? Fail.
I actually worked with a developer who said their tested IQ was in the 80s.
A person with an IQ of 80 usually has trouble functioning in society. It can be difficult to teach them concepts like alphabetization or hypotheticals. For someone with such cognitive impairments to become a software developer beggars belief.
With gap results it’s not uncommon to see 2 low areas scoring 80s and 2 high areas 120 or even 130+.
“A developer declaring a tested IQ of 80” could be a gap case and somewhere along the way the nuance got lost in translation.
Beyond that, IQ is not even predictive enough of job performance for a standard deviation to be a death sentence.
It's definitely possible for someone with IQ85 or IQ80 to be better at programming than the average IQ100 programmer, and it's not even that unlikely. Let's not overstate this.
Our occupations and interests cause us to self-segregate into cognitive strata. For the same reason you don't know many Trump voters or young earth creationists (despite the fact that they're 1/3rd of the US population), you probably don't know many dumb people (or many super-geniuses). Individual differences in cognitive ability are far greater than our personal experience indicates.
1. https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2002-hauser.pdf
Wouldn't you believe that, that's only slightly less than the general population which is at 25%, or right around what I predicted above :)
The median IQ difference between college professors and service workers is not even a full standard deviation.
Beyond that, I said average IQ100 programmer, of which there are many that can do a perfectly serviceable job in many sectors.
Individual differences in cognitive ability are great, yes, but they are not even close to being perfectly represented in IQ.
I don't know many Trump voters or young earth creationists because of where I live, but I know quite a bit of their relative equivalent where I am right now. Yes, there are a lot of differences, but I know enough young-earth-creationist and far-right engineers/stem people to know that it's not that simple.
Anyways, I think I made my point clear, IQ is not a very good predictor of job performance, you can definitely be a programmer with IQ85, and a great many are.
IQ is not the metric that people think it is. You could be above average at doing mental math and finding ways to push data, yet be under average and spatial problems, language problems, etc..., and get an IQ of 75.
It's also not that good of a test and not that predictive of actual programming ability, even if you're not being dragged down by other tests.
Different workplaces have different tolerances for people who seem unstable; for instance, if someone bursts into tears, are they pressured out? It varies.
Schizophrenia has nothing to do with psychopathy, sociopathy, multiple personalities, or anything you've seen in the movies, by the way.
No idea what you're talking about because obviously you can.
I think it's useful to define mental illness as those conditions where you can't take advantage of your rights on paper; where the proof that you are coping adequately is always and forever that you are not sharing much if anything - mostly coping with symptoms while at work is not enough.
Schizophrenia, bipolar, etc.
It's very clearly shown in this thread why these are different from conditions people are free to talk about. Most people can't imagine that someone with the above conditions can be employable, especially as a knowledge worker, whereas Aspergers/autism has become a cliche used to stereotype programmers in general.
There is no way to enforce a law that says people shall trust others regardless of their personal judgement. So there is no equalizing the privileges that some "neurodiverse" people have and others do not.
Calling it "Wildcard People" removed the gatekeeping/"medical" aspect while maintaining expectations of how these candidates end up doing their work.
https://beta.wildcardpeople.com/
In fact I just interviewed with a company today where I expressed my resistance being pigeonholed in my own words.
Speaking of being a generalist, the book "Range" by David Epstein gave me some hope.
I have seen a lot of job boards catering to various niches popping up in recently years, and they all eventually become just a regular job board that generates passive income for the creator without much curation.
Right now I've been able to speak directly with hiring managers/CEOs who are instantly on-board and "get it" after reading the blog post. My hope is that the clear messaging is actively driving away people who want to hire non-Wildcards. I make it clear on the Job Creation page that you will only receive applicants of a certain type. But that's just what I'm hoping happens. If it starts to drift away from that, I'll have to figure out how to vet employers better. I don't want people like me getting jobs that cause suffering.
I'd rather make 10x less money than compromise on the mission.
If nothing else:
> I don't want people like me getting jobs that cause suffering.
> I'd rather make 10x less money than compromise on the mission.
I feel that by saying those you have answered my questions already! :) It's quite possible that your answer is somewhere in there, too! All the best with it!
P.S. The "Why you shouldn't" section for the Pallet role is great. At least it makes me feel like it's a frank conversation about what both sides want.
ADHD people, from what I've read, are some of the most chronically underemployed, including myself. I think it's been a massive uphill battle for me as someone in programming, but who burns out easily, shows up late, and has crazy gaps on their resume. I hope you find success with this and will keep an eye on it.
Can I ask you what an Adhd-friendly job entails?
ADHD is different for everyone, but basically an ADHD-friendly job is one where "maintenance" or "routine" tasks are not an expectation. I.e. keeping API documentation up-to-date every week is not a good Wildcard task. If you need someone to do that work, don't hire a Wildcard. If you need someone to do a little bit of everything (i.e. Chief of Staff type role) then it's a better fit.
> First, neurotypical people (those without ADHD) make decisions based on three factors: Importance, Rewards, and Consequences. (e.g. I think it's important. Someone I [love, like, fear or respect] thinks it's important. Or, there are consequences and rewards
> People with ADHD, rarely, if ever, make decisions based on these things. Dodson says (and I agree wholeheartedly), that people with ADHD make decisions based on different criteria: Interest, Challenge, Novelty, Urgency (ICNU).
(https://www.oaktreecounselor.com/blog/adult-adhd-lazy)
That difference in motivators makes it likely that people with ADHD will constantly jump between different tasks, which over time builds up into becoming an expert at learning new things, and a broad knowledge about many things within their domain.
> Manage products from concept to design, requirements, testing, pricing, promotion, and support.
> Prioritize thousands of bugs and feature requests using a ruthless focus on both quantitative and qualitative criteria towards defined goals
> 5+ years of SaaS product management experience working within the financial sector
I get that's for a Senior position, but let's be real, they're looking for someone with specific skills in a specific domain that have been applied in a somewhat linear fashion for years. Is my impression off?
Your FAQ describes someone who might be doing a tradeshow one week, while probably not also being responsible for programming some feature, nor do they have unlimited time and energy. But those job postings read like they just want someone to be responsible for everything all the time, because everything is arbitrarily urgent, and manage it well.
I don't know quite what I'd expect to see, maybe I'm just too far gone from being in a job, but I feel like just short term contracting might be the thing to do.
My university or department has had absolutely no contact with me or any member of my group to guide us on how to work with a neurodivergent classmate, on how to make the group and project work. It has been a very tiring experience. Can anybody give me any advice on how to try to better the situation? How to make the environment better for him and my group?
I would send an email to the disability service at your university highlighting his likely need for support. He isn't going to be able to complete university without it.
Fortunately it's easy to deal with cowards. You just have to make them as afraid of you as they are of him. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know the laws for a classroom situation, but in a workplace I think you'd have grounds to sue. This other student is creating a hostile environment, and they are perpetuating that by forcing you to work with him without taking corrective action. If I'm remembering my workplace harassment training correctly, not only can the company be liable but also the manager in question individually. They can't afford to ignore such complaints.
I think as a first step, I would take the grandparent's suggestions for dealing directly with the other student. If that doesn't work—promptly—get your complaints to the school in writing with the complete history. If they don't address the problem promptly, threaten to sue. They'll back down. It probably doesn't even matter what the law actually says. Just a remotely plausible, explicit threat of a lawsuit will win over the implicit threat they feel when dealing with someone in a protected class and motivate them to find a solution that avoids anyone suing them.
It doesn't matter what the law says.
"Autism-spectrum student sues [college] for discrimination" is a bad headline, even if the school was 100% justified.
It's also expensive to fight in court.
> School administrators being afraid to do anything involving someone like this is cowardice that we shouldn't excuse.
It's more an issue with the massive and insane costs of litigation.
> I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know the laws for a classroom situation, but in a workplace I think you'd have grounds to sue.
Workplaces have different protections than classrooms do.
Also, no one is saying the other students can't sue the student who's on the spectrum. But it's not something the university is likely to push themselves.
Again, I'd first try explaining the rules to the other student as another commenter suggested. But the University has a responsibility to step in if that doesn't work. I would remind them they have more to fear from failing to act than from acting properly. I likely wouldn't actually sue—as another commenter said, students don't want to deal with that. A private threat is likely enough, and certainly a story in the press would do it.
No, I'm not. You're treating your own ethics as being universal and absolute. I don't agree with all of your implied premises.
In a vacuum, defending the harassed students would be ethical. But it isn't a vacuum, and the university has a responsibility not to burn cash (or brand value) on lengthy legal battles that only affect a small minority of students. A large public school in the US could harm literally 100,000+ people (with degrees completed or in progress) just to spare a few students from an unpleasant project.
> But the University has a responsibility to step in if that doesn't work.
Yes, they do. That's a much milder assertion than your original one. "Stepping in" does not immediately mean a lawsuit, disciplinary action, or expulsion. It probably means the professor would just ask the student to complete the project alone.
With guidance and learning we can cooperate and work well with people.
It’s supremacism but for neurodiversity.
If he’s unwilling to stop that behaviour or unwilling to try cooperate, make sure higher ups know. There’s not much you can do if he just refuses to cooperate (just like anyone else).
If he IS willing to try cooperate, asking him directly (or asking HR/advisors/etc to mediate a discussion) about what he needs to effectively cooperate/what isn’t working could help you find ways of working together. For example, if he’s feeling that his ideas aren’t being heard/discussed because he doesn’t quite know how to interject/take part in a group discussion could be alleviated by making sure to ask him for input explicitly during group discussions. Not saying that’s the case or a perfect solution, and that frustration certainly doesn’t justify unacceptable behaviour, but yeah that kind of thing might help?
Hope that gives you some ideas. Shitty group members of all stripes are a frustrating experience. Good luck!
I am neurodivergent and I have been on both sides of this. It’s hard for everyone involved.
From the start it seems that they felt unheard and unwanted so they are frustrated and feel stuck. Doing what I mentioned above can help repair this relationship.
Whatever you are describing does not fill any of those fields. At that point I'd be complete burden and I wouldn't want that on anyone.
The attitude of wanting to be charge of your life and not a burden to others around you? Or did I just completely misunderstand what you tried to say? Because that doesn't make any sense at all.
The way relationships especially with family works is that they'd usually rather have you be "a burden" than dead.
Also it is very hard not to project that attitude on other people who would be "a burden to others". It is hard for them not to think you want them dead or at least find them extremely worthless.
But that just isn't the same. Wishing somebody to die - because of intense and hopeless suffering - is in my opinion neither something to be judged nor to be enthusiastically welcomed. I think we should ideally neither wish suffering nor death to anyone. These can become conflicting goals, when death seems to be the only relief from the suffering. As a veterinary student I have killed animals to relieve them from suffering. Veterinary professionals have some of the highest suicide rates in many countries, one suspected reason being compassion fatigue. The only way I see to avoid the emotional consequences is to try and not "wish" either death nor prolonged suffering.
There are a lot of reasons for "being a burden" that don't involve nearly as much suffering and don't instill a will to die in people. Accepting that you sometimes (and almost inevitably, with age) you become a burden to society is hard. But the perception of "burden" often ignores intangible aspects. Not everyone who "is a burden" feels depressed about it, and I don't believe all of them to be selfish.
That is why I believe "I'd rather die than be a burden" is a burden to oneself and others.
Also, I'd be careful to assume to know what I'd be feeling when I would be in such a situation. I'd be hesitant of my ability to judge for others if they'd rather have me dead, and I'd hope I would have serious misgivings in asking or wishing them to take steps in that direction.
In these things I like to apply concepts from Buddhist philosophy. Desire leads to suffering, where "desire" is more precisely defined as "wishing something that is wouldn't". Also, causing suffering or death does damage to the Karma, in Buddhist teachings. For me, this is reflected in personal experience and even some scientific findings that hurting people or even animals, does some damage to the psyche, if only in the process of getting numb to such feelings.
Your comment is very nearsighted and for some reason compares inability to "function" in a social setting with being "some vegetable" who is in a coma? What are you even talking about?
This is more eloquently expressed here:
https://48laws-of-power.blogspot.com/2011/05/law-38-think-as...
But in this case I have absolutely zero knowledge or experience dealing with a similar situation but with a neurodivergent person. It's a completely new thing that I've never had to deal with. That's why I'm asking for advice.
But you probably want to plan this out with the other people in the group.
Don't snatch people's stuff, even temporarily, you will catch a fist, and as far as I'm concerned, justifiably so.
However, I wish google would partner with Autistic self-advocacy orgs or orgs that don’t support harming us, like ASAN (Autistic Self Advocacy Network) or any of the bigger orgs ASAN recommend. No, the Autistic community doesn’t always agree on things, but I think we can agree that as the saying goes, nothing about us without us.
The Els org mentioned has a couple of Autistic advisory board members, which is just slightly better than none, so I’ll give them that. However, they base their schools on the inherently harmful ABA, they use the puzzle piece and “person first” language to remind each other Autistic people are in fact people, and some of their staff work with eugenics org Autism Speaks. All of those things are the antithesis of understanding and advocating for Autistic people imo. (NB: some Autistics like the puzzle piece or pf language, as is their right)
I can’t find any useful information on the Stanford program. I want to know if there are any Autistic or otherwise neurodiverse people involved and what the org supports.
I find it interesting that google partnered with this Els org. It’s like they did enough research to know that Autism Speaks is unequivocally evil (and are of the belief that Autistic folks should either be warehoused, or should be ‘fixed’ by ABA abuse thus require no supports/accommodations at all as adults, so they wouldn’t want to be part of this program anyway, but I digress) so google found an org just inoffensive enough at first glance to use instead. I might be reading too much into it, but I’m really curious why they chose that org.
I know google and other companies with similar programs aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. I just hope that the Autistic people involved really benefit and don’t end up more exploited than their allistic (not Autistic) colleagues. Starting to address some of the complex issues why most of us don’t/can’t work is a great start and could really improve some people’s lives.
I prefer "Autistic person" because I'm into the whole brevity thing.
[1] https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-w...