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I wanted to post this for anyone out there who is in HR, or a parent with a child or children with autism, and some of the dilemmas they face at work. I had Steves permission to post. A number of people have replied to Steve already on another list.

Posted by: "AnEastBayGuy@aol.com" AnEastBayGuy@aol.com
Thu Oct 30, 2008 9:55 pm (PDT)

A friend suggested I contact this list to see if anyone might have some
suggestions or novel approaches to my problem. Basically, I am a very high functioning autistic person, higher functioning than a person with Asperger's syndrome.

In ways I'm pretty lucky because I have a number of the abilities associated with HFA, e.g.
logical analysis, attention to details, pattern matching, visual thinking, thinking over multiple fields,
etc, and only a few of the functional deficits, e.g. some limited empathy, somewhat atypical emotional responses, misunderstanding some social interactions, limited small talk capacity, not picking up on some social cues, etc. The HFA abilities work well in my field which is the
branch of computer science which examines human-computer interaction (HCI). Much of the time I can pass as being neurotypical unless someone knows what to look for.

Unfortunately, I can't pass all the time and the HFA deficits eventually crop up. I've been in situations where I was receiving corporate wide recognition for my work while at the same time my manager was trying to get rid of me because I was a political disaster which was requiring management time to clean up after. Because of the HFA pattern matching abilities, I can often predict when something is going to go wrong. Unfortunately, I've been written up for not being able to work with average intelligence people. This combination caused one of my managers to call me the team's Casandra. At this point people are reluctant to hire me because of a reputation for being hard to work with.

I'm actually pretty good at hearing feedback, especially when logically presented. Compliments aren't very useful to me because there's not much to do with them. I prefer hearing about problems because then there is something I can fix. I tend to get annoyed with flattery when it's not true because it is incorrect information. Unfortunately, I've found that people won't tell me when I'm doing something wrong because that open communication is not encouraged in our society. Telling
them about my autism and the importance of honest feedback doesn't seem to encourage people to be more open with me.

I've been hoping that the increased awareness of autism might help me, but I haven't found that to be happening. The major problem with HFA (though this is not true for lesser functioning autistics) is the incompatibility between how a HFA functions and how the rest of society functions. I've noticed that people are more likely to cut a person some slack if they find out that the individual is from a different culture. My thought was that people might do the same for HFA individuals.

I'm looking for help in two areas. One is how to work with HR people and managers to create work environments where I can be successful. (There have been a couple of situations where I was quite successful, but in each case there was a very fortuitous combination of people who valued my abilities and showed tolerance for my deficits.) The other area is how to find / be
considered for jobs in such a way that my reputation won't be a barrier.

Thanks for any suggestions.
Steve

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On the job with Autism