I was pretty surprised by how much time was devoted to rebutting "everyone autistic is a good engineer" when all of the quotes cited (including the infamous ppt) were claiming "every good engineer is somewhat autistic".

I don't buy that latter claim either, and it's worth talking about how the "autistic programming genius" stereotype is harmful to everyone, autistic or not, but writing an article that's centered around committing the base rate fallacy doesn't mean much of anything.

Well being somehow autistic comes as both of a blessing and a curse.

Imagine a gaussian curve compared to the average (bi modal)

Autistic curve is somehow a little centered below the «average curve» when it comes to learning, because of the sociopathic trait making them tougher for them to enter the mold.

Then this curve will be more spread than the non autisitic one: those who fail will fail harder, whereas those who make it at the end will have learned either to compensate the lack of «empathy» with observations and/or working more the raw knowledge.

For every «gifted» autistic there is at least one that failed harder than average in academic field.

A handicap is like a marathon you are given to run with a distanced point of departure: it will be tougher for you in life and you may have to work more than the others to develop your raw running skills to make it to the finish line.

People able to make it, are both still handicaped (mold adaptation) but also they over-developed skills to compensate. But they often don't complain; they finally want to be seen as normal. So they silence their pain, and probably have met people like them that failed without deserving it. Plus, they have experienced bullying and may want to make a low profile to avoid it again.

HR in Tech industry at my opinion have developed an intuition of the profile of autistic coders and are taking advantages of them.

They are weak, they fear to unionize because they fear retaliation, and they don't like how they are represented.

Most of them who believed once that computer science would be the saving path, may now be disenchanted. But like people who turned the table once, maybe they don't care thinking of the next plan to finally achieve happiness for what remains of their life.

Overcoming a handicap gives you both confidence, and doubt.

Oh! By the way, a handicap does not come from your differences, but from the look the society is having on you.

I have no doubt, being black or a women... is not making you significantly different, the handicap comes from being treated differently... especially by Human Resources.

> I can say that almost all rapists are men.

Obviously a tangent, but this strongly depends on how you define rape. Recent CDC studies find that a huge number of men report being "made to penetrate" women against their will. Most normal people would classify this (sex against your will) as rape, but the CDC only classified it as "sexual assault". Unsurprisingly, if you define men being forced to have sex with women as "not rape", then tautologically almost all rapists are men.

I have the feeling that as society moves towards true gender equality, we'll realise this problem is much less gendered than people currently assume.

I always thought sexual assault IS rape. How are they different?

Sexual assault also covers things like someone groping someone else's backside or chest in public without permission. Most people wouldn't consider those rape.

You're right that sex should be about a sober uncoerced "yes", rather than just an absence of "no", and that society needs to do a lot more to protect men. This narrow point is something that feminists and MRAs should be able to agree on. It benefits both of their groupings. The extreme end of MRA that rejects all rape statistics, and tries to suggest that rape (in all parts of the world, not just the US) has more male than female victims do great harm to this cause.

Having said that, the UK has some pretty clearly defined laws. They're written well, and are easy to understand and are not ambiguous. There are 3 laws relevant here. i) Rape ii) Assault by penetration iii) Sexual Assault. (I'm making the assumption that offences against children are different.)

Rape and Sexual Assault by Penetration are equally serious and are almost identically written, except rape requires the penetration to be done by a penis.

Women can't be rapists under UK law. Women can be perpetrators of the equally serious crime of assault by penetration. Men can be the victims of rape or assault by penetration. Men and women can be the perpetrators or victims of sexual assault.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/contents

All crimes of rape and assault by penetration are under reported by victims, and under-recorded by police. It's likely that these crimes with male victims are less reported (more under reported) (and less recorded) than these crimes with female victims.

The UK has 2 sets of crime data. The first is what police claim has been reported. (These are not seen as statistically robust because of variations in what police record). The second is the annual Crime Survey of England and Wales. These are seen as robust statistics.

Here's the reports for "Crime in England and Wales" for year ending March 2015 and year ending December 2015. Note that the sexual offences here also include offences against children. I think that's an unhelpful

http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandj...

http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandj...

The reliance on police recording, and the lack of reporting about sexual offences in CESW means that any stats the UK has for sexual offences are seen by government statisticians as being unreliable.

https://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/archive/assessment/as...

From "year ending December 2015":

> Police recorded crime figures showed an increase of 29% in all sexual offences for the year ending December 2015 compared with the previous year (up from 80,265 to 103,614; Table 10a), reaching the highest volume recorded since the introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) in April 2002 and marking the first time that the total number of offences has exceeded 100,000 in a given year. The latest rise remains among the largest year-on-year increases since the introduction of the NCRS, although it is not as steep as those seen in the years ending March, June and September 2015 (36% to 41%).

> Police recorded rape increased by 30% (to 34,741 offences) compared with the previous year, while other sexual offences increased by 29% (to 68,873 offences). Offence categories that directly relate to sexual offences against children[2] contributed 44% to the total increase in sexual offences recorded by the police.

> [2] This includes "Rape of a male/female child under 16", "Rape of a male/female child under 13", "Sexual assault on a male/female child under 13", "Sexual activity involving a child under 13/under 16" and "Abuse of children through sexual exploitation".

The charity rapecrisis leans towards gender neutral language. http://rapecrisis.org.uk/statistics.php

> Approximately 85,000 women and 12,000 men are raped in England and Wales alone every year; that's roughly 11 rapes (of adults alone) every hour

> Nearly half a million adults are sexually assaulted in England and Wales each year

With all these caveats to say that we don't really know the picture around sexual offences in England and Wales I still think it's reasonable to say that sexual offences against adults tend to be committed by men, and that while anyone can be a victim of these crimes (and certainly it's not as overwhelmingly gendered as some people suggest) the victims tend to be female.

>Women can be perpetrators of the equally serious crime of assault by penetration. Men can be the victims of rape or assault by penetration

But the point being that a woman forcing a man to have sex counts as none of those things. It only ends up in that list if she sticks something in his butt.

Sure, but the lesser (but still serious) offence of sexual assault is very clearly defined, non-gendered in law, and while subject to more under-reporting and under-recording of male victims is still mostly male perpetrators and female victims. That's unlikely to change even if every victim is accurately reported and recorded, or if the English and Welsh crime of rape is expanded to "non consensual sex".

Your use of "force" here is unhelpful. We know that juries don't convict because they feel that force is necessary for rape - thus women who don't fight back are not seen by juries to have been forced into sex.

It's much better for us to focus on consent, and to educate people that consent can't involve coercion.

That recognises the under-conviction of rape for women victims; and it also promotes the rights of men to not consent to sex and to have that recognized as the abusive crime that it is.

My aim here - just in case it's not clear - is to make it easier for men to report crimes committed against them, and to make law enforcement record those crimes, and to make juries convict those crimes. I also want to make those things happen for female victims. (And here where I use male / female I don't want to limit to a gender binary).

"Most companies favor hiring average programmers that fit the mold over "weird people" even if they are amazing at their work."

Do they? At my company we half-seriously joke when programmers are too socially well adjusted, that they won't fit in. We prefer a bit of spergy.

I don't have any idea what 'most' companies think, or if large companies even have consistent trends in their own thinking.

It often goes under "culture fit", allowing subjective biases to dominate.

Yes they do. Companies value organizational fealty above all else, and genuinely care little about productivity or talent. Sure, they talk and talk about caring for talent -- lip service necessary for various political pursuits -- but they don't actually value it. Even when an especially productive person is hired, their ability is more often talked about as a credential and used to win arguments from authority between rival political factions than to generate real business value.

Large parts of the research book Moral Mazes talk about this and various pieces of evidence for it.

Would you rather have an average programmer or one that does twice as much productive work every day but is only in the office half as many hours per day, given that they are both paid equally?

I have asked this question to people responsible for hiring and not one have answered that they would prefer the programmer doing double the amount of work. The "inconvenience" to the rest of the team that a peer is only working half as many hours is costlier than the benefit of doubled work. My conclusion: Fitting in >> Output. Maybe it is different in Silicon Valley. I don't know. :)

Also, your joke is an oxymoron. If someone is socially well adjusted then they will fit in. One key characteristic of Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is that it is hard for them to fit in and they may not even want to. You write "we prefer a bit of spergy" which probably means that your workplace has preferences for how employees should behave. Which means that there is something in your workplace to fit into which means trouble for employees with ASD.

Given a person that does absolutely nothing but working. Like not communicating unless it is work related and necessary, not partaking in joking, not going to lunches, not talking, not chit-chatting... Would that person "fit in"?

What's a "spergy"?

probably derived from Asperger ... Asperger --> Asperger-ish --> Aspberger-ey --> 'spbergery --> spergy

"Sperg" is a derogatory term for people with Aspergers. Jackmott clearly means well, but it's odd to use it in this context.

I self identify as a sperg lord. The term is hilarious to me at least (wait.. not realizing something is offensive is a sign of Aspergers?)

There's several things I self-identify as that I wouldn't want a stranger calling me.

It's a weird social balance today, between employers and employees.

It used to be that an employee needed to step up to the needs, expectations and social compatibilities of the company they're going into. Certainly that's still much of an expectation today; as you mention employers prefer average & expected, vs exceptional (including all meanings of the word), though there's a bit more two-way action mixed in especially with physical disabilities and discrimination.

But what actionable changes are mentioned in the article, and what are their tradeoffs? Dropping a degree requirement is obviously sensible that benefits pretty much everybody, and has been for a long time. But the biggest issues seem to be social and communicative processes with team development of large projects. How can things change there? Any great ideas need to be presented and gain traction and acceptance in order to be adopted in a larger team environment. So much of design and implementation is not just technical creation of stuff that works, but social championship of gaining consensus so that software works together.

In the high speed development environment of the larger commercial games industry, there's no real place for people to sit off by themselves and code some grand project solo to avoid those issues.

> Most companies favor hiring average programmers that fit the mold over "weird people" even if they are amazing at their work. If Microsoft is doing the opposite and targets autistic programmers, then good for them! I see no reason to complain about that.

Recognizing the strengths of autistic coders is great. Doing it specifically and explicitly because you think they're easier to abuse is a big problem.

I have a friend who was recently hired under Microsoft's autism hiring program, and is still really excited about it. I'm trying to decide if I should show her this article or not. It would almost certainly sour her feelings on the whole deal, and I'm holding out hope that her direct managers are more humane than this "they work like machines" motherfucker.

Why do you think Microsoft is abusing autistic programmers? It is not everyone that thinks working hard and long hours is abuse. At least not if they are compensated fairly for their time.

Life wasn't easy for Phil Katz (PKzip) either

It is difficult to judge Phil Katz's case. Phil was very very attached to his father. His fathers' passing destroyed him. His father was probably his best friend. I think that is more important that anything else in Phil's case.

> I can say that almost all rapists are men. Obviously that doesn't mean that all men are rapists, it means that the probability that a given rapist is a man is very high.

You can't determine the probability of an individual like that, at least without more data. I can say that almost all the people who contract HIV are african american or men who have sex with men, that does not mean that the probability of any given homosexual or black person having HIV is high (greater than 50%). The vast majority of men have never raped a woman and will never rape a woman.

...That is literally what he just said.

And this error is ironically an illustration of the exact problem he was commenting on: our brains tend to work by association, and implication (A implies B) tends to be interpreted as association (A implies B means A and B are associated, which means they go together, so A implies B is a way to say B implies A).

Ah, good ol' modus moron, as Angelo Margaris's "First Order Mathematical Logic" calls affirming the consequent.