>> there are some personality types or people

Yes, assholes in particular are bad at being managers.

On a more serious / less sarcastic note, you seem to have a preconceived notion of what autism should look like and/or what range of behaviors it entails. There _are_ types of it that would cause one to be an exceptionally bad manager, but there is also a strong possibility (that I think you need to consider) that your manager's flaws weren't caused by autism at all. People with severe autism typically don't make it into management positions in the first place.

I consider myself to be on the spectrum. I'm never the "heart of the party" (nor do I ever feel any desire to go to parties), I find it somewhat anxiety inducing to approach people I don't know well, stuff like that, pretty mild. If it I didn't feel like it impacts my life in a negative way, I'd call this "strong introversion" or the like.

Yet I'm basically the polar opposite of what you've described in your original post (other than being hard-ass on code quality), and I've received glowing praise from my former reports. I give people guidance and autonomy, and let them be adults. And if they aren't, I give them more guidance and perhaps very slightly less autonomy. If they can't function in this set-up, we part ways. This, by the way, happened only once. The person just didn't want the job I think.

If people with severe autism don’t make it into management, isn’t it likely that the bell curve is shifted versus neurotypical people on who can be a good manager? Wouldn’t this also imply that an autistic manager is more likely to be a worse manager than a neurotypical person? (Just considering the statistical distributions).

Of course, this doesn’t have anything to do with you (according to your post, you seem like a good manager), I’m talking about the statistical distributions.

And while I understand why someone might get offended by a statement of the form: short people are slower than average at running when you are a short person who runs very fast, I am just describing the distribution (in which any individual could be an outlier), not an affirmative statement like: there does not exist an autistic person who is also a good manager.

I hear what you're saying, and I'm sorry you had to endure this. But again, unless the person had a very strong degree of autism, there's a strong possibility that they were just an asshole towards you, rather than not able to feel empathy on a more fundamental level. FWIW I have encountered plenty of socially awkward and personally unaware people, as well as more than a fair share of just plain assholes, but I have never (in 25 years in the profession) encountered anybody in a manager position so impaired that they'd turn the lives of their reports into a living hell _because of that impairment_. FWIW the worst manager I've seen was an extraverted, narcissistic psychopath.