An Office Designed for Workers with Autism

Re:An Office Designed for Workers with Autism by mruts on Friday February 22, 2019 @10:14PM (#19231355)

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.

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Re:An Office Designed for Workers with Autism by m0zg on Friday February 22, 2019 @10:41PM (#19231446)

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.

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