> Since the ability to find a place to work is so important for any individual in our society to have a chance at a decent life, companies' social responsibilities must have them potentially sacrifice some efficiency to prevent discrimination of large groups.

I think about this often, so let me try to play the devil’s advocate: (1) why are we (the society) allowed (even encouraged) to discriminate for intelligence at almost every point in our lives (school, job, marriage)? (2) sure, companies are forbidden from discriminating because of certain characteristics, let’s take pregnancy; but why should companies be expected to shoulder that burden all by themselves? It’s more than reasonable for the society to cover the costs, as a sort of insurance policy - it probably doesn’t matter that much for big companies that can just statistically assume that a certain percentage of employees will be sick / pregnant / etc. but for a small company 1 missing employee is a big burden (even if the government covers parental leave salary)

edit: could also include "assholeness" in (1), could even blame it on neurodiversity

For (1) I think the 'intelligence' that we discriminate for in all those cases is such a vague term that it essentially means 'being good at X'.

If that is the case, obviously we discriminate by it, because we try to choose people who are better at X when trying to find people for X. Tether there is a single underlying characteristic that makes you better at X (a pre-determined IQ) that is discriminated for is perhaps harder to know. I certainly don't think that school for example advances students based purely on intelligence - discipline, even obedience, like-ability, sometimes teamwork, are all at least as important to what makes most good students successful.

Related to 2,my answer is very simple: companies don't take the full burden, at least in most countries. In general, there is a shared burden - the employee has reduced pay, the state is paying for some or most of that, and the company is forced to keep the position open for the employee when they decide to return. In my country at least, they are also free to hire a temp to fill that position for the 1 or 2 years of maternal leave.

I’m genuinely curious, why is it a company’s responsibility (in a capitalist society) to hire someone less efficient? I agree that work is fundamentally important, but how is this not the government’s responsibility like any other welfare effort? Also, are you claiming that employment is an undeniable human right like free speech or protection from harm? And if so, what happens if there’s something like another Great Depression? (For the record, I agree that neurodiverse groups should be protected like other disadvantaged groups. I also think that they have less spotlight and protections than other disadvantaged groups despite having what’s arguably more disadvantage)

Well, there are many ways to look at this. The most utilitarian is simply this: you could have a society in which people can live a decent life without having a job and without being born rich. In this society, companies could be allowed to only hire for maximal efficiency, since the state could e sure the livihood of those who don't get chosen for jobs by other means. However, such a society would be vastly different from our own - for example, it would be essentially impossible to hire for menial labor, since without the threat of starvation few people would choose to become garbage workers or maids. For another, you would necessarily have high taxes on the employed to be able to support the unemployed, which would lead to political problems and would likely be an unstable equilibrium.

In our society we have chosen a different solution, pretty much all over the world: your ability to have food and shelter is conditioned on having a job (or being born rich), but in exchange, the state tries its best to guarantee you a job. We don't generally allow the state to operate companies, so the only way for the state to guarantee jobs is to incentivize and even force companies to employ people without discrimination, to at least some extent.

Now, my personal belief is that the justification should come the other way around - why do we allow society to judge your right to a basic livelihood by any criteria at all? But I'm guessing that would not be a compelling argument, and I can't claim to have a working picture of how such a society could look like.

The society you are thinking of is UBI of some sort

You can see it as a sort of tax. For certain categories it certainly makes sense, like young women (that will likely get pregnant and take time off) because society absolutely needs people to have children. For people with various mental issues it is less clear that the burden should be put on each individual company. Perhaps better to have programs that help them find work that fits them?