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Dell Autism Hiring Program

jobs.dell.com

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Re: Dell Autism Hiring Program

#131

Post by jmkd »

IshKebab wrote: post #109
jmkd wrote: post #99

By maintaining >50% engineering staff for so long, Google has inadvertently created a fascinating study of the interplay between two spectrums: autistic and psychopathic. More on the similarities and differences here, namely aspects related to empathy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826592/ It seems of no coincidence that so many of Google's social products have misfired - due in part to this interplay…

That has nothing to do with why Google+ failed. Or Allo. It's because everyone was already using Facebook and WhatsApp and those have extreme network effects, and Google+/Allo were basically the same thing just owned by a different company. You don't need to invoke autism to explain it.

I'm not suggesting it as a primary cause, I'm offering it as an explanatory factor that is not coincidental.

The network effects statement is both true and relatively unimportant, considering prior social and chat networks had periods of extreme dominance before Facebook and Whatsapp, and that others will in future.

All despite network effects.

Apologies if I came across somehow invoking autism as an explanation for business failure. I certainly applaud initiatives such as Dell's, and we can easily find examples of brilliantly successful products and services created by those on the spectrum.

I mean to suggest that psychographic profile differences between the large tech workforce and their potential customers may be enough to contribute to product failure. This is particularly so if the products require empathic understanding, a known problematic for both the autistic and psychopathic spectrums.

Re: Dell Autism Hiring Program

#132

Post by zerr »

wrnr wrote: post #71

The way our industry treats neuro-diversity is autistic. I am very dyslexic, the other day I misspelled the word TAB as TAP when implementing an event listener in a codebase +100K lines. It took me half a day just to find this bug. At LastCo I heard the project manager and scrum master joke behind my back "we'll just have the autist with OCD do the programming" while referring to me. In their mind lacking a "theory o…

As a side note, did you consider switching to statically typed language with a good IDE?

Re: Dell Autism Hiring Program

#133

Post by keanebean86 »

zikzak wrote: post #127
wrnr wrote: post #71

The way our industry treats neuro-diversity is autistic. I am very dyslexic, the other day I misspelled the word TAB as TAP when implementing an event listener in a codebase +100K lines. It took me half a day just to find this bug. At LastCo I heard the project manager and scrum master joke behind my back "we'll just have the autist with OCD do the programming" while referring to me. In their mind lacking a "theory o…

I make little mistakes like this all the time in a massive code base. What I do is do a diff on the code to see what's changed. Much easier than hunting through. This applies any time it "should work" but does not. Also, I am sorry you have to work in an environment like that.

I mixed up l and I in my ldap function in some php code. I'm not sure if it was the framework (fat free) or something else but that function would never throw any errors or exceptions.

It was maddening and took at least a day to notice. I started questioning my sanity. I never thought to just do a diff...

Re: Dell Autism Hiring Program

#134

Post by lugg »

anth_anm wrote: post #16
lugg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are generally more forgiving when you perceive your employees' disability in a positive light instead of viewing their disabilities as something to exploit. It's a subtle difference, but the first one encourages/enables the employee to function in spite of their disability or perhaps one day overcome the shortcomings, or simply work in a way / environment where it becomes irrelevant. (Software development alre…

> People are generally more forgiving when you perceive your employees' disability in a positive light instead of viewing their disabilities as something to exploit. Is that what this is? I guess it's no more exploitative than employing anyone else.

Dell is exploiting autism here, but in a way that hopefully benefits both parties.

Re: Dell Autism Hiring Program

#135

Post by Nimitz14 »

jmkd wrote: post #99

By maintaining >50% engineering staff for so long, Google has inadvertently created a fascinating study of the interplay between two spectrums: autistic and psychopathic. More on the similarities and differences here, namely aspects related to empathy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3826592/ It seems of no coincidence that so many of Google's social products have misfired - due in part to this interplay…

Interesting theory! I can see some merit in it (even if most people are downvoting you, probably salty G employees haha).

Re: Dell Autism Hiring Program

#137

Post by itronitron »

black-tea wrote: post #96
rtpg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t engage in politics (in that list) means that they will become a pawn for other people’s politics. Show me an office without politics and I’ll show you one with unlimited vacation time

Not necessarily. Like anything it could be good or bad in certain situations. I interpret it as meaning the person will be driven to do what's right according to logic and merit as opposed to politics. It's another way of saying they are a disagreeable employee which are known to be very valuable to companies.

I also take it to mean that they will focus on what they enjoy and not scrabble to climb the corporate ladder.

Re: Dell Autism Hiring Program

#138

Post by ZeroCool2u »

keanebean86 wrote: post #133
zikzak wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make little mistakes like this all the time in a massive code base. What I do is do a diff on the code to see what's changed. Much easier than hunting through. This applies any time it "should work" but does not. Also, I am sorry you have to work in an environment like that.

I mixed up l and I in my ldap function in some php code. I'm not sure if it was the framework (fat free) or something else but that function would never throw any errors or exceptions. It was maddening and took at least a day to notice. I started questioning my sanity. I never thought to just do a diff...

Something that also helps cut down on these types of bugs for me is Semantic Highlighting. I've gotten my whole team to use it.

It's great, because you don't have to read the var name, you just have to see if there's any var in a function that doesn't have the same color as anything else and they tend to stick out like a sore thumb.

Not sure if that's the best explanation, but if you're using any JetBrains IDE you can try it by going to Settings and searching for Semantic Proximity and hitting the check mark. Easier to show than explain.

Re: Dell Autism Hiring Program

#140

Post by ThrowawayP »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #80

A recent article posted on HN offering funding to women to study programming sparked a flamewar, with many users claiming that special hiring policies for women in the tech industry discriminate against men. The current article is about a special hiring policy for autistic persons in Dell. Luckily there doesn't seem to be a flamewar this time around. Of course, I wonder why. To be honest, I don't understand why so ma…

I think suggesting that the disadvantages of gender are in any way comparable to the considerably greater disadvantages of being mentally or physically disabled is in extremely bad taste.

I would not hesitate to change genders, not for an instant, if it would free me from my disabilities.

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