Autism training for Employers

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Androbot, managers do have the power to hire and fire because they are allotted a certain amount of money to complete certain tasks. This means they must hire people who can complete those tasks, or the manager will lose their jobs. Unless we're talking about sadistic managers--or even more common, the manager who is working over his head--the good manager will appreciate any employee who helps him keep his job.

Rather than expecting the world to revolve around us, we would do well to try to fit in and do the very best we can.

I'm sorry but its that sort of 'we must fit in' mentality that perpetuates workplace inequality for autistic people. A significant portion of the labour market is orientated around fields that are aimed at normal workers, ie neurotypical workers therefore the skills expected are generally those skills that are synonomous with neurotypicality. What I want to see is an onus being put on the employer sector to deliver a broader range of jobs that include the sort of logical and non social fields that autistics tend to thrive in.

I'm not sure why you think that we shouldn't have to fit in. I'm gainfully employed for one reason: I do my job and do it well. When that happens, employers will work with us. Mine certainly does. But that's only because they are appreciative of my performance, and not because of my problems. They are more concerned with what I can do than with what I can't.

You can expect not to hold a job very long with your attitude; it sounds as if you're angry at the world and care nothing for the needs of the organization that would employ you. I hope you will decide to take the tremendous energy it takes to be so angry and use it to better yourself. I think you would be much happier. A job means a certain degree of independence, which I've found most aspies crave.

You can fight the world or try to work with it; it's up to you. But if you choose to fight the world, expect to pay the consequences, and not least to yourself.

Good luck.

Autistics cannot fit in even if they tried.

Do you think all of the gainfully employed aspies even here at WP are lying? Again, my recommendation as an employer AND aspie is to find what you're good at, preferably something consistent with a special interest, and become very good at it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

I don't know what the situation is in the country you live in but here we have rampant employment inequality against Autistics. Here 85 percent of the adult autistic community is out of work. To me that is an indictment of twofold: that firstly the jobs available are either innappropriate or difficult for autistics to obtain said jobs and secondly there is an inherent failure on the part of employers to properly embrace neurodiversity.

Good for you, you are among the fortunate minority. Most autistics cannot get work and those that can, like me, are often unhappilly unemployed and unable to find alternative work due to issues caused by a combination of a prolonged diagnosis and/or abject absence of available work in appropriate fields.


My attitude is fine, and most of my fellow colleages would advocate that. The onus is entirely on my employer who champions a corrupted corporate philosophy that is entirely indifferent to the needs of its workforce, able and disabled alike. These people are not pillars of the community, they are carpetbaggers that take advantage of people from economically challenging circumstances.

Good luck to you.

Save your good wishes. Fawning politeness breeds willful ignorance.

It takes adjustment on both sides, employer and employee.

It takes acceptance on both sides that adjustments should and can be made.

I accept that I should adjust myself within my limits, and I believe that I can adjust myself within my limits.

Can employers do the same within their limits?

I accept a signficant amount of discomfort caused by adjusting myself away from my comfort zone, but I am going to do it, because I want to have a job, make money, support myself, have an interesting career, pursue my special interest, do what I want to do in life.

In my eggsperience, the discomfort is verry merry berry high in the beginning, but drops over time, as I try adjustments, change adjustments, make adjustments, develop systems that work for me.

If I don't accept that I should and can make adjustments and eggsperience significant discomfort, then I don't think that I could do a job.

In fact, I have to adjust myself in different ways to do my current jobs 1a, 1b, 2a, and 2b.

At one job, employers know that I am autistic and understand autism, but at other job, employers don't and don't, so I have to adjust more for one than the other.

At both jobs, employers and colleagues also adjust to me, my individual traits, my autistic traits.

For each job, it was hard to get going in the beginning, like cluelessness + chaos + crapola, but once I got a system working, it got easier and funner, and I developed skills that I wouldn't have developed otherwise.

I think of what I do not as fitting in or being what I'm not, but more like being me and trying to make things work for me.

Sorry, I am fine just the way I am.

No, you're not just fine the way you are. Just to be perfectly blunt with you, as an aspie sympathetic to the plight of other aspies, I wouldn't hire you on a bet with your attitude, and I am in complete sympathy with anybody who would refuse to hire you for the same reasons. I should add I'm not trying to be insulting; I'm hoping you will change for the better. But that's up to you.

You know what. I don't have to work with someone who does not want to hire me. All I need is one job. People have been telling me all my life that I have to change my ways as if I were some evil person. The Bosses talk to me in that Confederate States of America slave driver accent.

Androbot, though I don't know you well at all, you come across as a reasonably smart fellow who could do well if he were to change. Why is it you think all those people might not have a point?

I hope you understand it won't do a thing for me if you do change your attitude. But I guarantee it will do good things for you. I hope you begin to reconsider things.

All I can do is to share my experiences with other aspies and hope they learn as much from me as I learn from them.

I was going to respond to the librarian with a scathing riposte but i'll go against the grain.

What it boils down to is that too few employers are autistic themselves. Only then can we cultivate a employer sector that is truly empathetic to our plight. We need more of us to think outside the box and view ourselves as potential leaders rather than sheep. If you look at contemporary successful business leaders such as Gates, Branson and Zuckerberg they often display aspie or at least neuroattypical tendencies. Thats not a coincidence in my view.

While I agree with much of what the above quoted poster has written in this thread, I would like to suggest that not all employers are willing to accept employees who "do their job and do it well", usually for reasons that involve corporate culture.

This is no way should be taken as disagreement with the rest of the above poster's argument.

What concrete steps would you advocate to make this transition?