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cberg
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23 Oct 2015, 5:13 pm

My clients/bosses usually don't notice anything different about me save for the fact I'm a hacker. I've got nothing against robotics or legos in their own right, my quarrel is with underwater basket weaving. If they were to use NXT properly, it would be as an office perk to help everyone think on their toes. I'm sure the percentage of NTs who know anything about robotics is much lower anyway. My idea of a plaything is a Fedora Netbook, it can deal with a whole lot more than Mindstorms.


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btbnnyr
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24 Oct 2015, 12:28 am

This is very interesting thread, I didn't know there was specialisterne in multiple countries.
I'm all for autistic people working, but I don't know about companies like this.
Please keep discussing.
Post more things you are studying, Soc.


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cberg
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24 Oct 2015, 1:04 am

Truth be told I'm not sure the economic climate anywhere I've been in the U.S. is quite ready to support this, which reflects on the people such companies work with. Not to say it's all bad, this has to have worked for some people in the states to have gained this much traction. I'd say more had I worked for any companies that granted me accommodations. All I've asked for was standard equipment anyways...


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dontASPme
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24 Oct 2015, 6:18 am

There are controversies surrounding the Specialisterne Model, both from a business perspective as well as from a disability awareness and support point of view. The Dandelion model is a simple version (perhaps too simple) of a diversity in the workplace/society ideal, and the use of the robots is essentially a legacy assessment tool from the original Specialisterne Denmark setup where they actually had a contract with LEGO (A Danish company BTW), and were given access to lots of LEGO products for quality/usability testing, they probably thought that building the robots was a good indicator of technical ability, and/or an easy way to assess a group of autistic people with relatively unknown or untested team working and instruction following abilities, and I'm disappointing that they haven't moved on to better methods like mobile game development, or indeed some of the other more flexible and modular robotics systems (as used at universities on robotics courses) Mindstorms is simply a toy and you can cover only the most basic of introductions to robotic principles with it, suitable for high schools perhaps.

At Specialisterne Scotland (which was based in Glasgow, from May 2010 to Sept 2012 ) me and another 11 people were chosen to be the first candidates for the training program, largely by looking at our CV's, attending a four person role play exercise, and of course a one to one interview, we did use the Robots for the first week of the training program, and it did separate the men from the boys regarding programming them for instance, but this at the time didn't actually mean anything as we all still were put through the exact same training program, which consisted of the most basic of basic intro to web page design and web technologies, despite several of us having degree level knowledge and even commercial web design experience, they hadn't the means to customize our development and training according to our individual abilities and vocational paths at that point, they did however engage a Well known IT Consultancy (SOPRA - look it up) to give us training on passing the ISEB Foundation in Software Testing certificate, but completely failed to get us placed with Software Testing companies who for some time had complained about skill shortages etc, but then there was the economic downturn of course, and perhaps under different circumstances the original plan would've worked.

It's interesting that some people think that a group of autistic people all working together might not be a supportable business model, I don't think that that was essentially the whole idea, the idea was to get people into mainstream businesses doing valuable specialist work that they are ideally placed to do, despite perhaps not having the same social/communication skills as other typical employees, and perhaps needing some more specific management than would be typical, and this is what offends some people, as many of us can work besides/along with the general working population doing the same tasks, it's just that I understand where Thorkil Sonne is coming from, his son is actually (apologies for the choice of words) at the other end of the Autism scale, and he was told that he would never be able to work, (and indeed, this was the case probably for many many people) he however discovered that his son had a most remarkable ability to draw maps with great accuracy despite having only glanced at a page of a map.

He was also very involved with Autism support groups and became the president of one, he was obviously consumed with a passion to provide a realistic secure future for his son, (he has said himself that he was painfully aware that he wouldn't always be there for him, a common emotion for parents with children with moderate to severe disabilities) and he struck on the idea of starting his own company which would actively use the abilities of autistic people to a commercial advantage. he's my kind of guy, he's a true social entrepreneur, because he's trying to change the world by doing it, by setting an example, not just pontificating (not saying that anyone here is either - lol) on what should happen according to the latest academic social model of disability and scientific management models, if you tried to study too much of that at your business planning stage, you'd maybe never get off the ground - lol.

Specialisterne UK, I believe acts as more of a 'specialist recruiter agency' for people on the autism spectrum, although they carried on from Specialisterne Scotland in the undertaking of short term IT projects, and perhaps still do, but I genuinely don't know anymore. In Scotland 85% of people on the spectrum are thought to be unemployed, way above the average of people not on the spectrum, and 27% are thought to have higher education, way above typical as well, from the stories from many people on the spectrum I've met in Scotland (50+ people I'm counting) and from my own personal experience of the difficulties of getting employment and staying in it, I think that it's more of a civil rights issue now to me, as there's really no excuse for it.



cberg
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25 Oct 2015, 12:20 pm

Ignoring people's knowledge & skill cannot be excused materially. Denmark is supposedly the happiest nation there is, so why is a company from there fixated on viewing its' employees as disabled? Sorry but from Sonne's anecdote, I get the sense he's not really focused on the positive fact that some of us can attack technical challenges without any preparation. That's why they want to hire me and that's why I remain dubious about working with private enterprises at all. They've spent years here stuck in loops talking about money, during which time I've been in something like four technology contracts. Basically Specialisterne is my franchised competitor.


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25 Oct 2015, 3:07 pm

Specialisterne imo looks for people with extraordinary abilities in one area or in other words look for prodigies who learned much more than their same age peers at a very young age, or those with savant abilities. If you don't express any of these things you aren't worth their time. I might have talked about this before but they either look for graduates or those who have an outstanding track record in whatever discipline they chose to specialise in; thus calling themselves 'specialisterne'.

I myself specialise in computers but nowhere near the expertise this company requires, I can do basic programming, networking and software design but nothing more, no sort of training will help me understand anything complex.



cberg
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25 Oct 2015, 5:09 pm

What? Intricacy in programming compounds itself. We call that cruft. You've decided against building anything cool? Bummer. This company's primary aim is training people with NO exposure to the technology industry. Help yourself understand something complex before downplaying others' ability to do the same.

The only thing a more accomplished dev can train you to do is relax.


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"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos :mrgreen:


SocOfAutism
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28 Oct 2015, 8:19 am

cberg wrote:
Ignoring people's knowledge & skill cannot be excused materially. Denmark is supposedly the happiest nation there is, so why is a company from there fixated on viewing its' employees as disabled? Sorry but from Sonne's anecdote, I get the sense he's not really focused on the positive fact that some of us can attack technical challenges without any preparation.


Thank you for saying this! In the "Autism as a Strength" section of my thesis I have a table (which my committee members were all confused by and wanted to change) where I matched the qualities employers looked for against common work stresses and common autistic strengths. The point of the table was that autistic people tend to be inoculated against work stresses AND tend to provide desired qualities from a combination of natural traits and having to overcome strife.

For example, companies look for people who are open to experience. A common work stress is organizational change. From both of these, it might appear that aspies are less qualified, until you consider that aspies are ALWAYS uncomfortable, and therefore USED TO dealing with stressful dynamics. In the same situation, a seasoned neurotypical will act up and cause problems, whereas a seasoned aspie will ride it out calmly.



dontASPme
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28 Oct 2015, 5:34 pm

From my own knowledge and experience, I don't 'get' any sense other than the fact that
Specialisterne Denmark, successfully managed to create a 'For profit' business in Denmark,
which employed with about 70% of the workforce who were 'diagnosed' as being on the autistic
spectrum, enough to produce a copy-cat plan to be employed in other countries, and which to date has
proven to be commercially viable everywhere, except in the first franchised branch, that being
'Specialisterne Scotland', and which has resulted, all the same, in a follow-on company namely 'Specialisterne UK'
to exist to date actually longer than the original UK branch but with admittedly far less people
being employed.

I'm not surprised SocOfAutism that some people were confused by the idea that Autism could be
viewed as an advantage, even I feel that having autism is a great disadvantage to me compared to others
I've met from my kindergarten to high school, who don't have the condition, but, I feel strongly that
we are nethertheless 'normal', diversity in neuro-developments is normal - in the gene-pool for instance,
to an extent that we may not ever be able to measure, we just have an opinion about it relative to our
social programming and our individual predispositions to acceptance of cultural norms.

However I do think in terms of what am I best suited for, what strenghts do I have, what weaknesses do I have
and what are my best opportunities that I can take advantage of, and whatever may threaten my success in my competitive areas etc, and do the SWOT thing if I'm very
practical and motivated, how best can we represent that mentality to others who don't fully emphasize with our
way of thinking?

Mike Riches



SocOfAutism
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29 Oct 2015, 8:48 am

Thank you for talking about your experiences here, Mike. It is very useful, not just for researchers like me, but for regular workers looking for real life experiences of what works and what doesn't in large scale operations like that.



dontASPme
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29 Oct 2015, 1:31 pm

Thankyou for your kind words. For me, only time will tell if it's worth commenting on this topic again, maybe next year - lol.



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29 Oct 2015, 1:45 pm

dontASPme wrote:
Thankyou for your kind words. For me, only time will tell if it's worth commenting on this topic again, maybe next year - lol.


Lol!

Comment on other threads! You have good insights!



dontASPme
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21 Jul 2016, 3:29 pm

Yet another wee update, I've been talking to Specialisterne Ireland, and they've put me forward to SAP, and I've to get an interview with them regarding IT work while being supported by Specialisterne Ireland. This was actually proposed at the time when Specialisterne Scotland went bust in Sept 2012, but at the time I didn't think that it was a feasible option, but now I think that it's a good opportunity, so wish me luck guys.



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22 Jul 2016, 9:04 am

Interesting. Will you let us know how it goes?



dontASPme
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22 Jul 2016, 9:20 am

Hello there SocOfAutism,

I can say that I had a phone interview from 2 managers at SAP today, and they asked me about my experience and aspirations, they are looking to next recruit in the new year and I've got some topics I can work on in the area of Software Quality Assurance and Automated testing etc that I might find useful. So I've got an interview for a support worker job coming up which will tide me over until then. So looks like I'm going to be busy :) How did your thesis go?



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22 Jul 2016, 10:25 pm

I still can't imagine working in such a place, the whole umbrella of conditions that autism covers is always assumed to be the same for all of us, yet we are all different in our own ways. This is where I think it would just make the whole environment working there very awkward, you might assume the same interests and then a few hours into it your interests clash and it's evolved into a make or break situation with regards to making friends within the workplace.

Then again I found it very impacting on my anxiety levels when working with NT's, they'd expect you to do beyond your set workload, comply with their requests whatever they may be. Where's the compromise? Anxiety or awkwardness, I'd like to avoid both situations if possible - but i'll be asking for the most specific job in the world.