Do you work with other aspies/auties?

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Oh absolutely! A big section of my thesis is about that. My colleague just published this article.

For anyone that doesn't want to read it all the way, she studied a bunch of lawsuits and found that people with "chronic" illnesses were discriminated against more than people with physical disabilities, and women more than men. That technically includes autistic people since autism isn't something that can be changed (it includes me too). Because people like us will ask for flex time and to do things differently. That is apparently a pain for companies so they are more likely to deny us or make us pay for our accommodations in other ways.

A guy that I work with has OCD, and I suspect ASD. He certainly is Aspie-ish. I have found that there are things that he is great at ( weeding for one ) and things he is terrible at (sorting logs for milling). I can adjust to his strengths and to his weaknesses as I can relate to where he is coming from. I use him where I need him, and do the other, more technical, things myself. Most companies would not do this. Conform or get out.

That's very similar to the dynamics at my workplace, in a way. When I was first hired there were 4.5 people doing my job & there was roughly the same ratio for most of the other IT positions. Over the next 5-6 years we had rounds of layoffs until we were down to a half person per essential function - in other words of those still standing, we each did our original position by ourselves plus half of some eliminated position. That "half" though was never officially divvied up; we each took on responsibilities based on our particular super Aspie powers that we knew how to do or could quickly learn due to our particular strengths. I ended up doing emergency hardware fixes & optimization, tape backups (which I've now handed off to a new hire; I'm his backup), and anything having to do with network hardware (now mostly handed off as well). Now that the pressure of keeping the company afloat has backed off, we have a group that already knows each others strengths and weaknesses as well as boundaries. Won't last forever b/c things always change, but for now it's really nice, and very efficient.

^^^ BTW This is the kind of information I'm looking for in my survey (see my signature line for the link), Autism Disclosure in the Workplace. One of the things I'm wondering about is if people help each other by using their "superpowers" to employ your term, Edenthiel, thereby avoiding the need for disclosure and accommodations. If anyone else finds this IS or IS NOT the case for you, I would love to hear from you.

WOW----THANKS, guys----I needed that vote-of-confidence, today!!

I believe my supervisor and the painter might be, and if not, some sort of social anxiety disorders...The three of us get along great actually, me and my supervisor call each other names and insult each other all day...

I work closely with someone who I strongly suspect is an Aspie. He almost definitely has ADHD. On the one hand, I feel like I have more in common with him than with most people and sometimes we understand each other pretty well, but his singing out loud, endlessly quoting lines from movies and twisted sense of humor make me nuts! Every one else puts up with his quirks, but not so much with mine.

Ha! Thanks for this! I have heard people say this in person, so I was waiting to hear another person say it on WP. That although another aspie's quirks may bring solidarity, they can also be annoying, since they're different from your own.

Especially if, say, you have sound sensitivities & auditory processing issues and your children verbally stim. My mom laughs whenever I mention it because, well...history repeats itself.