60 minutes story on autistic employment

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Many adults with autism have a hard time finding a job, but more companies are discovering the unique skills and potential people with autism offer. Anderson Cooper reports.

As per usual for these types of stories while they are useful positive stories of what some autistics can do it is. limited to STEM type jobs.

This may be due to the requirement for social interaction inherent to most HASS type jobs.

Were you expecting another result? Wouldn't those that have clear advantages in certain fields be exploited first? The fact companies are starting to appreciate the skills autism brings is a good thing. As more companies use us, more companies will be open to using us. And I am not sure why this is "usual"? These initiative never existed for most of my career.

It is usual for today and has been for the last few years. Yes, that is a good thing, it represents progress. That it seems stalled at mostly STEM jobs is a bad thing. Autistics can be skilled at more than STEM jobs.

Back in the day when black people were and still are stereotyped as being good at sports and entraining it opened up jobs to blacks in those fields. That was a good thing, it was progress but not enough.

The part about the block design task is very interesting to me.

I did something similar when I took the WAIS-IV and I think I did it methodically too, left to right and top to bottom, like Dan in the video.

But then I see Anderson Cooper do it and he does it haphazardly, and I'm like what? Why would you even do it like that?

How many people actually do the block design task like that?

You might be surprised. Thinking in terms of the whole (strong central coherence (as opposed to the weak central coherence of autistics)) is not always the best strategy. I think autistics can break down problems like these more systemically and so are at an advantage. While we might not be able to see the forest for the trees, NTs can't see the trees for the forest, which means it makes it difficult for them the recreate the forest from it constituent parts.

Come to think of it, I probably didn't do it left to right, top to bottom. In fact, I probably did it similar to how Anderson Cooper did it, which seems to be easiest first.



He started with the two white diamonds, then the full red blocks in the centre, then filled in the rest individually(?).

I think him framing it as disorganised threw me off.

Either STEM jobs or menial jobs. I get ticked off when people say how great it is that people get to work in restaurants and congratulate themselves, and isn't it cute. There are people with more to offer the world than restaurant work.

... or retail work, or assembly-line work, or multi-level-marketing, or baby-sitting, or manicurist work, or ...