Google teaming up with Stanford to hire Autistics

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Google Launches Program To Hire More People With Autism

This program is just for Stanford University grads, Stanford being one of the very top universities for tech. Indeed the entire Silicon Valley industrial community is, to a large degree, an outgrowth of Stanford University.

To get similar accommodations for autistic workers more generally (and perhaps eventually to get the corporate hiring process reformed more generally, for everyone including NT's), we need to organize.

If enough of us form and join career-oriented groups of autistic people who work or want to work in some particular category of professions / occupations / jobs, then corporations will reach out to these groups as a source of talent, just at they reach out to organizations like the National Association of Black Accountants when they want to diversify racially.

(For a list of some of the professional / occupational categories I envision, see my Autistic Workers Project page.)

It's worth mentioning that Stanford is a top, selective, elite university, sometimes called the Harvard of the West.

Graduates from four-year programs there, or even more so, graduates from masters and doctorate level programs, are going to be very very smart, much smarter than the average autistic person. They might well get decent tech jobs even without a boost like this one. Be assured, this arrangement benefits Google as much as Stanford grads, because they will be getting brainy, accomplished, top notch people.

My brother graduated from Stanford with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and has had a comfortable and lucrative career in a Palo Alto think tank. Yes, he's autistic, although that's just my diagnosis - I'm unaware of him ever being diagnosed.

Although we can hope for more career pathways to open up for people with autism, it is a little unrealistic to compare ourselves or the general autism population to those ultra smart Stanford grads.

Mona, I love your activism!! !! !!

Having been bullied out of my last job, I am so beaten down. I would like to be proud and effective (or at least appropriate irate), but it escapes me. Nobody in my last workplace disclosed. I can't decide whether I want to disclose my Autism in my next workplace much less during the interview process although surely my "quirkiness" is apparent. It would have to be a supportive work environment and so far I have not met one. Still "between jobs" here.

Google is probably over half ND people anyway --- I hope it figures out how to generally accommodate its majority.