The working world!

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Having a job is about providing you with money and keeping a roof over your head so your not homeless/in poverty.... so why in the heck is working the world so competitive and discriminatory towards us aspies in particular?

Don't employers/employees care that by denying us the right to work we are at risk of dying in poverty?


In general I am just asking why the working world has to be so tough for people with and without aspergers?

1. In a sense, it's not their job to care. They are in business to make money, and providing autistic people with a paycheck only is sensible if it doesn't hurt their bottom line. Some make the effort, some do not.

2. Along the first point, a business must compete with other businesses. If I make a place to hire 10 autistic people and my competitors do not, odds are I'm competing with others with a more versatile workforce who need no special accommodations. So, being altruistic could cost the entire business in the long run.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again....for those who are average/mediocre, below average and the disabled to have good opportunity, we need to have a VIBRANT and STRONG economy. Only then do employers need bodies so badly that they will take what they can find and work with it. When the economy is bad, employers have a glut of qualified and able-bodied candidates, and it makes no sense to hire someone who can not perform as well as the top 10% of applicants.

Overall, I don't think the problem is that non-autistic employers don't care or that they have anything in particular against autistic people...I think that employers often don't understand people with autism, and people with autism often don't understand employers.

For non-autistic employers, not understanding autistic employees (or potential autistic employees) can make it harder to see/evaluate the autistic person's skills and abilities, or provide the autistic person with effective instructions and training.

For both non-autistic employers and (potential) autistic employees, not understanding each other can make it harder to communicate and work together effectively.

I don't think that most people understand autism, and some employers might just be afraid of hiring people with autism because they don't know what it would be like to have an autistic employee...or mistakenly believe they need special skills to do manage/train autistic employees.

It's a complicated issue.

Businesses exist to make money. I do believe that businesses fail to properly leverage aspie talents. There are jobs aspies can work and be very successful in and it's a shame those talents are put to use.

But...

Aspies can also be a liability to businesses. If you can't do the job, and there's really no way to accommodate you, why should I hire you?

Business is a relationship. You need the company because they pay you, and the company needs you because you do a job for them.

So the question is as much what can business do to better leverage aspie talent as what can we do to give aspies the tools to be successful in the business world?

I feel like I can say it no better than whiterabbit.

Very nicely put.

How can Aspies better learn to enter the workforce?

I also think that there is the danger of expecting the employer to be totally aspie-knowledgeable. There are a whole host of other disabilities out there too, like FASD, ADHD, and the list goes on. How can all of our neurologically diverse minds work together better? and How can businesses become neurodiverse and still be competitive?