Jobs for autistic people?

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Been keeping an eye on the "Jobs that aren't for autistic people" thread and decided to begin this one. What are some good jobs for autistic people?

Yes, I know, I'm obsessed with getting a job...

Data entry...been doing it for 34 years. Very little social interaction.

Cash office and/or payroll entry...so long as you will actually be in the office most of the time. I had a cash office job in a store, and loved it. Only problem was they were constantly nagging me to come out of the office and help out on the salesfloor. But when I was in the cash office, I was completely alone.

Design engineer

One of the reasons I selected IT is because there are a lot of positions where social interaction is minimal. Not absent as some say, but minimal.

I've been doing freelance writing and it earns me a little income on the side. Very little interaction outside of business negotiations and a little advertising. I doubt it would pay a good living wage, though.

Agreed - I'm an engineer as well.

Agreed.

I write/tech edit pretty niche, so most of my work is via referrals.
Also, I started out design/engineering but found hardware & software tech support to be my natural niche for them, so got a CS degree.
System administration (whether for cad/bim in the engineering world or for other systems catering to other business departments (facilities, accounting, hr, project management)) working in a support department outside of a company's main money earning areas is typically a lot less pressure.

I'm not an engineer. I'm a Health and Safety Manager but with a very technical approach to what I do. The technical side of the job can be very much like engineering if in the right industry. Employers often expect Health and Safety people to be "peoples persons" and I am not.

It would take quite a bit to make it a primary income, but I buy stuff to sell online. The only times I have to interact with someone is when I am buying inventory or if I am answering a question or responding to a request online, and on rare occasions calling the post office due to a delivery problem. Otherwise, over 2 1/2 years it has put about an extra $1800-$2100 dollars in my savings.

Another good thing is the only one working at this job is me.

Truck driving is a good one.

I work in mechanical engineering (trade, not theoretical).

I work in a small company making gearboxes for modern rally cars and classic motorcycles, which people refurbish for racing. I work in assembly and also middle-management of the workshop.
I have very little interest in car or motorcycle racing, but this is irrelevant to my actual job. Many people seem to think that I must be so excited to work with racing things, but the job really has so little to do with racing. I am not DOING racing at my job, I am making objects from metal.

I think there is too much focus on "special interests", "passions" and not enough on "what people DO best". The thing is, many people have NO special interests, and don't really "love" doing anything in particular. Other people may have things they are specially interested in, but it can be hard to develop these interests into a paying job. I find that it is the day-to-day activities of a job that can make it tolerable, (or intolerable), rather than what the general field or job title implies. For example, for someone specially interested in airplanes, being an airline pilot might sound great, but the reality of sitting in a chair for hours might turn out to be really crappy and not what they thought it would be like.

Here are some reasons why I am doing my job:

1. necessity. People work to earn money. I had to choose something to support myself and my family. Most jobs these days don't last forever, therefore you don't have to choose a "forever job". I find this hard to do, because it doesn't fit with my binary brain, which tells me to choose one thing 100% and no other things. I believe the average citizen has seven career changes in their lives. This amount of change can be hard for a person with AS and it gets in the way of financial success because our whole society is geared to multiple career changes as the norm. I try to choose one job, with the knowledge that it is "just for now" (2-5 year timeframe), learn as much as possible, and use that understanding to move into a higher paid and more interesting job, either in that company or another one. I recommend this approach if you have no special interests, because you can still use your intelligence and hard work to further your career.

2. choice of day-to-day activities. I do not design the product, rather I am responsible for production targets, planning orders and dispatch. I arrange materials and job priority for other staff. My job involves a lot of logic, measurement of quantity, quality assessment, and work with objects. It is very visual/tactile rather than language/people-based. I deal with customers occasionally. I do not make phonecalls or answer the phone. I really want to emphasise the actual ACTIVITY of work, not the idea or concept of that job. This is especially important when you have social or sensory issues. It is what you are actually, physically DOING that makes the difference between a job working out for you, or not.

3. use of skills that other people tend to lack. The products we make have many variants (models, gear ratios etc) and many components are required to make each gearbox. I have very good object recognition and recall, so I can identify parts and picture the overall assembly in my mind.
I also use this mental picture to "manufacture" the parts, and arrange production in order of priority in my head. This is more effective than project management computer software, which I have tried using but found it too clumsy.
I am also very good at finding objects that people have lost, dropped, or left lying somewhere. This is actually a very useful workplace skill that other people are grateful for.
Although I find deadlines stressful, the job is object-based rather than activity-based, so it is easier to plan ahead.
I think I would find a management job very difficult if the end-product was vague or service related, for example, consulting, generating ideas, editing, making other people feel good, etc. There would be too many possible outcomes to decide what to do.

4. social simplicity. Due to the small number of staff (7 total), I find it reasonably easy to get along socially. It took about a year to work out where everybody was at, and I seem to manage ok now, as long as nobody is upset. I think people with AS need to give themselves more time to figure out workplace people/energy. I find that I am useful to other people because of my mental skills in arranging "object processes", ie. manufacturing/scheduling. This means that their jobs are well arranged in advance and they can get on with their jobs without any problems. A workplace that is object-focussed helps keep attention away from social issues.

I think that I have greater potential to find higher paid and more challenging work, but I have so little interest in social interaction that I don't see myself succeeding in many jobs. This does create difficulties as it limits my financial situation and sometimes I think that it would be easier if a wealthy business owner would offer me a position where I could work endlessly and get paid heaps.
In the meantime... good luck.

You build Rally gearboxes?! Did you guys ever build transaxles or AWD gearboxes for Saab NGs? PM me!

That is why with all the hell and confusion caused by no knowledge of ASD back in the day it was the "a lot less bad days" because society was geared towered the "lifer" model of one job, one company. That is what my father and grandparents benefited from and that is what our generation when we started around 1979, 1980 fully expected to continue, but a few years later the change was underway in a large way. My job history reflects this starkly.

I work at IKEA at the moment. In the past, i've worked in a Hobby shop, as a Manager at a Fast food store, as a Bicycle mechanic, as a Graphic Designer, and as a signwriter.

My current job does indeed require me to interact with a heap of customers. I do, however have my own ways of dealing with anxiety attacks. My coworkers are very respectful of my traits, and actually help me out when things get a little... Rough. We have a specially trained customer service team for dealing with tricky customers. I also do all of the builds for the department i work in, which is great, i love getting hands-on.

My favourite job was at the Hobby Shop, because of the fact that I really enjoyed working with RC Models. One of the things i've always wanted to do is to run my own store, but sadly, the market's flooded over here, and it's difficult to compete with the Internet. Pay was also pretty horrid as well.

Are you working as a design engineer? What about interactions with suppliers, collegeau design engineers and project engineers?

I wonder how people advice IT jobs as good for autistic people. I was working as programmer, system analyst and project manager and all these had almost the same high level of interaction, daily meetings, frequent phone calls and so on. Programming was also too boring for me - trying to find out where there is a bug in 10000+ rows of code, not to mention constant deadlines and rushing.
And once I had data entry job for GfK marketing company and it also required high interaction level - team meetings twice a day, redistribution of tasks, sharing best practices and other s**t.