Asperger's and economics.

Post Reply New Topic

It is more or less accepted (and with good reason) that economic success is intimately connected with sociability. People with good personal connections establish networks for finding good jobs, getting expert help in enterprises, establishing possibilities for financing projects etc. In other words all those efforts which make economic success a reality requires very good abilities in social skills. To sweet talk a client, work out social situations in friendliness and persuasion using the standard techniques of providing good places to meet and convince people of worthiness and success of projected propositions - all this is a basic salesmanship understanding of how to work the world for profit and success.

In general, these seem to be the prime characteristics that AS people lack. They may have huge specific knowledge of important and worthwhile areas but completely lack the ability to use it well. Many businesses start out with an excellent product but lack the very basics of salesmanship and thereby fail.

Thereby I wonder what the general economic status might be of Asperger's people. I know for myself that my almost complete lack of social mobility and adherence to general standards of dress and behavior has been a severe hindrance in my own personal economic success. Is that a general characteristic in this group?

Last edited by Sand on 15 Mar 2010, 8:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It is for me. Why not make this a poll?

If you have a technical, scientific, or advanced academic skill, you might still do okay even without all the soft skills.

Usually people with high tech skills are probably highly employable but the high salaries and power go to management which deals with people skills.

this is an emotional question, which means it gathers further gravity to its gravitas...

Yes, management usually makes a higher salary and has more authority to make decisions, but people with at least some autistic traits have had financial success in the business world. I really don't understand why management positions tend to make more money either since I just see management as a different role that needs to be played; I personally wouldn't want to get "promoted" to a managerial position.

Management makes the compensation decisions, so there's a bit of a conflict of interest there.

That said, I don't think middle managers in software engineering generally make any more than engineers with comparable experience. They do have a better chance of moving up into more highly paid executive roles, though.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, two of the richest people in the world (2nd and 3rd at the moment, I believe) are suspected of being on the spectrum due to traits. And those traits are indisputable fact.

I actually know someone who knows lots of people in the business world, including one of the multimillionaires behind Last.fm. He offered me his help if I need it, and we recently had a very good discussion about what the market's like at the moment and other such things.

I'd like to point out that my ambition in life is to become a successful wealthy entrepreneur. I have every intention of doing that, and am already working on doing so. I think I am more than capable of doing it, more so than most NTs (if that wasn't true, why are the two richest people in the world Aspies while the world is full of NTs who aren't rich?).

There is the concept of the org chart, where people higher up are better compensated. Software engineers are managed by managers, so the managers tend to get better salaries and benefits. In many cases, though, they tend to work long hours and deal with a lot of social communication that doesn't appeal to me (coordinating efforts across teams/departments and that kind of thing). It's a different job requiring different skill sets; most of the programmers where I work who want to become managers eventually aren't such hot programmers.

Those who can do. Those who can't manage.

ruveyn

I have been known to invest in certain stocks.. It usually goes pretty well. Penny stocks are fun, and my researching abilities are helpful... I tend to obsessively track the stock prices... and it is very time consuming.

I'd say I'm doing pretty well. I've noticed that even with certain social shortcomings in an immediate sense I can smooth them over with most people, even to the point where when they see something strange they're more apt to question themselves.

As far as working/business social skills, its not really a stuck issue. Anyone can improve them by leaps and bounds, it does take bold character though or at least enough drive from behind to commit to that sort of thing. So far I've had jobs almost constantly since I was 17, have worked most of them for more than two years, even had a restaurant job through college for about seven years. My current professional job, auditing, I've been in for three years now and the jump from college to real world application was shaky but I thankfully came to an employer who understood the difference between getting good grades and having 10 or 20 years experience, they've trained very well and been very compassionate in that endeavor. I have to take on a lot of management responsibilities and I will find myself speaking to accounting managers and controllers on a regular basis for meetings and presentations, it doesn't bother me too much as a) they're mere humans themselves and b) they're usually pretty down to earth and friendly regardless.

As far as the overall economic state of Aspies in general though? I think horridly underutilized. I get the impression that we have a problem from both ends - ie. the psychological community still hasn't figured it out in a broader sense or what to do with it, I think a lot of people could function on an NT level without selling 'themselves' out, just that its a very rigorous and personal path and having good/useful mentoring means a lot. Also, I'd say this with any minority group - victim culture is terrible, ie. its the antithesis to progress. It seems like its simmered down a lot on WP, where we're largely unfriendly to Aspie/Autie supremecy ideas or people who want to play the blame game, but for those who do - its resignation to have less and to be less successful in life; when it comes to that, that much is a choice and a very poorly made one.

Cheers.

I'm hoping to get into international business - my goal right now is to get fluent with one other language, my ultimate hope is to be fluent with three or four. I get the impression that in this economy and with globalization that will be worth a lot more than a masters degree.

Know thy self.

AS are drawn to engineering/logic based tasks.

Sciences are the place to achieve higher salarys then other fields that don't require advanced degrees. If you are making much higher then per capita income, you are likely to be running your own business (You are Awesome if you do this with AS!! !, I sure couldn't), have a medical degree, high level management or you are in the sciences.

Sure tech managers make more money, but there are plenty of 6 figure jobs for senior level engineers that can just produce the product and be good enough for people to ignore odd comments. There are rules based fields that are growing FAST, information security and IA is all about applying and enforcing rules. The government IA jobs seem to be GS-12 on average (80k or so average starting salary)

Overall since we AS people are drawn to sciences, I think we, as a group, have a higher per capita salary then non-AS populations. We also get into routines going to work at a set time, leaving at a set time and are seen as reliable, that helps on job security and raises. If you are AS and rely on reading body language like sales, best of luck to you and I bow down to you if you can pull that off without being totally drained at the end of every day.

I doubt that. Most jobs require working with people in some form or fashion, and I doubt that the overwhelming majority of AS people have science jobs. After all, many aspies don't have the hard sciences as their interest, but rather might have things like social sciences, humanities, or even less obviously useful interests. (I know, a shock. There are things less useful than the humanities.) Additionally, getting a science job requires getting through college, which can be difficult all things entailed(financing, not getting into some trouble, etc) and with having strong enough mathematical conceptual abilities as some aspies can't conceptualize math very well.