Good career prospects in IT for autists
staff in Copenhagen with branches in 12 countries, including Australia.
A good number of autists find work in laundries, in mailing rooms, packaging factories, car washes, in fruit grading, dog walking, as parking attendants, and so on.
But Sonne’s firm specialises in screening, training and finding work for high-functioning autists – people with exceptional skills denied the rest of humanity.
Many autistic people are keen to work but struggle with hiring and recruitment processes. Specialisterne teaches them how to overcome these problems and also teaches them some social graces.
Most high-functioning autists have very sharp, hawk-like, vision and strong coding skills. They have long memories and can concentrate tirelessly on repetitive work that would drive a normal person mad.
Many have an obsessive facility to detect patterns, inaccuracies and any hint of disorder in vast arrays of facts or numbers. Employers say they are loyal and diligent workers and are a lower turnover risk.
This makes them ideal workers in the information technology world. IT companies large and small go to Specialisterne for recruits.
In the United States at least 26 companies hire autistic people to work on data-entry, coding, testing and programming software, developing video games, designing apps and to do repetitive iterated maths jobs.
Microsoft, Hewlett-packard, Vodafone and the big Freddie Mac mortgage company hire autistic interns, some to review complex problems such as compensation survey data for actuarial purposes.
There is no shortage of autistic Americans. A recent survey reveals that 1 in 68 children are ‘‘on the spectrum’’, the number increasing from only 1 in 30 children in 2008.
The incidence varies from state to state – Alabama having the fewest autists, about 1 in 175, and New Jersey the most, about 1 in 46.
Silicon Valley is notoriously crowded with autistic geeky youngsters, as is the Dutch equivalent of Silicon Valley, Eindhoven.
Research by Simon Baroncohen, professor of psychology at the University of Cambridge, leads him to believe that genes conferring a talent for systematising get doubled up when geeks mate with geeks in these Itrich regions.
New Zealand is estimated to have about 40,000 autists but, as far as I can tell, Specialisterne does not operate here. Instead we have the umbrella organisation Autism NZ Inc, a charitable agency that runs frequent training programmes for the autistic, their families, caregivers, teachers and medicos in its many branches throughout the country.