The link between IT and autism

An interesting topic was published by the British Computer Society on the link between IT and autism. In Britain we have no clue how many autistic adults there are in our society and the role of autistic persons in IT has never really been considered.

What is autism?
A person with autism lacks social skills, do not interact well with other people and have obsessive attention to details. They like logical, consistent and ordered system.

According to the author of the article on the BCS website,

Autistic people often have narrowly defined and highly technical interests. IT systems obviously fall into this category with their inherently ordered systems and logic. Whilst an obvious generalisation, in different times these sorts of people could have been the monks who developed champagne and printing presses, whose meticulous attention to detail, with the ability to repeat the same processes hundreds of times, was the ultimate driver for success.

Apparently if you search on Google the key words – “Bill Gates” and “Asperger”, it will tell you a lot about computer geniuses and autism.

The management problem

If we do not have the statistics of adults with autism working in IT, management will not be equipped to manage such special individuals properly. Awareness and training are needed and management styles should adapt to manage people with autism.

Question
Do you know anyone with autism who are working in IT?

Read the full article here.