by Eric Garcia
But despite the menial tasks like uploading letters into the computer system and determining what letter elicited what kind of response, I loved the gig; I loved the weekly meetings in the East Wing. But more than that, I liked the fact that I was working in a city and in a profession where my encyclopedic knowledge of politics was celebrated. This was readily on display when high-ranking aides to the president would speak to our intern class. I would research their past and try to ask probing questions. If they’d worked for Wall Street between the Clinton and Obama administrations, I asked if it affected their views on financial policy. I loved watching them be visibly uncomfortable. I liked asking Obama’s speechwriter Jon Favreau about his writing style, and at our final Q&A with Michelle Obama, I got the first question. It was about why she’d left big law for public service, which led to a standing ovation. My buddy Eric Jones (now an Emmy-winning producer at Good Morning America) used to say with his sweet Vidalia onion accent from Georgia that I was always “rea-tee” (not just “ready”) for these Q&A sessions.
But I occasionally disagreed with Obama’s policy in Afghanistan and found myself trying to determine the difference between his foreign intervention in Libya and the War in Iraq, which was one of the reasons I didn’t trust George W. Bush and the Republican Party. Those little breaks made me conclude that a career in Democratic politics was probably not for me. But I also knew I wasn’t a Republican like many people in my high school. All of this showed me that journalism was a more natural fit.
That turned out to be the right decision. Between my junior and senior years at UNC, I interned at the American Prospect. Through that job, I befriended Jonathan Chait, an alum of the magazine, who introduced me to other political journalists like Jonathan Cohn, then an editor at the New Republic. Cohn liked my work, and while he couldn’t offer me a job, he let me freelance for the magazine that I had loved for years. I parlayed that into other freelancing gigs before working at MarketWatch, National Journal, Roll Call, the Hill, and the Washington Post.
This is the point in the story where people expect a happy ending, the part where an autistic person goes from being a social outcast to channeling their special abilities into gainful employment. It’s probably why a few people bought this book. This happy ending is seen in Temple Grandin when she pioneers new methods to handle livestock because she can “think in pictures.” It’s John Elder Robison in his book Look Me in the Eye learning to set off bombs in rock-and-roll band Kiss’s guitars and then working on toys before moving to cars. It’s every autistic person in Silicon Valley who can program a computer, no sweat.
These stories are neither bad nor untrue. In fact, they offered a much-needed corrective to the idea that autistic people could not work or that their autism meant they were defective. But highlighting hyper-savants who improve companies’ bottom lines implies that only certain autistic people are worthy and deserve to find employment, and it positions autistic people who can’t work without government services as a burden. Finally, it ignores the many autistic people who exist somewhere between those two extremes who have simply not been afforded adequate resources to find and keep a job.
But perhaps most important, these narratives put the onus on autistic people to find a super-skill that will make them an asset to employers rather than forcing employers to become more accepting of autistic workers. I was incredibly fortunate that I found something I loved as much as music when I became a journalist. I was even more fortunate that I had a family that fostered that passion and that I had the resources to pursue it. But not everyone has those luxuries; there needs to be institutional support for autistic people regardless of their work environments. Autistic people should feel their only limit to working in a profession is their own capacity to do the job rather than any outlying barrier that would exclude them.
Getting the Job
Because there is little accurate data about the number of autistic adults, it is difficult to track specific employment statistics about autistic people. One commonly cited statistic is that 75 to 85 percent of college-educated autistic people are unemployed or underemployed. Drexel University’s National Autism Indicators Report found that paid, community-based employment, which is to say, autistic employees working alongside nonautistic employees, was, at only 14 percent, “the least common outcome” for autistic adults who received state developmental-disability services. And it isn’t due to a lack of desire; a quarter of autistic adults had community employment as a goal.
This employment gap is partially what drives John Marble in his work. When we first met in 2018, he told me that when he speaks to companies, he emphasizes that hiring autistic people is not an act of charity. “There’s a lot of companies that, for whatever reason, if you say autism, it’s this sparkly thing that grabs their attention, and they’ll open the door and say, ‘Hey, I want to learn more, what can we do?,’ not really knowing that they even need to employ autistic people,” Marble told me. This is why Neurodiversity Pathways organizes introductory luncheons with companies to discuss neurodiversity and why autistic people are beneficial employees. “And that’s not to say that we sell [autistic people] as some sort of superhero. It’s just a different way of experiencing the world that’s beneficial to a team,” Marble said. He emphasizes that it is important to have many diverse types of people and notes autistic people offer certain skills. Marble said that while many neurotypical people have similar traits, autistic people often bring unique passion for projects that interest them, an attention to detail, and an integrity that can improve any team.
However, without proper support, there are many impediments that prevent autistic people from finding a job. For one, traditional job interviews often require unspoken rules and trick questions. Along with the daunting interview process, employers may have misconceptions about autistic employee’s needs. For this reason, many autistic people who can pass as nonautistic often find it easier to not disclose. Marcelle Ciampi, the lead recruiter for Ultra Testing’s neurodiverse hiring initiative, said she always regretted disclosing she was autistic to her employers.
“They don’t know a lot of the strengths and gifts. They don’t know that it doesn’t cost that much money to have workplace accommodation or workplace adjustments,” Ciampi, then fifty, told me in a phone interview. Ciampi, who used the pen name Samantha Craft for her book Everyday Aspergers, also said that once someone discloses, employers begin to question whether an autistic person is the best person for the job, whether this person can become a manager, and what challenges for the office this person would pose.
However, in recent years, multiple companies have made a push to specifically hire autistic people. A variety of companies, ranging from financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase and UBS to technology companies like SAP, Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft, have neurodiversity hiring initiatives. Many of them even include the same language the autistic community prefers and uses. For example, a statement on Goldman Sachs’ website from April 2019 read: “Our goal is that this initiative encourages our people to share their stories and learn about how they can support neurodiverse individuals as managers, mentors, and colleagues inside and outside the firm.” Many of the companies that have autism hiring initiatives recognize the challenges with job interviews.
The “Autism @ Work Playbook,” compiled by companies like Microsoft, SAP, EY, and JPMorgan Chase as well as the University of Washington’s Information School, says that interviews can be stressful and an undue burden on autistic job candidates but also that “traditional interview techniques may not always uncover the relevant skills the interviewee has.” Some companies, like SAP, offer an alternative monthlong interview process that has candidates build robots out of Legos based on a set of instructions. Jose Velasco, an executive at SAP who has two autistic children, told Inc. back in 2015 that the goal of these exercises was to gauge how candidates read and follow instructions. Neurodivergent candidates are also allowed to pick the formats of their interviews; they can
choose walking and talking or meeting one-on-one or in group settings.
What’s more, these hiring initiatives exist in companies all over the world. Thorkil Sonne founded the Danish company Specialisterne in 2004 after he learned his son Lars was autistic, and he has pledged to create one million jobs for autistic people. When I spoke to Tara Cunningham, who was then the CEO of Specialisterne’s U.S. organization, on the phone, she immediately mentioned how there were still plenty of misconceptions about autistic people in the workplace, including the idea that many autistic employees love repetitive tasks, which she dubbed “bullshit.”
Cunningham said there was an assumption that autistic people would be in the exact same role for the rest of their lives. She also said she was concerned about new trends, among them that as companies see the benefit of autistic employees, they will start poaching them from other companies.
“Right now, we can say, ‘There’s awesome retention rates,’ but pretty soon, autistic people are gonna get headhunted like everyone else and possibly harder,” Cunningham said. Such a trend could have unintended consequences, including undermining the idea that autistic people are loyal employees.
The Loyalty Trap and Other Issues with Corporate Hiring Initiatives
The concept of loyalty as an autistic trait permeates many hiring programs. One story by my former employer MarketWatch said that “being honest and loyal” made autistic employees an asset—though I clearly failed on that front when I quit working for them after four months. But while the idea that autistic employees are loyal may be based in reality, it is by no means universally true. Steve Lieberman, who is autistic and used to work for Senator Robert Menendez, put it best when he tweeted that disabled employees were not loyal; rather, “We’re stuck.”
“I worry about saying, ‘Hire an autistic person. They’re yours for life.’ I don’t believe that’s true,” Tara Cunningham said.
Another one of her concerns is that autistic people are considered good assets only because they are perceived as more productive. In countless news reports, increased productivity is one of the features employers highlighted when talking about hiring autistic people. But Cunningham worries that this could backfire.
“When people say that their autistic employees are a hundred and seventy percent more productive than their neurotypical counterparts, now that’s a huge problem,” she said. If autistic people are only slightly more productive, employers feel cheated for getting someone who is only, say, a hundred and forty percent more productive. The productivity myth can also make neurotypical employees resentful of autistic employees.
There is also concern that these types of programs are focused on hiring autistic people into STEM fields only. Julia Bascom, the executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, said while certain companies do a good job and promote autistic people in management, there is a risk of just focusing on a certain type of autistic employee.
“[These programs are] very focused on tech, which causes a lot of problems, because, while statistically, we may be represented in certain [STEM] majors, but a lot of autistic people have learning disabilities that affect math or other things like that,” she said.
John Marble agrees with this sentiment, explaining that as of right now, autism hiring is concentrated in one “slice,” as he calls it. At the same time, parents of autistic kids know their children have the ability to work in any field, from communications to groundskeeping to food service to graphic design and so on. Marble said the narrow focus of hiring initiatives becomes frustrating.
And I understand this frustration, as I’m a perfect example of an autistic person who would be overlooked by certain companies’ hiring initiatives. I am utterly terrible at math—when I took a computer coding class, I got a C-minus (this despite the fact that I flunked most, if not all, of my exams but always finished my homework thanks to the tutoring center on campus). Suffice it to say, I never had a desire to work in science or technology. And many other autistic people have no desire to do so. There are some companies, like Ford Motor Company, that have already taken these initiatives beyond the normal STEM sectors. But hiring practices that are suitable for autistic people should be adaptable for employers of any sectors. Chances are, there are already autistic employees in those businesses. It’s just a matter of making them and future autistic employees feel welcome.
Bascom also said she was concerned that many of these companies were just siloing autistic employees and creating de facto sheltered workshops wherein autistic people were separated from the rest of their coworkers. Sometimes, they were even paid less. Bascom added that many companies used autism-at-work programs to hire autistic people with lower support needs as a way to avoid hiring autistic people with intellectual disabilities who might need more accommodations. It is why, after initially discussing a partnership with Specialisterne in March of 2018, Bascom said, ASAN withdrew from the discussion—it was clear there was no commitment to helping autistic people who had higher support needs.
Alan Kriss, who is the head of Specialisterne’s North America branch and served as head of the organization in Canada, confirmed that talks broke off at the time but said that the company has progressed.
“From our perspective, our objective and our focus is on helping employers to access talent pools of people who are in a position to or can be in a position to achieve competitive employment,” Kriss told me in 2020, adding that Specialisterne doesn’t focus on whether a person has intellectual disabilities and that almost all of the people recruited for work have some type of job coaching.
“We take people’s strengths, and we leverage their strengths,” he told me. “And as long as the challenges that they face aren’t ones that are going to stop them from achieving competitive employment, then we’re going to support them into that.” Kriss added that the organization is trying to change “how the employment market operates.”
“We’re focused on helping employers to see that there are better ways of assessing people’s talents and competencies,” than just glad-handing and job interviews, which Kriss said has been shown to be a poor method for recruiting for neurotypicals too. “And just good management is going to get a lot of people success, [it’s] going to help a lot of people be more successful,” regardless of their neurotype. He also added that the company is moving beyond technology and financial services and hopes to work with the “intellectually challenged” but that there will be some hurdles because those aren’t the markets where Specialisterne started.
Dignity
Even if there is success with hiring programs, the push to create autism-at-work programs can create tiers of worthy autistic people. This concept, of course, is not new. It goes back to the idea that there are high-functioning and low-functioning autistic people, which runs the risk of creating a power imbalance. It sets up the false narrative that autistic people who cannot find full-time work or who do not have the capacity to work full-time are not worth the same amount of attention or resources that autistic people who can become assets for companies receive.
Because of this, few autistic self-advocates think all autistic people will achieve full, integrated employment, acknowledging that there will always be a need for a robust safety-net program.
“While it’s good to advocate for decreased barriers to employment for autistic people who want to work, there will always be some of us who simply cannot hold jobs,” said endever star, a nonspeaking autistic person I met at Autspace, a retreat for autistic people.
“We need to consciously avoid saying things like ‘autistic people can work too if we just have the right supports!’” star added. “That’s a sweeping generalization that denies the reality of part of our community.”
Star points out that even America’s social safety nets create a dichotomy between earned and unearned disability benefits in the difference between Supplemental Security Income (SSI) versus Social Security Disability Income (SSDI). Disabled people with limited income often receiv
e SSI, which is paid for by “general funds,” like personal income tax and corporate taxes, whereas workers’ contributions to the Social Security trust fund pays for SSDI and is based on their earnings. A total of 383,941 autistic people received SSI in 2019. These different funding streams reflect how America constructs a contrast between “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. American culture perceives recipients of SSDI as “earning” their income because they paid into Social Security.
“Meanwhile, people who have never been able to work or haven’t worked ‘enough’ are given ONLY SSI, which leaves them in inescapable poverty for potentially the rest of their lives,” endever star said over e-mail. “This is a very blatant expression of the way society views access to supports—there’s an idea that we have to earn our supports or prove that we’re worthwhile human beings in order to access them.”
To add another layer of difficulty, the process for obtaining SSI benefits is baffling and as discouraging as possible. Andrew Savicki, the political prognosticator from Apex, North Carolina, said he hasn’t been able to acquire SSI benefits. “One of the times they told me I wasn’t disabled enough to get benefits because it is physically possible for me to hold down a full-time job,” he said. However, not having a college degree and not being able to drive makes it extraordinarily difficult for him to find work. “So that’s really hurt my independence [not] being able to get out there and find a job,” he said in reference to not driving.
In my opinion, Savicki has one of the better political minds I know, better than a lot of the gasbags who wind up talking about politics and congressional races on television (including the gasbag who wrote this book). But the barriers to entry are still too high for him because of his inability to drive and his lack of a college degree. Without SSI income, it is difficult for him to have full independence, yet because of society’s expectations of autism and neurotypicality, he is stuck in an income purgatory even though he wants to work. Savicki’s predicament shows how the concepts of high-functioning and low-functioning hurt autistic people. When people exist somewhere between these two ideas, they often wind up getting neither accommodating work environments nor income from social safety-net programs.