Asperger's and IT: Dark secret or open secret?

It's important to note that it's not clear that Asperger's actually exists as a separate set of people, rather than simply as a group of people who's personality fits in some distant corner of the normal distribution.<p>I.e., I'm saying I want to see a continuous stable functional <i>with a margin</i> (1) to distinguish between asperger's and non-aspergers before I take it too seriously as a "condition". As far as I know, this has never been done.<p>(Note that I'm not disputing full fledged autism. I'm just uncertain about aspergers.)<p>(1) For those unfamiliar with stats, this is what I mean. Let x be an N dimensional vector, representing the personality/physical features of people (i.e. x[1] = propensity for antisocial behavior, x[2] = seizure frequency, x[...] = other diagnostic criteria). Then I'd like to see a continuous function f(x) such that if f(x)&#62;1, you have aspergers, f(x)&#60;0 you don't, and <i>the probability that 0&#60;f(x)&#60;1 is very small</i>.

As an aspie myself, I generally try not to let people know about it, but I debated on something in my resume the last time I was job-searching.<p>I co-founded a major AS website with 17k+ registered users, but you definitely don't want to disclose a disability in the hiring process. But a cursory Google search on me would reveal the same, so I left the mention in. Additionally, it's well-known in the IT industry.<p>In retrospect, I should have left it out.

Dark secret? No way.<p>I can't even count on my fingers and toes the number of people I've worked with that have been either aspies or HFA... every single one of them has been someone I'd want on my team again. You give them a little direction and they will just take off.<p>The hardest part is containing them and stop them. They have a tendency to keep going when something is obviously not working or to tangent or drift and not realize it.

One thought.<p>What I dislike in this text is that it treats people with Asperger syndrome as people with a problem that needs to be addressed.<p>What if not Aspies are wrong, but rest of the world?<p>When I'm in a regular office the first thing that I notice is how unproductive an average worker is. Massive amounts of time burned in bureaucracy; hours wasted during the meetings etc., etc.

Since one out of 150 people have some kind of autism-spectrum disorder, then it should be easy for a reporter to find people with these disorders in a wide range of occupations. A plumbing-supplies Web site could run an article about how plumbers with Asperger's use their nonverbal skills to find clogs. UPS could put something on its intranet about an autistic driver who can plan a complex route just by glancing at a map.<p>But "aspie IT worker" reinforces hoary stereotypes, whereas "aspie plumber" and "aspie truck driver" don't.

It's only going to be a matter of time before the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) starts describing anything and everything. And, if it gets into the DSM, it's by their definition "aberrant" or a problem.<p>It's like ADD or ADHD was a couple of years ago, it's the current trend in news reporting. I'm sure that I have a bit of ADD, but it's rather helped my career as and ER nurse. You just have to pick the right environment. I'm sure it will help me in my pursuit of being a founder, too.

We should note that IT itself is a kind of an "Aspergism-Amplifier": When one has an aspie-bias before, IT might make it stronger. And when one switches from math or IT to project management and similar social activities, aspergism steps a bit back (even if the untold rules, rituals, and mean social games can be a real pain). I experienced that myself several times and know of other people who told me that, too.<p>And sometimes I feel that being an aspie is even caused by a dumb social environment that isolates normal people with interest in math, tech, logic, a.s.o. as nerds.

Douglas Coupland touched on the subject a few years ago in his book "jPod". After reading that, it really changed the way that I looked at all of the coders / sys-admins that I know.

got me