Comment by bko
2 days ago
A lot of places claim they want to hire extremely smart autists, and some do. But these types of employees are incredibly hard to manage. Imagine herding cats. So if you don't invest a lot of effort in building an environment to let this person cook, go down the right rabbit holes and not rub others the wrong way, a person like this is a huge liability to the org.
A lot of companies who claim to want highly intelligent and autonomous engineers by revealed preference actually want glorified slightly above average ticket pushers.
At least by the looks of it, Jane Street appears to be an odd one to genuinely value competence.
There are a lot of incredibly smart non-autists. Or maybe slightly autistic, but enough awareness of the real world that they can be managed.
The strong affinity between autism and intelligence seems strongest in technical fields, and engineering and computer science in particular. Autism does not seem to be over-represented to anywhere near the same degree in many other domains that are full of intelligent people.
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Good mentorship can make all the difference in the universe.
I can be a glorified slightly above average ticket pusher, where do I sign up for a million per year job?!
> A lot of companies who claim to want highly intelligent and autonomous engineers by revealed preference actually want glorified slightly above average ticket pushers.
No. FAANG companies and quant firms want people who are independent and self-directed, not people who need to be told what to do.
Please, explain how you determined this person was an "extremely smart autist".
I took it as a compliment!
I find it hard to believe that saying autistic people are "incredibly hard to manage", that managing them is like "herding cats" and their presence is a "huge liability to the org" is anywhere near complimentary. Autism presents in thousands of ways, and the portrayal is, at best, caricatural.
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