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I’m curious on how old you are. I’m in my 40s and I feel like that was a common way to grow up. Pigeon holed with Atari/nes/video games as being introverted and awkward growing up but you were still aware that you needed social skills to be a part of society.
Nowadays I feel texting, social media, and a billion different internet apps has made it too easy to be a social recluse.
When my team hires young people, I’ve seen too many fresh out of high school kids scared to death to talk on the phone. Like it’s really anxiety triggering for many of them. I do worry for some of them that don’t grow out of it because it’s too easy to be an internet only person now.
I’m 24. I don’t disagree but I was kind of egregiously awkward as a kid so I ended up getting bullied. This really forced me to realize I needed to learn to get along with people.
I only had very mild social anxiety though probably and I was still kind of chatty to start with if I liked what I was talking about.
I'm also in my 40s. You may be onto something there.
Also it didn't exactly happen by accident in my case. As a shy, awkward kid/teenager, I always desperately *wanted* to be the fun, confident, social guy, so when I went to college I was hellbent on reinventing myself and it actually kinda worked.
My issue wasn’t technology it was helicopter parents who wouldn’t allow me to have a life outside of school. I very rarely did anything social. You go to school and you go to church, why the hell do you need to go to a friend’s house or even your senior prom. Even going to the library after school was a privilege and that got ruined by an older teen SA’ing me there when I was about 14. Oh and the autism
We all revert back to being antisocial at some point.
Hahaha. Comes with age for a lot of us. Hopefully before then you’re able to get a career going.
Burn out is reaaaaal
Not just socially awkward kids. Lonely kids are kids whose needs are not being met, so neurodivergent kids, kids who are being abused and/or neglected, kids whose parents move the family frequently, etc.
Idk about that I was very socially isolated, bullied, and outcast as a 12 year old. By the time I was 18 I was one of the "popular" kids (we had 2 groups of popular kids at my school preppy and non preppy) and was hanging out with people every single night.
I think the real issue isn't social awkwardness, but at that age your time scale is all messed up. Every little thing feels like it's a big part of your life, 1 year is 1/12th of your life. Things are just different. So this can cause people at that age who are socially awkward and never given the chance to learn and develop social skills to just not know how to even go about working on it. This is on the parents to do this, as socializing as a young child is the most important factor for improving social awkward Ness as an adult.
I think what i find most interesting about this, in todays society theres SOO much employment opportunities for people who dont want to engage with anyone. That is what makes me a little curious about this study
Actually, there are not. Not any that pay comfortably.
The go-to field for that was tech and software. Nowadays companies are excluding more introverted, socially awkward candidates because of a lack of communication skills.
Yep, you need communication skills, attend parties, be athletic and play basketball or whatnot during the breaks or whenever, do other kinds of social activities. That is the main reason why I'm not working in that area.
I don't think there is a job where you can be left alone and just do your job, apart from self-employment like carpentry, etc.
I once found a small company selling books, etc., but during breaks the other guy or two would close the warehouse and we had to go to the other warehouse, also there were plenty of other people with whom I had to communicate (20 or so), which drove me crazy... Low paying jobs I've found tended to prefer women because the jobs were too layed back and men used to get drunk, so they didn't even want to talk to men.
Also, socially awkward people tend to look weird, so not many want to hire those for certain more or less solitary jobs.
Bingo. I was interested in software dev when I was young, a) because it was a very well paying field at the time, and still is to some degree, and b) because it was advertised as a field with minimal to no social interaction beyond maybe your dev buddies on the team and maybe a manager.
It can depend a lot on the organization you join, but going on 5 years in the field and that could not be further from the truth. Like 70% of my day sometimes involves various chats with devs, management, users (we build internal tools), other teams to gain and clarify business specific information, coordinating support or with support to solve issues., demos. Bit of a culture shock....
You only get to code monkey if you don’t want to be a senior dev and it’s been like that for over a decade tbh.
Moving up = planning on mentoring more junior devs
I wasn't arguing against you by the way. You asking the person you were responding to to name some jobs that fit that description just made me think. Because I get people at my job all the time (recruitment) asking for a job that fits all these specifications and Im always professional say I'll see what I can do but it baffles me that anyone would ask and think there's a job out there for them like that. A job where you don't have to interact with people or work with computers or with money/numbers, that only requires the hours you WANT to work but still pays you enough to live the life you want.
A lot of people don't like this but I think a lot of damage has been done to younger generation by making them think the world can and should bend to all their proclivities
The job like this that I can think of--delivery driver, stock room associate, nighttime security guard--are generally low paid. Low paid jobs don't support a loner lifestyle, since an individual would have to get (multiple) roommates to stretch their meager paycheck. Or live with family.
Good oaying jobs with low people engagement tend to require higher education. Basic social competency is required to get through college
a) There isn't. Even if you don't directly deal with the public/stakeholders, you will still need to interact with a team in the vast majority of jobs.
b) Even if you do find a job where you can work alone with little to no interaction with others, you're still going to need to interview well enough to get it in the first place, a difficult task for someone with serious social issues.
Jobs require social skills and those personalities that are more sociable will see more job opportunities. Networking is more based on your character than your skill and communicating with others allows them to know your abilities but in a casual way.
I also think these lonely kids are probably neurodivergent, which employers try hard to avoid.
I swear a lot of those job interview personality quizzes are just there to legally discriminate ND people.
as an antisocial ND, i fear what the future holds for me. im getting my bachelors in a field which doesnt require too much communication but the people in the field are notoriously bad at communicating (software engineering/CS)
you have to borderline waterboard and torture people to get an ounce of specificity from them. it's like prompting an AI in slightly different ways to get a good answer. as an autistic i sometimes genuinely think that these people are even more robotic than i am.
I appreciate what you are saying and it’s technical correctness, I’d just like to say that jobs don’t unilaterally “require” social skills. Many jobs can be done with very little to no social skills at all but the social skills are required to get a job by effectively persuading managers that you will perform well but is often tertiary to what someone is doing in the day to day.
This pervasive myth is one of the reasons why neurodivergent people struggle to find and keep employment. We are seen as a “poor cultural fit” for being shy, awkward, argumentative and struggling with face-to-face communication. It’s often not a reflection of our ability to do the job well, but our ability to convince our managers that we are doing so in the ways that they want to be convinced.
I mention this because “lack of cultural fit” was and is one of the most pervasive justifications for not hiring PoC’s and women. That’s become harder to do with advances in discrimination law but it’s still really prevalent for neurodivergent people even when it is unrelated to performance of the core job duties.
Yep you make good valid points. It’s unfortunate that employers still make hiring judgments based on more personality than skill. That leads to people for are more extroverted getting jobs over possibly more qualified people. Then throw in unconscious bias with actual discrimination and you get even more people that judge based on qualities and character they are only comfortable with.
Or in my case as an introverted extrovert, I’m able to put on the extroverted persona but only for 1-2 hours a day without feeling completely overstimulated. So I interview pretty well and then my coworkers resent me for not being that person all the time.
That’s a good point and totally happens to non introvert extroverts too. It’s tough to keep everyone happy and other fellow employees can impact your job longevity because they can’t deal with someone who is different or not happy all the time at work.
I agree, and it’s important to find solutions. Do you have any resources on how managers can make better decisions based on different data? If “how they want to be convinced” does not create equitable opportunities (which I agree with), what are other ways to be convinced and take the risk of hiring someone?
It seems like the latest trend is to promote the skills and productivity that neurodivergent people bring to the table but that has its own side effects of essentially commodifying neurodivergent people without actually embracing diversity which can cause burnout and misinterpreted neurodivergent behaviors.
I’m not sure there is a way to do it correctly but I think a big part of it is shifting our accommodation mindset from a “no, unless….” to a “yes, when…” in order to allow people with “invisible disabilities” the ability to work in ways that are comfortable to them without having to say “listening to my cubicle neighbor with allergies sniffle every 3 minutes for 8 hours makes me want to strangle her can I please just work from home?” Or “I went on a site visit yesterday and talked to people all day and I am so overstimulated that I don’t want to leave my bed at the risk of having a conversation.” Basically, if someone is doing their work, we should trust them. And if they aren’t doing their work, it should be communicated to them clearly in a way that gives them space to rectify it and without personal judgements.
Absolutely. There needs to be a massive shift in management culture not just for DEI but also to account for the fact that we now live in a professional world where employees expect flexibility and work-life balance because of their diverse lives and needs
No mention was made about neurodiverse or ASD 12-year-olds, but they have school avoidance rates of over 40% and unemployment rates of over 80% as adults so this isn't surprising to hear.
I am unable to find a good source that backs up this 80% unemployment figure which you have mentioned. I can only find secondary articles which mention 'other studies' without actually linking them, or conflations such as '85% of them are unemployed *or* underemployed'.
I would love to see a source for this. Unemployment, and the drivers behind it, is a topic that I hope to write about for my undergraduate thesis next year, and I would love to look into this provided you have a credible source.
Thank you for this. It's quite interesting, and it's helped me find the paper which appears to be the source of the 80% unemployment claim. See here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5924705/
Of course, one thing with this paper that nobody seems to mention, is that 75% of the participants had learning disabilities and IQs below 70. It's no surprise then that they would struggle to find employment. But I think what would be more interesting is to look at people with ASD who have average levels of intelligence, and evaluate their employment outcomes. Then you could point out that any deviation from the average population comes from them having ASD.
University graduates.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13623613231182756
> Autistic graduates were over twice as likely to report being unemployed (15%) compared to graduates with an Other Disability (6%). While they are five times more likely to report being unemployed than their peers with No Disability (3%).
> For example, 17% of autistic males reported being unemployed compared to only 7% of those with Other Disabilities and 3% of males with No Disabilities. By contrast, only 11% of autistic females were unemployed. This was still more than twice the proportion of those with Other Disabilities (5%) and more than four times that of females with No Disabilities (2.5%). There was less of a contrast by sex for those in full-time work. Of autistic males, 35% were in full-time and 32% of autistic females were in full-time work. Again, there are considerable differences in the main activity that graduates with autism are doing following their studies, in comparison to their non-autistic peers.
> Across the 6-year period of reporting, 15% of autistic graduates reported employment in wholesale and retail, with proportions by sex at similar levels (14% male and 15% female). This is, however, noticeably higher than the proportions from Other Disability (10%) and No Disability (10%) groups who were working in the sector. In 2017/2018, the percentage of autistic graduates in retail fell to 11%, perhaps denoting declining employment opportunity in the sector.
> Of the available income data, differences are starker for female graduates compared to male graduates overall. Male graduates were more likely to report having a job earning more than £25,001 (42%) compared to female graduates (31%). However, at 46%, male autistic graduates were the most likely of any group to earn £20,000 or less. Of male autistic graduates, 28% earned £25,001 or above compared to 37% of those with No Disabilities (9% difference). The equivalent difference for female graduates is only 3%. Males with No Disabilities were the most likely to earn more than £25,000 (43%). In sum, well-established patterns of sex-based differences in earnings are apparent among graduates in full-time employment with autistic graduates experiencing additional disadvantaged in comparison to their non-autistic peers.
> our data demonstrate that economic activity outcomes are consistently poorer for autistic graduates over the 6 years. Half as many autistic graduates were in full-time employment compared to their non-disabled peers, which concurs with a recent UK report from the Association of Graduate Careers and Advisory Services (AGCAS, 2022) showing that autistic graduates were the least likely to be in full-time employment of any disabled group in higher education.
I'm not sure how you would scientifically categorise neurodiverse people in this context since it's a framework of understanding the human mind and not an explicit group of people.
Where did you get the stats from if I may ask?
School avoidance rates? Like cutting classes or just trying too hard to not go to school? TBH most kids come up with an elaborate plan at least once in their life to try to get out of going to school. Wouldn't it more be socially awkward kids who never learn how to grow out of their awkwardness struggle to find employment due to their lack of social skills? And then eventually give up trying due to low self esteem
I have a 12 year old with autism. It’s more like crippling anxiety and meltdowns preventing her from going to school. School environments can be over-stimulating for kids with autism and in middle school the social dynamics are complex and overwhelming. Many kids like my daughter are in a permanent state of fight or flight while at school. “School avoidance” is a term that’s often used but it sounds like an oversimplification. Not that I can think of a good alternative…
“In this study, we investigated the associations between loneliness and multiple indicators of social position in young adulthood in a nationally representative British longitudinal cohort. We aimed to (1) test whether loneliness is associated with social position using measures of NEET status, employability and subjective social status in young adulthood adjusting for correlates of loneliness, (2) test the robustness of the association between loneliness and social status using a sibling-control design, and (3) estimate the direction of the associations between loneliness and subjective social position using longitudinal analyses.
Participants were members of the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, which tracks the development of a cohort of 2,232 British twins. The sample was drawn from a larger birth register of twins born in England and Wales in 1994–1995 (Trouton et al., 2002). Full details of the sample are reported elsewhere (Moffitt and E-Risk Study Team, 2002). Briefly, the E-Risk sample was constructed in 1999–2000, when 1,116 families (93% of those eligible) with same-sex 5-year-old twin pairs”
Yet somehow every job posting still lists "excellent communication skills" as a required bullet point, in an effort to shove us off. I think someone in HR insisted that it be on there.
But seriously, I feel like tech may be the big exception to assertion in the title.
That’s what I did. When I was 12 my C++ compiler was my only friend. Turns out that was a good career choice! Also being good with computers doesn’t impress boys but it sure does impress men - from dateless wonder to belle of the ball when I grew up!
Still very socially awkward.
I wish I liked tech, it seems really hard and incredibly competitive since it's a trend now. But I also feel like I chose wrong by picking nursing while being incredibly introverted.
You did not choose the wrong route.
Nursing gave me everything - I was even able to combine nursing and tech in a very niche field.
Keep at it and you will be thankful
Right, it’s not a death sentence like people are trying to make it, the whole world is so disconnected physically nowadays anyway.
And yes you’re right, nothing hotter than a smart lady in tech, making good money!
I'm a mechanical engineer. Don't disagree. A lot of that social awkwardness came from loneliness and lack of social development.
I've caught my non engineer older friends saying "it's so good you hang out with these people" in college like I was doing it out of the kindness of my heart rather than actually appreciating them as people.
We are all adults now and most of the quirks are ironed out. That being said it's still there and we should probably work on making it somewhat better for the next generation.
AI is quickly going to takeover a lot of STEM sectors in the future. From lab techs to engineers. Even developers, teams that have 40-50 people will be down to a few. At least if you believe Larry Ellison, I watched him give a talk late last year on it in Vegas.
First, I think it will take a lot of low skilled jobs, such as service industry. But no one is really safe entirely in the long run, once it gets to that point we will have UBIs
My brother is the same way and I'm super glad for him to have a non toxic and welcoming work environment, but even for the normies this is a highly unlikely scenario, add anything else ontop of it (high BPD/NPD overlap with Autism and ADHD, due to chronic invalidation, expectations to perform when you can't, leads to suppression of self to avoid abuse from parents, friends, colleagues etc.) this leads to no sense of self, no desire to get better, and is infinitely cyclical.
This is all society projecting onto kids, making hell children, and then being confused why they don't act in accordance to society, society has never done anything for them, so social contracts were never established or were eroded over time. You don't feel any desire, urge or sense of responsibility towards something that is actively hurting you. So you check out of society.
There's no entitlement with this explanation, these kids got invalidated instead of validated chronically, so they cannot function in society.
Well theres some toxicity, but theres alot of kind people there, while the job is great my health isnt and i just cant get the energy to express my gratitude
“gaining employment” or being “employable” should not be the pinnacle of human existence. we’re at a point in time where our productivity, automation and continually advancing technology should make work a thing of the past. bring on the Universal Basic Income.
Antisocial and communicationally inept people have a handicap at trying to prove to the society they're actively avoiding that they want to contribute to it. You don't need a peer reviewed study to know this...
You are correct somewhat however Asocial is probably the correct term you are looking for.
Asocial people tend to prefer solitude and limited social interaction
Antisocial people tend to have a blatant disregard for the feelings or wellbeing of others and in extreme cases antisocial personality disorder tends to be linked to criminality though not always
Not meaning to be pedantic or argumentive but It's an important distinction due to the connotations
I appreciate the correction. Honestly though, if I failed to see the difference before you pointed it out then I'd bet real money tons of other people have the exact same issue. In my mind, there is little difference between asocial and antisocial people, their rudeness or lack thereof doesn't make them register as different groups in my mind. And if that's how they're being perceived, that will certainly negatively affect their employment.
Less likely to gain meaningful... employment... I was a loner,I don't know that I was necessarily lonely...and now as a middle-aged adult I work at a gas station thank you very much, have worked crap customer service jobs for the last 19 years...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9489955/
This research partially captures that stigmatized social groups (anime, idol fandom, etc) are closely associated with adverse psychological issues.
The perception is that the subject matter does not relate to things that one objectively would consider relevant or productive in the context of living a life of contribution to society, and thus, these people are further ostracized.
I think we've all had our anecdotal experience with anime fans throughout life if you're 30+ and have been working since you were 16. There's definitely a common denominator. I personally find these particular "outcasts" fascinating and actively engage with the handful of them where I work. In a vacuum, they're all fine as individual characters, but the giant red x's in their list of life skills is comically consistent across the board, to the point where I've subconsciously realized that "he watches anime" is a verifiable explanation for some things.
This sounds like an obnoxiously targeted comment since reddit is 200% anime fans, but the reality is that I like a lot of these people and pity that it seems like they're... trained to not go near the toolshed of life skills or positive community engagement. They're usually smart people with a good moral compass. It's a wistful feeling to see a capable body concede to being third string. Yes, this is a reliable formula to make employment and social interaction difficult.
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Socially awkward 12 year olds, grow into socially awkward adults which impacts their ability to gain employment.
I was very social and outgoing as a kid but I ended up growing into the socially awkward role as an adult.
I went the other direction. I was super awkward and weird as a kid, but ended up turning into a pretty socially adept adult.
I’m curious on how old you are. I’m in my 40s and I feel like that was a common way to grow up. Pigeon holed with Atari/nes/video games as being introverted and awkward growing up but you were still aware that you needed social skills to be a part of society. Nowadays I feel texting, social media, and a billion different internet apps has made it too easy to be a social recluse. When my team hires young people, I’ve seen too many fresh out of high school kids scared to death to talk on the phone. Like it’s really anxiety triggering for many of them. I do worry for some of them that don’t grow out of it because it’s too easy to be an internet only person now.
I’m 24. I don’t disagree but I was kind of egregiously awkward as a kid so I ended up getting bullied. This really forced me to realize I needed to learn to get along with people. I only had very mild social anxiety though probably and I was still kind of chatty to start with if I liked what I was talking about.
I'm also in my 40s. You may be onto something there. Also it didn't exactly happen by accident in my case. As a shy, awkward kid/teenager, I always desperately *wanted* to be the fun, confident, social guy, so when I went to college I was hellbent on reinventing myself and it actually kinda worked.
My issue wasn’t technology it was helicopter parents who wouldn’t allow me to have a life outside of school. I very rarely did anything social. You go to school and you go to church, why the hell do you need to go to a friend’s house or even your senior prom. Even going to the library after school was a privilege and that got ruined by an older teen SA’ing me there when I was about 14. Oh and the autism
I’m proud of you!
Thank you.
What was the main contributing factor why you improved?
We all revert back to being antisocial at some point. Hahaha. Comes with age for a lot of us. Hopefully before then you’re able to get a career going. Burn out is reaaaaal
Same. All the trauma and depression had sucked all the energy out of me.
This guy got sucked
But with a job
I did the same, but not until my 30’s so I got to get employed first.
Not just socially awkward kids. Lonely kids are kids whose needs are not being met, so neurodivergent kids, kids who are being abused and/or neglected, kids whose parents move the family frequently, etc.
Idk about that I was very socially isolated, bullied, and outcast as a 12 year old. By the time I was 18 I was one of the "popular" kids (we had 2 groups of popular kids at my school preppy and non preppy) and was hanging out with people every single night. I think the real issue isn't social awkwardness, but at that age your time scale is all messed up. Every little thing feels like it's a big part of your life, 1 year is 1/12th of your life. Things are just different. So this can cause people at that age who are socially awkward and never given the chance to learn and develop social skills to just not know how to even go about working on it. This is on the parents to do this, as socializing as a young child is the most important factor for improving social awkward Ness as an adult.
I think what i find most interesting about this, in todays society theres SOO much employment opportunities for people who dont want to engage with anyone. That is what makes me a little curious about this study
I think the barrier remains. You still have to have enough social skills to convince the person to hire you.
Actually, there are not. Not any that pay comfortably. The go-to field for that was tech and software. Nowadays companies are excluding more introverted, socially awkward candidates because of a lack of communication skills.
Yep, you need communication skills, attend parties, be athletic and play basketball or whatnot during the breaks or whenever, do other kinds of social activities. That is the main reason why I'm not working in that area. I don't think there is a job where you can be left alone and just do your job, apart from self-employment like carpentry, etc. I once found a small company selling books, etc., but during breaks the other guy or two would close the warehouse and we had to go to the other warehouse, also there were plenty of other people with whom I had to communicate (20 or so), which drove me crazy... Low paying jobs I've found tended to prefer women because the jobs were too layed back and men used to get drunk, so they didn't even want to talk to men. Also, socially awkward people tend to look weird, so not many want to hire those for certain more or less solitary jobs.
You think self-employed people don’t talk? How do you think they get jobs?
Why do you act surprised when you need to interact with society?
Bingo. I was interested in software dev when I was young, a) because it was a very well paying field at the time, and still is to some degree, and b) because it was advertised as a field with minimal to no social interaction beyond maybe your dev buddies on the team and maybe a manager. It can depend a lot on the organization you join, but going on 5 years in the field and that could not be further from the truth. Like 70% of my day sometimes involves various chats with devs, management, users (we build internal tools), other teams to gain and clarify business specific information, coordinating support or with support to solve issues., demos. Bit of a culture shock....
You only get to code monkey if you don’t want to be a senior dev and it’s been like that for over a decade tbh. Moving up = planning on mentoring more junior devs
Name ‘em. Where can one get hired without engaging with anyone?
uber eats/doordash
To be fair isn't it a bit naive to expect to be able to find a bunch of jobs where you don't have to interact with anyone?
That's the point they are making
lol thank you. I can never figure out how to respond to people who are arguing against me but are agreeing with my point.
I wasn't arguing against you by the way. You asking the person you were responding to to name some jobs that fit that description just made me think. Because I get people at my job all the time (recruitment) asking for a job that fits all these specifications and Im always professional say I'll see what I can do but it baffles me that anyone would ask and think there's a job out there for them like that. A job where you don't have to interact with people or work with computers or with money/numbers, that only requires the hours you WANT to work but still pays you enough to live the life you want. A lot of people don't like this but I think a lot of damage has been done to younger generation by making them think the world can and should bend to all their proclivities
Will not read all that
The job like this that I can think of--delivery driver, stock room associate, nighttime security guard--are generally low paid. Low paid jobs don't support a loner lifestyle, since an individual would have to get (multiple) roommates to stretch their meager paycheck. Or live with family. Good oaying jobs with low people engagement tend to require higher education. Basic social competency is required to get through college
still need to interact with the people who you work for. wether it is you boss who pays you, or your clients directly
I'd rather not deal with the general public, but I have to answer phones and solve their stupid tech issues before I can get there
a) There isn't. Even if you don't directly deal with the public/stakeholders, you will still need to interact with a team in the vast majority of jobs. b) Even if you do find a job where you can work alone with little to no interaction with others, you're still going to need to interview well enough to get it in the first place, a difficult task for someone with serious social issues.
Such as?
Like what.
Delivery work. Get your CDL. Digital gig work through apps like upwork and fiverr. Drop shipping ecommerce work. Real estate & stock investing.
What jobs have no clients or coworkers? Seems like a large ask. Social skills always seem required in some way.
Except for that part where you have to pass high level speech checks with some coke addict HR person.
Jobs require social skills and those personalities that are more sociable will see more job opportunities. Networking is more based on your character than your skill and communicating with others allows them to know your abilities but in a casual way.
I also think these lonely kids are probably neurodivergent, which employers try hard to avoid. I swear a lot of those job interview personality quizzes are just there to legally discriminate ND people.
as an antisocial ND, i fear what the future holds for me. im getting my bachelors in a field which doesnt require too much communication but the people in the field are notoriously bad at communicating (software engineering/CS) you have to borderline waterboard and torture people to get an ounce of specificity from them. it's like prompting an AI in slightly different ways to get a good answer. as an autistic i sometimes genuinely think that these people are even more robotic than i am.
I appreciate what you are saying and it’s technical correctness, I’d just like to say that jobs don’t unilaterally “require” social skills. Many jobs can be done with very little to no social skills at all but the social skills are required to get a job by effectively persuading managers that you will perform well but is often tertiary to what someone is doing in the day to day. This pervasive myth is one of the reasons why neurodivergent people struggle to find and keep employment. We are seen as a “poor cultural fit” for being shy, awkward, argumentative and struggling with face-to-face communication. It’s often not a reflection of our ability to do the job well, but our ability to convince our managers that we are doing so in the ways that they want to be convinced. I mention this because “lack of cultural fit” was and is one of the most pervasive justifications for not hiring PoC’s and women. That’s become harder to do with advances in discrimination law but it’s still really prevalent for neurodivergent people even when it is unrelated to performance of the core job duties.
Yep you make good valid points. It’s unfortunate that employers still make hiring judgments based on more personality than skill. That leads to people for are more extroverted getting jobs over possibly more qualified people. Then throw in unconscious bias with actual discrimination and you get even more people that judge based on qualities and character they are only comfortable with.
Or in my case as an introverted extrovert, I’m able to put on the extroverted persona but only for 1-2 hours a day without feeling completely overstimulated. So I interview pretty well and then my coworkers resent me for not being that person all the time.
That’s a good point and totally happens to non introvert extroverts too. It’s tough to keep everyone happy and other fellow employees can impact your job longevity because they can’t deal with someone who is different or not happy all the time at work.
I agree, and it’s important to find solutions. Do you have any resources on how managers can make better decisions based on different data? If “how they want to be convinced” does not create equitable opportunities (which I agree with), what are other ways to be convinced and take the risk of hiring someone?
It seems like the latest trend is to promote the skills and productivity that neurodivergent people bring to the table but that has its own side effects of essentially commodifying neurodivergent people without actually embracing diversity which can cause burnout and misinterpreted neurodivergent behaviors.
Right. I haven’t seen anyone talk about how to do it correctly. Have we just not figured it out yet?
I’m not sure there is a way to do it correctly but I think a big part of it is shifting our accommodation mindset from a “no, unless….” to a “yes, when…” in order to allow people with “invisible disabilities” the ability to work in ways that are comfortable to them without having to say “listening to my cubicle neighbor with allergies sniffle every 3 minutes for 8 hours makes me want to strangle her can I please just work from home?” Or “I went on a site visit yesterday and talked to people all day and I am so overstimulated that I don’t want to leave my bed at the risk of having a conversation.” Basically, if someone is doing their work, we should trust them. And if they aren’t doing their work, it should be communicated to them clearly in a way that gives them space to rectify it and without personal judgements.
I do think that’s a good start. And it needs to start at the top, somehow.
Absolutely. There needs to be a massive shift in management culture not just for DEI but also to account for the fact that we now live in a professional world where employees expect flexibility and work-life balance because of their diverse lives and needs
Real life requires social skills.
I’m wondering why this study only focuses on 12 year olds though
It’s less social able and more having a good personality
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No mention was made about neurodiverse or ASD 12-year-olds, but they have school avoidance rates of over 40% and unemployment rates of over 80% as adults so this isn't surprising to hear.
I am unable to find a good source that backs up this 80% unemployment figure which you have mentioned. I can only find secondary articles which mention 'other studies' without actually linking them, or conflations such as '85% of them are unemployed *or* underemployed'. I would love to see a source for this. Unemployment, and the drivers behind it, is a topic that I hope to write about for my undergraduate thesis next year, and I would love to look into this provided you have a credible source.
Here is an [article with linked sources](https://mydisabilityjobs.com/statistics/autism-employment/)
Thank you for this. It's quite interesting, and it's helped me find the paper which appears to be the source of the 80% unemployment claim. See here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5924705/ Of course, one thing with this paper that nobody seems to mention, is that 75% of the participants had learning disabilities and IQs below 70. It's no surprise then that they would struggle to find employment. But I think what would be more interesting is to look at people with ASD who have average levels of intelligence, and evaluate their employment outcomes. Then you could point out that any deviation from the average population comes from them having ASD.
University graduates. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13623613231182756 > Autistic graduates were over twice as likely to report being unemployed (15%) compared to graduates with an Other Disability (6%). While they are five times more likely to report being unemployed than their peers with No Disability (3%). > For example, 17% of autistic males reported being unemployed compared to only 7% of those with Other Disabilities and 3% of males with No Disabilities. By contrast, only 11% of autistic females were unemployed. This was still more than twice the proportion of those with Other Disabilities (5%) and more than four times that of females with No Disabilities (2.5%). There was less of a contrast by sex for those in full-time work. Of autistic males, 35% were in full-time and 32% of autistic females were in full-time work. Again, there are considerable differences in the main activity that graduates with autism are doing following their studies, in comparison to their non-autistic peers. > Across the 6-year period of reporting, 15% of autistic graduates reported employment in wholesale and retail, with proportions by sex at similar levels (14% male and 15% female). This is, however, noticeably higher than the proportions from Other Disability (10%) and No Disability (10%) groups who were working in the sector. In 2017/2018, the percentage of autistic graduates in retail fell to 11%, perhaps denoting declining employment opportunity in the sector. > Of the available income data, differences are starker for female graduates compared to male graduates overall. Male graduates were more likely to report having a job earning more than £25,001 (42%) compared to female graduates (31%). However, at 46%, male autistic graduates were the most likely of any group to earn £20,000 or less. Of male autistic graduates, 28% earned £25,001 or above compared to 37% of those with No Disabilities (9% difference). The equivalent difference for female graduates is only 3%. Males with No Disabilities were the most likely to earn more than £25,000 (43%). In sum, well-established patterns of sex-based differences in earnings are apparent among graduates in full-time employment with autistic graduates experiencing additional disadvantaged in comparison to their non-autistic peers. > our data demonstrate that economic activity outcomes are consistently poorer for autistic graduates over the 6 years. Half as many autistic graduates were in full-time employment compared to their non-disabled peers, which concurs with a recent UK report from the Association of Graduate Careers and Advisory Services (AGCAS, 2022) showing that autistic graduates were the least likely to be in full-time employment of any disabled group in higher education.
Ah, ableism in a nutshell.
That’s a great opportunity for your thesis then.
That article doesn’t seem to have a source for the 80% unemployment rate. I just see a graph. It also states that 85% have a college education.
Right below the graph there are links to the sources.
The sources don’t seem to back up the 85% unemployment / college number. The pubmed source finds a ~40% unemployment rate.
I'm not sure how you would scientifically categorise neurodiverse people in this context since it's a framework of understanding the human mind and not an explicit group of people. Where did you get the stats from if I may ask?
School avoidance rates? Like cutting classes or just trying too hard to not go to school? TBH most kids come up with an elaborate plan at least once in their life to try to get out of going to school. Wouldn't it more be socially awkward kids who never learn how to grow out of their awkwardness struggle to find employment due to their lack of social skills? And then eventually give up trying due to low self esteem
I have a 12 year old with autism. It’s more like crippling anxiety and meltdowns preventing her from going to school. School environments can be over-stimulating for kids with autism and in middle school the social dynamics are complex and overwhelming. Many kids like my daughter are in a permanent state of fight or flight while at school. “School avoidance” is a term that’s often used but it sounds like an oversimplification. Not that I can think of a good alternative…
Yeah well it’s the same as an adult 💀 I HATE working in the office I get so overstimulated 😭
Thanks science! Just needed that little dosage of blast from the past proving my present ✊
Well that seems specific
People without social skills less likely to do well in areas social skills needed
“In this study, we investigated the associations between loneliness and multiple indicators of social position in young adulthood in a nationally representative British longitudinal cohort. We aimed to (1) test whether loneliness is associated with social position using measures of NEET status, employability and subjective social status in young adulthood adjusting for correlates of loneliness, (2) test the robustness of the association between loneliness and social status using a sibling-control design, and (3) estimate the direction of the associations between loneliness and subjective social position using longitudinal analyses. Participants were members of the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, which tracks the development of a cohort of 2,232 British twins. The sample was drawn from a larger birth register of twins born in England and Wales in 1994–1995 (Trouton et al., 2002). Full details of the sample are reported elsewhere (Moffitt and E-Risk Study Team, 2002). Briefly, the E-Risk sample was constructed in 1999–2000, when 1,116 families (93% of those eligible) with same-sex 5-year-old twin pairs”
loneliness <-- personal characteristics --> employment
Don't worry - with child labor laws being shredded to bits, soon in the US they'll be expected to work at the age of 12.
it’s why republicans banned abortions
Should just get a job in tech making six figures, most the people I work with are socially awkward.
Yet somehow every job posting still lists "excellent communication skills" as a required bullet point, in an effort to shove us off. I think someone in HR insisted that it be on there. But seriously, I feel like tech may be the big exception to assertion in the title.
Excellent communication skills is basically giving them an out if they don’t like ya
Being socially awkward doesn’t mean not being able to communicate at all. I swear some people use social awkwardness as such a crutch
That’s what I did. When I was 12 my C++ compiler was my only friend. Turns out that was a good career choice! Also being good with computers doesn’t impress boys but it sure does impress men - from dateless wonder to belle of the ball when I grew up! Still very socially awkward.
I wish I liked tech, it seems really hard and incredibly competitive since it's a trend now. But I also feel like I chose wrong by picking nursing while being incredibly introverted.
You did not choose the wrong route. Nursing gave me everything - I was even able to combine nursing and tech in a very niche field. Keep at it and you will be thankful
Right, it’s not a death sentence like people are trying to make it, the whole world is so disconnected physically nowadays anyway. And yes you’re right, nothing hotter than a smart lady in tech, making good money!
The joke belittles the problem. Nothing like punching down at 12 year olds without friends.
I’m not joking. I work in tech and most of the people are socially awkward.
I'm a mechanical engineer. Don't disagree. A lot of that social awkwardness came from loneliness and lack of social development. I've caught my non engineer older friends saying "it's so good you hang out with these people" in college like I was doing it out of the kindness of my heart rather than actually appreciating them as people. We are all adults now and most of the quirks are ironed out. That being said it's still there and we should probably work on making it somewhat better for the next generation.
It's so easy for us to sit here and make fun of awkward hypothetical 12 year olds, fun too.
Cancer patients next?
Hell yeah, now you're getting it
IDK about going into an industry that's quickly getting replaced by ChatGPT
AI is quickly going to takeover a lot of STEM sectors in the future. From lab techs to engineers. Even developers, teams that have 40-50 people will be down to a few. At least if you believe Larry Ellison, I watched him give a talk late last year on it in Vegas. First, I think it will take a lot of low skilled jobs, such as service industry. But no one is really safe entirely in the long run, once it gets to that point we will have UBIs
Well yeah this basically just screens for autism. Autistic people struggle immensely to get and keep employment
Ahaaa ?!! i was lonely when 12, especially when i was bullied but here i am working, and i like the job!!!
My brother is the same way and I'm super glad for him to have a non toxic and welcoming work environment, but even for the normies this is a highly unlikely scenario, add anything else ontop of it (high BPD/NPD overlap with Autism and ADHD, due to chronic invalidation, expectations to perform when you can't, leads to suppression of self to avoid abuse from parents, friends, colleagues etc.) this leads to no sense of self, no desire to get better, and is infinitely cyclical. This is all society projecting onto kids, making hell children, and then being confused why they don't act in accordance to society, society has never done anything for them, so social contracts were never established or were eroded over time. You don't feel any desire, urge or sense of responsibility towards something that is actively hurting you. So you check out of society. There's no entitlement with this explanation, these kids got invalidated instead of validated chronically, so they cannot function in society.
> this leads to no sense of self, no desire to get better, and is infinitely cyclical. There is a desire to get better. The question is how?
This is very well put and 100% true.
Well theres some toxicity, but theres alot of kind people there, while the job is great my health isnt and i just cant get the energy to express my gratitude
Good for you!
ha! I was depressed and lonely at 12, and I'm currently employed.
“gaining employment” or being “employable” should not be the pinnacle of human existence. we’re at a point in time where our productivity, automation and continually advancing technology should make work a thing of the past. bring on the Universal Basic Income.
Great so I’m screwed
Antisocial and communicationally inept people have a handicap at trying to prove to the society they're actively avoiding that they want to contribute to it. You don't need a peer reviewed study to know this...
You are correct somewhat however Asocial is probably the correct term you are looking for. Asocial people tend to prefer solitude and limited social interaction Antisocial people tend to have a blatant disregard for the feelings or wellbeing of others and in extreme cases antisocial personality disorder tends to be linked to criminality though not always Not meaning to be pedantic or argumentive but It's an important distinction due to the connotations
I appreciate the correction. Honestly though, if I failed to see the difference before you pointed it out then I'd bet real money tons of other people have the exact same issue. In my mind, there is little difference between asocial and antisocial people, their rudeness or lack thereof doesn't make them register as different groups in my mind. And if that's how they're being perceived, that will certainly negatively affect their employment.
What's with all these links to articles that establish correlations of dubious relevance I've been seeing here lately?
“Well thanks for letting me know, mister scientist.”
Okay who's using the time machine again?
That explains it.
Thanks - this explains so much
I was a hermit as a child. Hermit as an adult. I currently make over 100K in a very people oriented role.
Less likely to gain meaningful... employment... I was a loner,I don't know that I was necessarily lonely...and now as a middle-aged adult I work at a gas station thank you very much, have worked crap customer service jobs for the last 19 years...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9489955/ This research partially captures that stigmatized social groups (anime, idol fandom, etc) are closely associated with adverse psychological issues. The perception is that the subject matter does not relate to things that one objectively would consider relevant or productive in the context of living a life of contribution to society, and thus, these people are further ostracized. I think we've all had our anecdotal experience with anime fans throughout life if you're 30+ and have been working since you were 16. There's definitely a common denominator. I personally find these particular "outcasts" fascinating and actively engage with the handful of them where I work. In a vacuum, they're all fine as individual characters, but the giant red x's in their list of life skills is comically consistent across the board, to the point where I've subconsciously realized that "he watches anime" is a verifiable explanation for some things. This sounds like an obnoxiously targeted comment since reddit is 200% anime fans, but the reality is that I like a lot of these people and pity that it seems like they're... trained to not go near the toolshed of life skills or positive community engagement. They're usually smart people with a good moral compass. It's a wistful feeling to see a capable body concede to being third string. Yes, this is a reliable formula to make employment and social interaction difficult.
So it started way back then
Guess I'm not a statistic then. People change over time anyways
I did not give permission to reveal this information about myself
This must be at least 10th bs article and claim in r/science in less than month.
Ohhhh, so that wasn't all of us? 25+years later, I'm still a socially awkward 12 year old
I call BS. I was a lonely 12 year old. I only have 1 friend remaining from pre-high school. I completely changed between the ages of 18 and 22.