Nevrorazlični beremo - 2.

The Power of Neurodiversity

Danish software executive Thorkil Sonne wants employers to hire the disabled, but not for the reason that you might think. He isn’t trying to get companies interested in employing the disabled out of a sense of charity or goodwill. He wants them to hire the handicapped because they’re better than anybody else. At his own software company, Specialisterne (“The Specialists”), 75 percent of his workers have Asperger’s syndrome or some other form of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). 

Their work is to test software applications. As it turns out, most software developers and programmers are very good innovators, but they’re lousy testers. They enjoy novel problem-solving and uniquely challenging cases, but not the boring process of testing once the product is finished. 

It’s tedious work for them, and they’re likely to make many errors along the way. Yet good testing saves a company tons of money when bugs are caught early. 

Along come people on the autistic spectrum, many of whom have excellent computer skills, exceptional powers of concentration, and a knack for actually enjoying routine work. As one worker put it, “I like working here. I don’t have to try to be anything other than myself. 

At times I can become obsessed with my work and that’s fine. In another company I might be expected to make small talk and be flexible. Here I can just concentrate on my work without being considered antisocial.” 

Sonne observes, “My staff are motivated all the time. Our fault rate was 0.5 per cent, compared with five per cent from other testers. That’s an improvement by a factor of 10, which is why we can charge market rates. This is not cheap labour and it’s not occupational therapy. We simply do a better job.” 

Sonne first became aware of the awesome memory and concentration abilities of people with autism when his own autistic son, Lars, drew a complicated map of Europe from the Book of European Road Maps, with scores of page numbers drawn in accurately from memory. 

After years of involvement with the autism community, he got to know an eighteen-year-old man with Asperger’s syndrome who was exceptionally gifted with computers. “He had retired on a state pension,” says Sonne. “But I thought that was so unfair as he had valuable IT [information technology] skills that I could see would be useful for softwaretesting, support monitoring, programming and so on.” 

In 2004 Sonne left his position at a Danish communication company, remortgaged his home, and started Specialisterne. At present the company has sixty employees and has had contracts with Microsoft, Oracle, and LEGO, among many other companies. 

Microsoft, for example, touted Specialisterne’s assets in one of its ads for a Danish magazine: “We all know what it’s like to lose our concentration once in a while when our tasks become too dull. 

And we all know about skipping details when they become too overwhelming. However, this is not the case for Specialisterne (‘The Specialists’) who have tested Windows XP Media Centre for Microsoft. They have autism, and are therefore, especially gifted.”