I want to understand about autistic adults difficulties which they face in workplace.

I have just been through yet another terrible experience at work which has lost  me my job, and probably my whole career this time. I think it can be boiled down to this: whereas everyone needs to have people "on their side" in anything they do in order to succeed, neurotypicals tend not to be on the side of a person on the spectrum. It's like running a race having to wade through deep thick mud, when everyone else gets to run on dry ground. You have no chance of winning unless you are a really really fast runner.

Even though I am more capable and more intelligent than just about everyone around me, I never get any credit for my work and effort, more is expected of me (in terms of working hours and tasks), I get criticised for things I do that would be overlooked if anyone else did them, and, even worse than all that,  I have even been openly sabotaged by certain of my colleagues and my employer refused to take any action. I was treated about the same both before and after my disclosure, so it's not about whether people consciously know about the autism.

It all boils down to cognitive bias. I know that autism is supposed to be a disorder or a disability, but many people on the spectrum are actually far more intelligent than their neurotypical peers, and also have a better work ethic. Moreover, people on the spectrum are not nearly as susceptible to cognitive bias as neurotypicals.

A neurotypical forms an opinion and then their whole perception is altered based on the strength of that opinion. If they don't like someone (for example, if they have heard from another person that the person is weird or unfriendly), all they will see is that person's negative points, and they will disregard anything good about that person as some sort of aberration. That is all to protect their point of view, to reassure them that they were "in the right" all along. That is called "selective perception".

A very closely related cognitive bias is "confirmation bias", in which any evidence they receive from their senses confirming their own preconceptions is given much more weight than is evidence that would tend to disprove their preconceptions.

The really annoying thing is that neurotypicals don't even know they are subject to cognitive bias. After all, to realise that their own perception could be anything other than perfect would damage their fragile little egos that are telling them they are perfect and can't possibly make a mistake about someone else.

If the majority of people had an autistic type brain, that which is less susceptible to cognitive bias, more capable of making decisions based on logic rather than emotion, and generally more efficient overall, then the people who are called "neurotypicals" at present would be the ones who are considered deficient or disabled.

However, that isn't the world we live in. We have to put up with distracting noise and annoying fluorescent lights because they don't really bother anyone else. We have to work with people whose primitive minds reject us as different on the subconscious level and will not even give us a chance to prove ourselves, much less succeed. We are considered dishonest because we don't like making eye contact, even though we are much more honest, on average, than most people. Our lives are made difficult by little people with little minds who cannot bear for anyone else to prove them foolish or anything less than the alpha dog. People find us annoying because we just want to do our work and don't want to waste our time exchanging mindless banter in coffee breaks. I guess they can't stand the feelings of rejection because we aren't falling all over ourselves to socially ingratiate ourselves to them.

Well, guess, what, neurotypicals, the slight feeling of rejection you get when one of us isn't as quick to give eye contact as you think we should be isn't anything compared to how we feel when you shun, exclude, and outright bully us. Is it really surprising that we are shy about socialising with you when you treat us that way?

I have just been through yet another terrible experience at work which has lost  me my job, and probably my whole career this time. I think it can be boiled down to this: whereas everyone needs to have people "on their side" in anything they do in order to succeed, neurotypicals tend not to be on the side of a person on the spectrum. It's like running a race having to wade through deep thick mud, when everyone else gets to run on dry ground. You have no chance of winning unless you are a really really fast runner.

Even though I am more capable and more intelligent than just about everyone around me, I never get any credit for my work and effort, more is expected of me (in terms of working hours and tasks), I get criticised for things I do that would be overlooked if anyone else did them, and, even worse than all that,  I have even been openly sabotaged by certain of my colleagues and my employer refused to take any action. I was treated about the same both before and after my disclosure, so it's not about whether people consciously know about the autism.

It all boils down to cognitive bias. I know that autism is supposed to be a disorder or a disability, but many people on the spectrum are actually far more intelligent than their neurotypical peers, and also have a better work ethic. Moreover, people on the spectrum are not nearly as susceptible to cognitive bias as neurotypicals.

A neurotypical forms an opinion and then their whole perception is altered based on the strength of that opinion. If they don't like someone (for example, if they have heard from another person that the person is weird or unfriendly), all they will see is that person's negative points, and they will disregard anything good about that person as some sort of aberration. That is all to protect their point of view, to reassure them that they were "in the right" all along. That is called "selective perception".

A very closely related cognitive bias is "confirmation bias", in which any evidence they receive from their senses confirming their own preconceptions is given much more weight than is evidence that would tend to disprove their preconceptions.

The really annoying thing is that neurotypicals don't even know they are subject to cognitive bias. After all, to realise that their own perception could be anything other than perfect would damage their fragile little egos that are telling them they are perfect and can't possibly make a mistake about someone else.

If the majority of people had an autistic type brain, that which is less susceptible to cognitive bias, more capable of making decisions based on logic rather than emotion, and generally more efficient overall, then the people who are called "neurotypicals" at present would be the ones who are considered deficient or disabled.

However, that isn't the world we live in. We have to put up with distracting noise and annoying fluorescent lights because they don't really bother anyone else. We have to work with people whose primitive minds reject us as different on the subconscious level and will not even give us a chance to prove ourselves, much less succeed. We are considered dishonest because we don't like making eye contact, even though we are much more honest, on average, than most people. Our lives are made difficult by little people with little minds who cannot bear for anyone else to prove them foolish or anything less than the alpha dog. People find us annoying because we just want to do our work and don't want to waste our time exchanging mindless banter in coffee breaks. I guess they can't stand the feelings of rejection because we aren't falling all over ourselves to socially ingratiate ourselves to them.

Well, guess, what, neurotypicals, the slight feeling of rejection you get when one of us isn't as quick to give eye contact as you think we should be isn't anything compared to how we feel when you shun, exclude, and outright bully us. Is it really surprising that we are shy about socialising with you when you treat us that way?

Great post

Thanks for the nice post, NAS24456, and sorry to hear about the terrible experience. I'm guessing from what you say that you think that your most recent job won't give you a good reference. If you are willing, maybe a bit more detail would help us and the original poster understand what happened, and what form the exclusion and bullying took. Is it something workplace training of managers and typical colleagues could have helped with?

I'd agree autistic people are often more intelligent than the people around them, and this can be part of the communication difficulties. I sometimes want to put quite a complex argument, throwing in a lot of incidental detail, but people only listen to a part of it. Also agree that autistic people can be more conscientious, and fail to get deserved credit, possibly because they're more modest, or don't use typicals' ways of claiming success. Do you defend yourself against the criticism? How do you think it would be if you had more autistic colleagues?

I wouldn't necessarily agree about being relatively immune to cognitive bias or confirmation bias. Such things can still come to bite one, which is why I like to triple-check everything before making a firm statement. For example, what evidence is there against your account of a general underlying bias in your post?

There's an old Dilbert cartoon where a character listening to a presentation says something like 'there's no point in this - either you're telling me what I already know, or you're wrong'. It's still de rigeur to listen to other points of view and try to take them seriously, trying to work out any difference of fundamental assumptions.  I said above that I could pass at banter (and nowadays even eye contact), and it doesn't feel like it's about ingratiation - maybe we can see mutual strokes and compliments as not just social lubricant, but a work motivator and feedback according to our own values, whereby everyone can achieve their best potential. Maybe that's unrealistic, but it's deliberately an aspiration.