Tech Giant SAP Seeks To Hire More Autistic Adults (cio.com) 165
itwbennett writes: In May 2013, SAP launched its Autism at Work program, with the goal of recruiting and hiring 'hundreds of people' with autism worldwide. Now the company is expanding the program, and is looking to have people on the autism spectrum make up 1 percent of its total workforce (~650 people) by 2020, says José Velasco, head of the Autism at Work program at SAP. So far, autistic workers fulfill all kinds of roles in IT — from software testing, data analysis, quality assurance to IT project management, graphic design, finance administration and human resources, Velasco says, and the potential for new roles is expanding rapidly.
I just added it to my resume. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I just added it to my resume. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm... I expect no more unemployed people on Slashdot.
That said, they're going to capitalize the ever living hell out of people's mental disorder and are trying to spin this as a positive thing? What's next? Hiring people in wheelchairs specifically so you can save money on office furniture? We want to save on the water bill, it's a green initiative, so we're hiring people with catheters!
Hmm... I'm a cynical bastard today.
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I work for the Navy, and they are currently in the process of switching their entire financial system to a SAP ERP system (my command has been using it for about 2 years now). The Navy LOVES paying extra for services from companies that hire the disabled (my notepads say "made by blind people"). I can't help but think that someone did the math and found out after tax breaks and premiums on government contracts that it pays very well to hire the disabled. Hell, that's practically skillcrafts entire business
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What if they gave their employees awesome new wheel chairs?
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They are looking for people with useful abilities which can make, not save, money. You are not being cynical, just missing the point entirely.
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Autism isn't a handicap, it's evolution neurotypicals are too simple to perceive.
Says the person who has never dealt with anyone with real autism.
Note: self-diagnosing yourself as being "on the autistic spectrum" because you're anti-social and good at maths doesn't mean you have autism.
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I know two people on the autism spectrum pretty well. One is what they call high-functioning, can cope with society, is very intelligent, and I don't consider him to have a disability. The other is considerably more autistic (not near the end of the spectrum though) and is definitely disabled.
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Autism isn't a handicap, it's evolution neurotypicals are too simple to perceive.
Says the person who has never dealt with anyone with real autism.
Note: self-diagnosing yourself as being "on the autistic spectrum" because you're anti-social and good at maths doesn't mean you have autism.
yeah these kind of comments irk me since I've seen a few friends and family deeply affected by it. Fwiw I am diagnosed and have above tech skills plus much higher IQ than average, got through Hon degree in Biochem with zero revision and effort and so on going mostly on finding what most struggled with where fact recall doesn't help and needs actual understanding due to it being intuitive and could've figured it out myself even BUT these are nothing to do with my aspergers as was confirmed by several expert
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Aren't the flashing strobes on fire alarms there to alert the totally deaf to a fire alarm? Adding those strobes was a 'change', albeit a small one.
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which in turn endanger the epileptics (very slightly).
Sometimes no changes will be made to help.
So SAP is just hiring more engineers then (Score:3)
http://spectrum.ieee.org/biome... [ieee.org]
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Yea antisocial geeks love to use the autism designation to explain why they're forever alone. Doesn't make it real.
Found one !
HOW ABOUT (Score:1)
How about they just hire whoever is best qualified for the job, regardless of gender, skin color, age, or brain function? Just give everyone an equal chance? Is that too hard?
The main problem is HR that should be anti-discrimination is the biggest discriminator. If you have dirty clothes and tattoos that might "reflect badly" on the company you've got no chance. Same with autistics that they think belong moving boxes in the warehouse so they don't upset the girls in marketing.
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No. If anything, it is the neurotypical persons that are more likely to receive discrimination. Neurotypicality is a handicap.
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I never understood this bizarre fantasy so many Slashdot users have of being diagnosed with autism. It's not a superpower, it's a disability.
It doesn't make you more logical, rational, or better at maths. [childmind.org]
It's not going to excuse antisocial behavior either.
Instead of fantasizing that you are or could be autistic, how about you work on your maths, social skills, and hygiene. You'll find more fulfillment and success that way.
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Smart people care about solving problems. It's much harder to solve a problem if you willfully misdiagnose it as whatever's popular.
Autism is to the nerd community as quantum physics is to Deepak Chopra's: mostly a convenient topic to borrow aspirational pseudo-science from.
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Near one end of the autism spectrum, it doesn't necessarily cause negative effects on the whole. It's possible for a high-functioning autistic to learn social skills, but it tends to be explicit learning rather than implicit. High-functioning people with ASD also do better at some tasks and worse at others.
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They have identified a problem (autistic people find it hard to get good jobs) that they want to try to address. They are saying they want 1% of their workforce to be on the spectrum. That means 99% are not. So before you feel outrage at the terrible discrimination against the poor straight while males, consider that 99% of the positions are available to them.
In fact 1% is about the proportion of people with autism of some kind anyway, so all they are really saying is that they want to stop (unintentionally
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"unless you believe that autistic people are simply inferior."
People with true autism have a mental handicap whether you like it or not. They CANNOT interact normally with other people and this is rather important even in IT where you may be required to work in collaborative teams. The lone antisocial bedroom developer might work for writing little homegrown apps but it doesn't work in large companies.
Also hiring people because of their handicap regardless of whether they're as suitable as another n
Re:HOW ABOUT (Score:4, Insightful)
Also hiring people because of their handicap regardless of whether they're as suitable as another normal candicate is not only patronising to all concerned but is doing the austistic a disservice as they'll more than likely struggle in the role and reinforce the stereotype.
Wow. How about you treat autistic people like human beings and accept that if they tell you they can do a job and appear qualified and make a good impression at the interview, maybe they are not lying?
I have a disability. If I tell someone I can do a job it's not because I'm lying to get the job. That would be pointless, I'd switch to their company, be found out and end up unemployed. In fact I'd make damn sure that I could do the job and they would be accommodating before even accepting it.
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Also hiring people because of their handicap regardless of whether they're as suitable as another normal candicate is not only patronising to all concerned but is doing the austistic a disservice as they'll more than likely struggle in the role and reinforce the stereotype.
Wow. How about you treat autistic people like human beings and accept that if they tell you they can do a job and appear qualified and make a good impression at the interview, maybe they are not lying?
I have a disability. If I tell someone I can do a job it's not because I'm lying to get the job. That would be pointless, I'd switch to their company, be found out and end up unemployed. In fact I'd make damn sure that I could do the job and they would be accommodating before even accepting it.
Autistic people are gifted. They can focus, and do a job exceedingly well. Give them programming, quality-control testing, and well defined tasks, and many can do that part better than the "brilliant, but scatterbrained" software engineer. SAP is in a win-win situition.
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Nice "no true scotsman" argument.
Anyone who is on the spectrum, anywhere on the spectrum, has true autism.
Many on the spectrum can be outstanding employees if they are given a little support. Aiming to bring the employee autistic population in to line with the general population's % is not that big an aim.
If a company stated they wanted to increase their physically disabled employee count, and they aimed to do this by putting ramps etc in, so that the disabled can function in that work environment, this wou
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What do you mean by "true autism"? Many people on the spectrum can indeed work normally with other people in collaborative teams. It happens by a somewhat different approach, but that isn't necessarily a problem.
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If they create a truly non-discriminatory workplace: they'll have 1% of their jobs without this requirement.
Which is total bullshit. How about finding ways of enabling collaboration that suit people with diverse personalities and ways of working.
I've been medically diagnosed as having Aspergers and I fucking love collaborating. I just hate sitting in a room talking to people all day. So I use IM a lot, I email people, I get on the phone rather than arranging face-to-face meetings, I schedule some quiet time, I work from home frequently.
Other people have different tolerances, and different approaches. Being non-di
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"Collaboration is just the weak freeloading off the strong"
ROTFL!
I think you get the idiot of the month award for that one!
If humans didn't collaborate we'd still be living in the fucking trees grabbing bananas you brainless tool.
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I'm really smart and good at computers, so I don't need society. Gotta go now, I'm working on a GUI for this social networking site.
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So before you feel outrage at the terrible discrimination against the poor straight while males,
You do realize that you were the one to bring this up right?
What happened no SJW story on Friday so your chomping at the bit for the next one to show up?
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Right, which means people on the autistic spectrum will get all of the good tech jobs and leave nothing for anyone else.
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Your second paragraph suggests that you think autistic people have problems getting jobs (certainly true for many on the spectrum). In that case, the best qualified person available might well be on the spectrum, and by encouraging people with ASD to apply SAP may be finding more competent people.
They'll be working (Score:1)
On the Tech Support call line.
I thought about 90% of all the people I worked with at SAP were either autistic, or lied on their resume about their qualifications.
Holy exploitation potential! (Score:3)
I read this as, "Let's hire first-world developers, and give them non-stop coding work for 100 hour weeks. They love this sort of thing, so it's a win-win! And, we don't even have to pay them as much since they're just working constantly!"
Actually, if it's not an exploitative relationship, why not encourage autistic hiring in development? It's a good counter-point to the recent hyper-social brogrammer style startup environment, where autistic tendencies would be frowned upon. SAP's a perfect test case for this as well -- anyone who has worked even on the periphery of an SAP implementation can attest to the insane system architecture and massive tower of layered code that's built up.
I'm "normal" but tend toward the introverted side, like most "classical" IT guys and developers. It is nice to see some effort to cater to people who aren't natural-born communicators.
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In EU countries companies get serious subsidies if they hire people with disabilities ...
Similar to the progam by Goldman, Stanley etc (Score:5, Funny)
Just hire them for QA (Score:2)
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There is a party in my head, and I wish I could invite anyone, but then again, I guess I'd not feel too comfortable.
This is great, but honestly the closet is better. (Score:5, Informative)
Though I am hired and paid and valued based on the skills that I have which are related directly to my diagnosis, I would never tell a perspective employer that I have the dreaded 'tism. Passing is much more lucrative, and even when I have a lower technical skill level than other members of my repressed class, I manage to make more money than them, because I can talk to management.
I highly recommend "business" books such as "Hug your customers" and other trendy MBA type books. Business interaction isn't nearly as hard as say high school, or social gatherings, because business interactions have specific enumerated rules, that have been written down, and are generally agreed upon. This is a boon for Autistic people trying to have successful careers because that means we don't have to rely on an instinct that is present in others but not us. Business interactions are already scripted, and working a script is significantly easier than navigating unspoken social protocol.
I applaud SAP for this initiative, but I urge working autistic adults to eliminate their own need for such programs by spending time learning the protocols of business, it is similar in scale to learning the rules to Magic the Gathering, but way more financially rewarding.
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SAP is probably not hiring people who can pass as neurotypical in this program.
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Although it would be way less exhausting, and possibly worth the hit to your paycheck to not have to constantly watch your Ps and Qs, and to just let your Aut-flag fly all day. It just comes down to why you work. I work for money. I would prefer to do something I am good at and something intere
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This.
Even having to spend time with people I cannot "turn off" (by closing a window) is stressful to me. Especially if they want something from me, like an answer. My mind is usually a mile past the problem they're currently discussing, so coming up with an answer on the spot is anything but trivial for me. To stay in a single conversation demands more concentration than any "sane" person can possibly imagine.
There is no possible price tag you could stick to something like this.
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LOL, OK, on behalf of those of us without a clinical diagnosis, but craptacular human interaction skills ... for the love of god, please tell us where these rules are written down.
Nobody told me there was a frickin' manual for this stuff.
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Hug your customers [amazon.com]
I used to use a different book for Meetings, but this one is way better, and is even styled as if it is some sort of science: Powerfully Si [amazon.com]
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Is autistic.
Tries to "pass" as normal.
Creates username "king neckbeard".
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why dont you just talk to girls, its not that hard
I was 35 before anybody told me that someone asking, "How are you" as part of a greeting doesn't actually want to know. Yes, I had to be told.
You really think the complex nuances of establishing potential relationships is 'not that hard' for someone that struggles with as basic a human interaction as that?
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They don't want to be told? From reading these comments it seems like a bunch of people who feel forced by society to act a certain way whining about it. I don't see what it has to do with autism. If you don't want to know about someone's sick kid (to one of the other posts), don't freaking ask. That's disingenuous and some people can tell. If someone asks you "how are you" and doesn't really want to know, why are you having a conversation with them in the first place?
Nobody is FORCING us to go out and
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If someone asks you "how are you" and doesn't really want to know, why are you having a conversation with them in the first place?
Welcome to society, where "Hi, how are you?" is a greeting and "Hi, I'm good, how are you?" is the expected response.
Maybe you can get through an entire fucking day without walking into a room (or being in one someone else walks into) or walking past someone, or bumping into someone for the first time that day. I generally can't, especially at work, and in this country "Hi, how are you?" isn't a conversation, it's a societal norm.
Nobody is FORCING us to go out and make friends with every douchebag and bastard we meet.
No, just giving us a fuckton of shit if we don't obey societal norms.
I don't see what it has to do with autism. If you don't want to know about someone's sick kid (to one of the other posts), don't freaking ask. That's disingenuous and some people can tell.
Fuck me,
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Really? Who told you that? Usually, they do want to know, at least a little, and a quick answer to the question is what they want. It's important to note, however, that they don't ask "How are you, and why do you feel that way, and could you tell me about the past few days of your life leading up to this?" They really don't care that much.
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News flash: Most people don't talk in words, they use "Sound symbols" that just sound like words. It's like ships passing, sending light flashes or signal flags to get a response so that they know the other ship sees them and won't collide with them (probably).
Or, like secret agents giving a code word and getting a counter-sign word. it is not meant to be taken literally.
Just give the expected sign/countersign and they will be able to avoid stress. It's much easier that way.
By the way, these signal words ar
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Oh yeah, because that's been working really swell.
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I discussed this with medical professionals and they felt I should inform my employer.
I haven't told anybody I work with. Some of them have clearly figured it out anyway, but have never asked or explicitly discussed it.
I did inform the HR department, but under clear instructions they weren't permitted to tell my managers. As I said to them, I was employed to do a job and it's fair to assess me against my performance in doing that job. I want the managers to have the same expectations of me that they would o
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Simon Baron-Cohen breaks empathy into two parts: cognitive (understanding people's thoughts) and affective (a desire to act appropriately). Autistics have functional affective empathy, but difficulty with cognitive empathy, while sociopaths have functional cognitive empathy, but little affective empathy. I think a lot of business cult
Re:This is great, but honestly the closet is bette (Score:5, Informative)
Because after you perform enough, the act isn't rehearsal, it's natural.
Bullshit. I have to consciously remind myself to ask about someone's poorly child. I frequently think, "I'd better say because that's expected now" even though it's pissing me off by extending the conversation in a direction I just don't give a shit about. I put a lot of effort into almost every single conversation in the office - indeed, the only easy conversations are the ones with people that exhibit severe symptoms for Aspergers.
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That's an inspiration for us all.
Is the "us" in your statement referring to dickheads, people who break shit, people who inflate their own egos, or people who circle jerk? Or are you, as I suspect, all four?
Knowing SAP... (Score:3)
...they're going to be responsible for the user interface.
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Does it really matter why you don't understand the help desk rep?
So they're going to make their software worse? (Score:2)
Good grief. Trying to get anything done is SAP is already a nightmare. Now they're going to give their convoluted instructions to people who will, sorry for the wording, mindlessly follow them to the bitter end and claim everything is okay?
I used to joke that for being a German company, SAP didn't make very efficient software. I can only imagine how much worse it will now become.
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Well, can SAP get any worse?
I'm thinking that since austic tend to be retentive and want simplicity the UI might actually improve!
Have to wait and see I guess.
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This may actually be a very smart move on their part. As the architect of a very meta-driven, open-ended, polymorphous software framework, I have 2 things to thank for its ongoing elegance and lack of insane bloaty bullshit that is the SAP UI:
1) I have drawn my most important lessons on how not to do things from the SAP UI - and I only interact with it to do a timesheet once a week. A few years ago I coined the phrase 'SAP-itis' to refer to frameworks so ridiculously abstract and poorly factored that the
Makes sense (Score:2)
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The definitions of Autism and Aspergers changed recently. The DSM (which is a technical book that is the bible for people dealing with mental disorders) came out with a new version last year that replaced Aspergers, Autism and a couple of related conditions into a new thing called: "Autism Spectrum Disorder" (ASD) - so in "official" terms, there is no longer such a thing as "Aspergers Syndrome" - it's just a range of symptoms on a spectrum that ranges from normality to the most severely Autistic people ima
Why all the negativity? (Score:2)
I am generally not in favor of quotas but when it comes to people with disabilities I think we should do all we can to help them get engaged in the workforce. The key is to find a job where that individual will be given the chance to excel. Just sayin.
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There's a hypothesis and some evidence that Aspergers in women isn't necessarily less prevalent than in men, but that women are far better at faking social interactions than men are and that prevents a lot of the problems which lead towards diagnosis.
My own view is that hiring should be based on relevant skills, and any plan like this should be implemented as efforts to recognize the technical abilities of applicants with more limited social skills.
Yeah, with you on that. Hire people that can effectively do the job, not people that know how to tell you that they can.
That explains their user interface (Score:2)
Come on (Score:2)
Is this an advert? Looks like this "news" is in the ./ rotation. It comes up every now and then.
Too many people self-diagnosing themselves (Score:2)
Here is what you should do. Get off your arse, start eating right and exercising and find a way to make new friends in the "real world". For me, that was by going to church and becoming involved in the Alpha course. Through that course, I learned more about the faith, met some great new
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So, you handed in one disorder for another one?
As long as you feel happier ... no objections.
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What you just said is that you don't have Asperger's but figured out what your other problems were and solved them. Congratulations (and that's not sarcastic). You continue by implying that people with Asperger's can do just what you did and have the same success. Seriously, the ASD people I know have better logic than that, so I believe you misdiagnosed yourself.
Discrimination For = OK (Score:4, Insightful)
It looks like the Americans with Disabilities Act only prohibits discriminating against people with disabilities, and not discriminating for them. I didn't see any mention of outlawing discriminating for people with disabilities (see Sec. 12112. Discrimination, here [ada.gov].)
Potential Abuse (Score:1)
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You ALWAYS - ALWAYS - ALWAYS - validate what system you're on and where you're running before you reboot.
If you don't multitask and focus on one system at a time, you avoid rebooting the wrong system.
Also - if your sysadmins are rebooting *workstations*? You're doing it way, way wrong. A single user workstation should be rebooted by the user themselves.
If the workstation is in a pending reboot and no user is logged into the workstation, I reboot the workstation.
Do you go around in the evenings and power off peoples' laptops before they leave for hte day,
Corporate policy requires that users log off their workstations at the end of the work day. A corporate policy that most users routinely disregard. Since most users start work at 7:00AM, we have a 6:00PM to 8:00PM maintenance window that may initiate a reboot. Also, all workstations are rebooted on Sunday
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Or, you could be a responsible professional, and validate what you're about to do, before you do it.
The best way to do that is to focus on one task at a time. Getting it right the first time is more important than getting it done fast.
Of course, if you like perpetually chasing jobs that are being offshored to mindless drones in India, that's fine.
My job requires a U.S. security clearance. Not too many Indians have one of those. My contract is also fully funded for the next four years.
Most professional sysadmins would write automation to handle this for them.
My department handles all the stuff that can't be automated. For example, a workstation that the user refuses to log out of has an up time of 30+ days, doesn't have the latest security patches installed, and won't automatically reboot ov
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can't hold more than 1 variable in play at a time in their limited brains
No wonder you're posting AC, registering for an account would require a modicum of intelligence which you've amply demonstrated you're sadly lacking.
It's ok, I'm sure you're a nice person anyway.
Incidentally have you considered that when you're talking to someone with Aspergers that they're concurrently processing the conversation with you, an internal dialogue examining your body language, an internal dialogue processing what you're saying to try and assess whether it's what you actually mean, another cons
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If you're so great at computing, what can you show us you've done that's good that reputable others spoke highly of?
Show us something you've done that reputable others in the art and science of computing said is good then
Oh shit is there a council of elders of 'computing' that I never knew about? How will I ever be taken seriously until they speak highly of my things that they say are good? Are they the ones that taught you to talk right by using words and think good stuff?
I'm quite convinced that you are a troll or some kind of idiot Turing test gone off the rails, but I can't resist: who are these reputable people that were supposed to review my work before it was sold worldwide as a critical part of energy infrastruct
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Argh! I don't want to feed the troll but I so want to know what 'his' (your) idea of 'showing' good 'computing' is! C'mon - give us a taste! I assume from your incredibly odd and specific language that you must have done some amazing things in the world of computing that have been spoken of most highly by reputable people in the art (or you are suffering from some kind of aphasia, I can't tell for sure).. Lay it on me! Allow me to learn from this crushing defeat by getting a glimpse of true computing gen
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Personally, I've impressed various companies enough so that they give me a lot of paychecks for typing on their computers. Since a company can't make money employing me unless I produce a lot more value than I'm paid, I consider that evidence of being productive.
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I wouldn't recommend it. It's not terribly good.
Maybe people that aren't classed as having ASD or Aspergers find it interesting, scary or insightful. I found it pretty dull and quite dreadful, and got very irritated with the internal monologue of the protagonist.