IT's dark little secret

Becker and Meyer say they have yet to hear of a single corporation that has any kind of formal program in place to nurture and support employees with Asperger's and HFA, aside from covering the costs of therapy through standard health care plans.

Which begs the question: If Aspies are everywhere among us, why isn't the IT industry doing more to support them or even to simply acknowledge their existence?

High-tech companies, after all, have been at the forefront of supporting workers with nearly every type of social, ethnic, physical or developmental identification. Microsoft, to take just one example, sponsors at least 20 affinity groups -- for African Americans, dads, deaf and hard of hearing, visually impaired, Singaporeans, single parents, and gay/lesbian/bisexual and transgendered employees, to name a few. Just nothing for autistics.

A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed that the company has no group or formal, separate support for Asperger's. On rare occasions, an employee with AS has requested accommodation, she says. When that happens, the employee is paired with a disability case manager to determine "reasonable accommodation" on a case-by-case basis.

Intel and Yahoo didn't respond to requests to discuss their policy toward Asperger's employees, and a Google spokesperson says the company was "unable to accommodate the inquiry."

To be fair, the question of whether and how corporations should support Aspies is a thorny one to untangle.

For one thing, unlike a disability that confines an employee to a wheelchair or the language barrier that a foreigner faces, autism is something others can't see or easily understand.

"A readily visible disability is easier [for co-workers] to cognitively take on board, it seems," Ryno laments. "Ah, if only Asperger's made one turn green!"

"If you meet someone from another country," Jeremy elaborates, "people know they're from a different country and they cut them some slack."

And by their very nature, Aspies are not uniters. Microsoft's clubs and support groups are all initiated and chartered by employees. That leaves Aspies out by default: It would be highly unusual for an employee with Asperger's to voluntarily organize any type of social group, with or without other autistics.

Finally, many Aspies aren't "out" in the workplace; they haven't acknowledged their condition publicly or to more than one or two individuals.

Whether they should is a matter of contention. Ryno revealed his Asperger's at only one job (his last) and lived to regret it, even though his boss happened to be a young Aspie as well.

"It's the first time I've had an AS person as a superior," he says. "It was definitely a refreshing change not to have to explain why I didn't do eye contact, hated meetings and could not suffer fools, let alone feign gladness."

In retrospect, however, Ryno regrets having told anyone he has AS. "I'd say there were many disadvantages and few gains. The gains were short-lived, too." Specifically, systems that Ryno and his boss had designed both to help users and to minimize interruptions to their own workdays were resented and little used.

Now that Ryno is gone -- he quit after being ordered by an executive to restore Internet access for an employee caught downloading pornography against company policy -- "the other AS employee is being forced into meetings, crowded social gatherings and many of the situations we had previously been allowed to keep to a minimum," he reports.

Jeremy has found that when he asks co-workers and bosses to accommodate his differences, it doesn't help, and in fact always seems to lead to the same end: termination.

"I don't blink. I stare. I don't understand boundary issues very well. I don't have a feeling of group membership, but other people have a very firm idea of membership in groups," he says, struggling to define the problem as precisely as possible.

As a result, where other employees are able to correct their mistakes and adjust their behaviors day to day in the office environment, Jeremy isn't. "People won't give me negative feedback. I don't know what I'm missing until it's already become a problem. I pick up on a lot of stuff, but I miss some cues. They're like little black holes, and the little black holes accumulate, and I end up being forced out. It keeps happening."

It isn't a question of work -- he is sought out for his programming specialty and always busy as a contractor -- but of social relationships. "I get the feeling what they'd like to do is put me in a black box, give me an assignment and get it out the other end in few weeks."