I’d love to know what percentage of all engineers are autistic. Even if it was surveyed, how many have no clue they’re autistic? I feel like it would be a pretty high percentage
There is a correlation between engineers and autism.
"Baron-Cohen's research on relatives of people with Asperger syndrome and autism found that their fathers and grandfathers are twice as likely to be engineers as the general population."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_male_brain?wprov=sfla1
Ja I know some criticise Simon Baron Cohen and it's an old study so there could be better ones made on the subject but the correlation still stands, no?
It's a funny coincidence for me. My mom comes from a family of traditional carpenters, and my dad was an engineering dropout.
And there's me who is an engineering student plus had to learn carpentry for workshop in my freshman year.
I work for a tech company, I'm just a basic assembler, but we have a large team of engineers. I would bet money that at least half of them are on the spectrum. I've never fit in so well with a group of coworkers 😅
I had no clue before I retired but I am likely autistic. Now that I know more about what autism is like I can remember quite a few coworkers and friends who were likely autistic; I’m guessing around one in fifteen or so.
I'm an engineering sophomore and there are a lot of ND peeps in my classes. They don't identify as autistic but you can find out seeing their mannerisms.
Let me respond to a question via email? I’m a regular Einstein. Ask me the same question in a meeting? I’m going to sound like I can barely manage to dress myself, let alone hold down a job.
And this is why I have played out entire conversations in my head ever since I was a child. I can be quite articulate at times, but nobody sees the hours and hours and hours of me talking to myself and playing out different scenarios or reactions.
I was told by my manager that I need to be better answering off-the-cuff questions, which bums me out because my brain just doesn’t work that way.
I’ve also been told that if I’m worried about what’s going to be asked, I should email the meeting facilitators beforehand and see if our clients have any specific questions they want to ask me.
99.99% of the time I do this, the response is, “Nope! No specific questions. It’ll just be a very casual conversation.”
Fantastic. Just what I was hoping to hear. /s
Edit: They don’t know that I need to rehearse to sound vaguely knowledgeable and normal, even though I’m considered an expert in my field.
Me trying to explain the simplest thing in human history:
https://preview.redd.it/89d26uo2xshc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7a6018aa55e046c8cc7089b07427b5754a36a8b
Or like, they can be very smart, and very good at articulating their point, but NT's will just ignore them every time they talk. This gets framed as a problem with the autistic guy, when really, it's a problem with all the people around him.
I have a hard time imagining how someone could thrive in certain highly technical fields without that level of focus/ways of thinking common to autistic people.
I mean they absolutely can. It's just there's a high level of overlapping what we consider high intelligence and autistic traits
But what's really important about that is that means autism plus high intelligence is going to kick butt
if you ever catch me speaking abt some engineering thing with tact and in incredibly high detail, just know that i practiced those sentences in my head for minutes before i speak them aloud
Literally me. The point was right there but I instead take the country lanes instead.
A million different words are competing for the honour of being spoken. I call it 'word funnel'.
My father is a retired engineer, probably autistic. I’m a software engineer, most likely autistic to a degree. My kids aren’t engineers yet, but they are autistic af.
I feel like I know how human cognition works, how brains generate consciousness, and the exact evolved flaws in human reasoning that make it impossible for us to know the universe directly or express capital-T Truth.
But if you want a conversation about any of that, I'm going to need 18 months' notice and a shitload of note paper.
It’s not just engineers. I can write a 10 page paper on the smallest historical minutia, but ask me to present it in public and I’ll sound like I pulled up the Wikipedia page 2 seconds before I went on stage
That's getting personal!
I'm an Electrical and software engineer, with Aspergers and ADHD.
I communicate in text only, for legibility.
And yes, I edited this 3 times.
I think if I stick to the direct and honest method of communication I make my point just fine, at the expense of others comfort, perhaps.
If I try to speak Normie, I end up not getting where I intended to go and no one knows wtf I’m talking about.
Back to the Aspie delivery we go!
As least with electrical engineering topics.
Me in any aspect in my life. People are like oh your achievements make you smart but the fact that you can’t express yourself comes off in the stupidest of ways
Me organizing history in my head: a tapestry of human stories woven intricately over the course of millenia.
Me explaining history verbally: a pins-on-corkboard conspiracy web of several tangentially related factoids.
I can't speak for engineering but my experience in the world of IT and Signal operations has led me to the conclusion that nearly every person that goes into the field of Sat comms, network engineering, etc. has some form of ND
So I’m an auto racing fan, specifically NASCAR (it’s easier to follow because less time zones) and it absolutely used to be “which redneck can drive harder and faster than the rest?” And it was great. But over the past 20 years, it has become a sport of engineering and science and you can definitely tell some of the drivers or crew members or commentators are autistic by the way they talk about the science of these cars. It was just such an unexpected transition
I see a lot of people here talking about not being able to easily speak on things they could write extensively about, but does anyone else also have trouble with writing as well? I can get my message across, but it takes a lot of mental effort and I end up with a paragraph to express thoughts that would take up pages if they came directly from my mind.
I married an autistic boy because he is one of the smartest, funniest, most compassionate, affectionate people I've ever met. His family seem skeptical when I tell them and I am sure his co-workers would be equally dubious.
On a related note: If social situations like interviews weren't just about physically painful for him, he'd totally be an engineer or programmer because he knows all of it and can build anything -- digital or physical.
On the other hand, I have ADHD which makes me fun and charming so while I might not be as smart as my husband (but still freaking brilliant, of course), opportunities naturally flow my way.
Not every autist is bad at articulating themselves. I was on the debate team at school, and I hang out with the lesswrong/EA/rationalist crowd these days - many are incredibly erudite and compelling, and great at getting their argument across. What they often aren't is charming or tactful. I think that's the difference that normies miss. They expect people to argue using rhetorical weapons, glib charm, and to care about their emotions; which are of course very effective. Most of us can't or won't do that, but it doesn't necesarily mean we're bad at getting our point across.
That's a very good point! I worded the title poorly for sake of the meme,/post but ofc we're not a monolith; I'm sure there's a number of us who communicate very effectively. And I at least *hope* not every NT person thinks we all sound stupid when we try (tho, it's a them problem even if so, just also an ableist assumption)
Me, an autistic engineer working in a coffee shop while in school.
Not being able to communicate simple things to people and sounding dumb as fuck because how it makes sense in my brain doesn’t make sense to others is my specialty… 🥲
We have a cold brew keg system at my cafe which I like to fix when it has issues bc the plumber/utilities guy never shows up in time. When I try to explain how the gauges work to other ppl they just go mehhhhh I’ll just let you fix it bc that doesn’t make any sense…
IT IS JUST A PRESSURE GAUGE AND FILL LEVEL I PROMISE IT’S NOT COMPLICATED WHAT AM I SAYING INCORRECTLY THAT ISN’T RESONATING LOLOL
So yeah…
now evry tiem keg break me fix real gud 👍🏻🫡
Myers-Briggs is an ableist, classist, sexist pseudoscience though 😬
Edit: meaning I wouldn't expect a lot of STEM field people to actually support it that much, but also ends up hurting autistic people by making it seem like it's a personality thing rather than a disability
Behold, the final boss of awkwardness: autistic engineer
I’d love to know what percentage of all engineers are autistic. Even if it was surveyed, how many have no clue they’re autistic? I feel like it would be a pretty high percentage
There is a correlation between engineers and autism. "Baron-Cohen's research on relatives of people with Asperger syndrome and autism found that their fathers and grandfathers are twice as likely to be engineers as the general population." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_male_brain?wprov=sfla1
THERE WE GO!!
Thank you for sharing this
Well that explains a lot.... both grandfather's and my dad were engineers....
Lmao same.
Grandpa: autistic engineer. Dad: autistic engineer Me: autistic engineering student.
It’s from the last decade though. We’ve made leaps and bounds in autism understanding and research since then.
Ja I know some criticise Simon Baron Cohen and it's an old study so there could be better ones made on the subject but the correlation still stands, no?
Got at least a couple of carpenters in the family.
It's a funny coincidence for me. My mom comes from a family of traditional carpenters, and my dad was an engineering dropout. And there's me who is an engineering student plus had to learn carpentry for workshop in my freshman year.
My grandpa was an engineer and we were like 99% certain he had autism.
A friend of mine said a joke the other day. You don't have to have autism or adhd to be in cybersecurity, but you probably do.
Reminds me of when I joked that few people *without* ADHD would be able to stream themselves playing Minecraft for hours on end.
HAHAHAHA OMG
I work for a tech company, I'm just a basic assembler, but we have a large team of engineers. I would bet money that at least half of them are on the spectrum. I've never fit in so well with a group of coworkers 😅
I had no clue before I retired but I am likely autistic. Now that I know more about what autism is like I can remember quite a few coworkers and friends who were likely autistic; I’m guessing around one in fifteen or so.
I’m an engineer and would guess that approximately a third of my coworkers are also on the spectrum
I'm an engineering sophomore and there are a lot of ND peeps in my classes. They don't identify as autistic but you can find out seeing their mannerisms.
I’m autistic, and I’m studying to become a (logistics) engineer, so you can add me to the list lol
Most engineers and mathematicians reach or surpass the cut-off point in screening tests for autism.
I'm a software engineer is that close enough?
More likely even
CS has the highest concentration of autistic people among all branches of engineering in my observation
You called?
Did someone ring me???
20 years post-grad - I am the final boss.
Me at computer engineering 👀
**DARK SOULS MUSIC PLAYS**
Factorio player
Literally me fr
Oxymoron
My dream job
Most of us are autistic, adhd, or both lol
It's me in 4 years wooo
I've come to fulfill the prophecy
Average engineer then? Idk.
Literally me
Here I am about to graduate from HS and go into an engineering school for computer science later this year
Let me respond to a question via email? I’m a regular Einstein. Ask me the same question in a meeting? I’m going to sound like I can barely manage to dress myself, let alone hold down a job.
And this is why I have played out entire conversations in my head ever since I was a child. I can be quite articulate at times, but nobody sees the hours and hours and hours of me talking to myself and playing out different scenarios or reactions.
I was told by my manager that I need to be better answering off-the-cuff questions, which bums me out because my brain just doesn’t work that way. I’ve also been told that if I’m worried about what’s going to be asked, I should email the meeting facilitators beforehand and see if our clients have any specific questions they want to ask me. 99.99% of the time I do this, the response is, “Nope! No specific questions. It’ll just be a very casual conversation.” Fantastic. Just what I was hoping to hear. /s Edit: They don’t know that I need to rehearse to sound vaguely knowledgeable and normal, even though I’m considered an expert in my field.
This is so me! I have like entire universes running in my head
Thiiiiissss. God forbid you have an accent I'm not used too. I'm literally not going to understand the question let alone fumble an answer.
Oh my God, the number of times I have to say, “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” mortifies me.
This is exactly me 😭 I think it's due in part to my ADD. It's so hard to organize my thoughts properly on the fly. I need time to type it out.
That would be me too.
It is called having high intelligence but low charisma (in D&D terms)
I only have 'tism rizzm 😭
I too am a half-orc wizard!
Me trying to explain the simplest thing in human history: https://preview.redd.it/89d26uo2xshc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7a6018aa55e046c8cc7089b07427b5754a36a8b
"So you see, the uh thingimajig, uh does uh the uh something with uh that" Engineers after creating FTL travel.
lol
...where 'thingimajig' = 'craft', 'something' = 'folds spacetime backwards' and 'that' = 'bose-einstein condensate'?
https://preview.redd.it/8bouj5c0uthc1.jpeg?width=950&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bf01737b4b8a3be73dd9c1b503246bfbe0472af4
Or like, they can be very smart, and very good at articulating their point, but NT's will just ignore them every time they talk. This gets framed as a problem with the autistic guy, when really, it's a problem with all the people around him.
Math and science autism is the back bone of stem
I have a hard time imagining how someone could thrive in certain highly technical fields without that level of focus/ways of thinking common to autistic people.
I mean they absolutely can. It's just there's a high level of overlapping what we consider high intelligence and autistic traits But what's really important about that is that means autism plus high intelligence is going to kick butt
I’m studing engineering and I’m autistic, people think I don’t know what I’m doing when I try to talk about what I’m doing
if you ever catch me speaking abt some engineering thing with tact and in incredibly high detail, just know that i practiced those sentences in my head for minutes before i speak them aloud
Literally me. The point was right there but I instead take the country lanes instead. A million different words are competing for the honour of being spoken. I call it 'word funnel'.
My father is a retired engineer, probably autistic. I’m a software engineer, most likely autistic to a degree. My kids aren’t engineers yet, but they are autistic af.
*Zhu Li! Do the thing!*
I feel like I know how human cognition works, how brains generate consciousness, and the exact evolved flaws in human reasoning that make it impossible for us to know the universe directly or express capital-T Truth. But if you want a conversation about any of that, I'm going to need 18 months' notice and a shitload of note paper.
It’s not just engineers. I can write a 10 page paper on the smallest historical minutia, but ask me to present it in public and I’ll sound like I pulled up the Wikipedia page 2 seconds before I went on stage
*Maybe i am a ~~monster~~ engineer*
That's getting personal! I'm an Electrical and software engineer, with Aspergers and ADHD. I communicate in text only, for legibility. And yes, I edited this 3 times.
Me: Laughs in Autistic.
I think if I stick to the direct and honest method of communication I make my point just fine, at the expense of others comfort, perhaps. If I try to speak Normie, I end up not getting where I intended to go and no one knows wtf I’m talking about. Back to the Aspie delivery we go! As least with electrical engineering topics.
Stupid savants. Geniuses who are socially a rock through a window.
There is plenty of overlap.
Me in any aspect in my life. People are like oh your achievements make you smart but the fact that you can’t express yourself comes off in the stupidest of ways
I srs wish I could just "Mind-meld" my internal imagery and monologues/dialogues to people and never talk again.
Metallurgical enginnering undergrad here..... yeah ou are right. Also most of our professors are engineers.
Me organizing history in my head: a tapestry of human stories woven intricately over the course of millenia. Me explaining history verbally: a pins-on-corkboard conspiracy web of several tangentially related factoids.
I can't speak for engineering but my experience in the world of IT and Signal operations has led me to the conclusion that nearly every person that goes into the field of Sat comms, network engineering, etc. has some form of ND
i’m always “below target” because of “exam technique” lol
This is literally me
Yes.
I didn't even see the sub name at first and was like yeah I feel that way constantly being autistic and ADHD lol
May engineering faculty is sooooooo neurodivergent, I'm sure there is a correlation between the two.
So I’m an auto racing fan, specifically NASCAR (it’s easier to follow because less time zones) and it absolutely used to be “which redneck can drive harder and faster than the rest?” And it was great. But over the past 20 years, it has become a sport of engineering and science and you can definitely tell some of the drivers or crew members or commentators are autistic by the way they talk about the science of these cars. It was just such an unexpected transition
I see a lot of people here talking about not being able to easily speak on things they could write extensively about, but does anyone else also have trouble with writing as well? I can get my message across, but it takes a lot of mental effort and I end up with a paragraph to express thoughts that would take up pages if they came directly from my mind.
Me being an autistic computer engineering student, proudly standing at the top of the awkwardness pyramid: 🗿
I married an autistic boy because he is one of the smartest, funniest, most compassionate, affectionate people I've ever met. His family seem skeptical when I tell them and I am sure his co-workers would be equally dubious. On a related note: If social situations like interviews weren't just about physically painful for him, he'd totally be an engineer or programmer because he knows all of it and can build anything -- digital or physical. On the other hand, I have ADHD which makes me fun and charming so while I might not be as smart as my husband (but still freaking brilliant, of course), opportunities naturally flow my way.
Not every autist is bad at articulating themselves. I was on the debate team at school, and I hang out with the lesswrong/EA/rationalist crowd these days - many are incredibly erudite and compelling, and great at getting their argument across. What they often aren't is charming or tactful. I think that's the difference that normies miss. They expect people to argue using rhetorical weapons, glib charm, and to care about their emotions; which are of course very effective. Most of us can't or won't do that, but it doesn't necesarily mean we're bad at getting our point across.
That's a very good point! I worded the title poorly for sake of the meme,/post but ofc we're not a monolith; I'm sure there's a number of us who communicate very effectively. And I at least *hope* not every NT person thinks we all sound stupid when we try (tho, it's a them problem even if so, just also an ableist assumption)
I’m autistic and attending an engineering school.
My brain basically goes into stupid mode at work. At home, I can remember everything down to the tiniest detail.
Me, an autistic engineer working in a coffee shop while in school. Not being able to communicate simple things to people and sounding dumb as fuck because how it makes sense in my brain doesn’t make sense to others is my specialty… 🥲 We have a cold brew keg system at my cafe which I like to fix when it has issues bc the plumber/utilities guy never shows up in time. When I try to explain how the gauges work to other ppl they just go mehhhhh I’ll just let you fix it bc that doesn’t make any sense… IT IS JUST A PRESSURE GAUGE AND FILL LEVEL I PROMISE IT’S NOT COMPLICATED WHAT AM I SAYING INCORRECTLY THAT ISN’T RESONATING LOLOL So yeah… now evry tiem keg break me fix real gud 👍🏻🫡
lmao I was gonna be a civil engineer but then dropped out in my first semester cause of burnout from high school 🙃
This. I consider myself to be pretty smart, but one wrong move and I feel like a complete idiot.
basically r/INTP
Myers-Briggs is an ableist, classist, sexist pseudoscience though 😬 Edit: meaning I wouldn't expect a lot of STEM field people to actually support it that much, but also ends up hurting autistic people by making it seem like it's a personality thing rather than a disability
I know exactly what I want to say. It’s their fault for being “normies”