According to the US developer portal Developer Pitstop, 3.7% of software developers say they are on the autism spectrum. The proportion of programmers is almost four times as high as the proportion of autistic people in the general population (around 1%). Where does this accumulation come from and why are autistic people such good software developers?
First of all, software development simply corresponds to the strengths and tendencies a lot of autistic people generally tend to have:
- For many people on the spectrum, they like communication that is clear and unambiguous, software development and interaction with computers in general is based on a “literal” language that is unambiguous and precise in its meaning. The way a function is programmed is exactly how it gets delivered.
- Autistic people often think exceptionally logically. It is logic and problem-solving skills that make a great software developer
- They like to proceed in a structured and forward-planning manner, they organise before starting a task and prefer clearly defined tasks with predictable results, another software development strength.
- Autistic people tend to feel they have control over their computer and their progress, giving them security. They feel comfortable in this type of work environment
- Reading and interpreting lines of code is a large part of software development. This very visual work corresponds to the autistic functioning of the brain, mostly autistic people tend to be particularly detail-oriented to the point of hyper focused, this allows them to concentrate intensively on even the smallest detail in large volumes of code.
For many autistic people, programming is an area in which they feel particularly comfortable and can shine. Many of our IT consultants at auticon started programming as a child, and for many, it is much more than just a job. They see a natural beauty in what they do.
This is how auticon consultant Jürgen Schuch describes it. At Zurich Insurance, he tested and documented thousands of lines of code in around four months to enable the migration of the customer-specific CRM to the cloud. Despite the large scope of the project, Jürgen Schuch remarked that the code at the end was “beautiful” in his eyes: clean, self-explanatory and perfectly structured.
Versatile “code artists”
This feeling, the passion, the almost artistic approach and the particularly high-quality awareness characterize many of auticon’s developers. In addition, at Zurich Insurance, Project Manager Stefan Kübitz looks for skills such as attention to detail, pattern recognition, a high level of concentration, an excellent memory and good error detection. He was finding this difficult to find but then he reached out to auticon and he found what he was looking for, because our consultants bring exactly these strengths.
The possible uses for these skills are extremely diverse, autistic people can also make excellent testers, test automators, data scientists and database specialists, >80% of our entire workforce has developer know-how.
We have seen this across a variety of industries, in both the financial and automotive sectors, auticon consultants have impressed customers with their high level of competence and special cognitive abilities.
“A new perspective and special analytical skills were required, and so we started talking to auticon. The collaboration was extremely fruitful and productive.”
— Tibor Konya, Head of GSE1 Business Continuity & Intelligence, HypoVereinsbank
Scenario 1:
Business continuity in particularly critical areas
Due to the way some autistic people process information, they can familiarise themselves quickly and comprehensively with both data and its environment.
This was particularly important for a project delivered for HypoVereinsbank (HVB). The challenge in this project lay primarily in understanding the critical business processes and taking a particularly analytical look at how they work and how they could be improved.
Task:
The core of the project involved analysis of high volume of data pertaining to the organisations critical business continuity area.
Failures and downtimes of HVB’s IT infrastructure can lead to immense financial damage and loss of reputation and must be avoided at all costs. As part of reducing the potential for downtime, the team needed to investigate the measures and resources necessary to ensure continuity in the organisations IT infrastructure.
Solution:
The first milestone was the comprehensive examination of all risk scenarios for the HVB data centers as part of agile work processes and quality assurance and plausibility control.
As a result, our IT consultants programmed Business Impact Analysis (BIA) software so the HVB IT team could run through risk scenarios and recognize system critical resources necessary to maintain business operations.
This is where the special analytical skills of our autistic consultants came into their own, the BIA software the team developed has now become an indispensable part of business continuity management for HVB.
Programming the BIA tool required a deep understanding of these organisational connections and dependencies and strong developer skills in order to analyse the exact interrelationships in the infrastructure.
Scenario 2:
Software development “from scratch” for central information provision
auticon can also provide teams to complement the work of your developers. We have been working with a German automotive company since 2019 and have deployed software developers to bolster output and performance of this automotive businesses IT team.
Task:
A new software platform was being developed to provide information and vehicle data to the group’s workshops worldwide. Until now, this information was provided via a 10-year-old central release and publication system for vehicle-related software in the area of diagnostics and software updates. The system was aging and reaching the end of its useful life.
A failure of the system would mean that vehicle data would no longer be available worldwide, including safety-critical information. This would create real challenges in both repairs and customer service.
Solution:
auticon supported this with a team of autistic IT consultants well attuned to each other and worked with Job Coaches to interact excellently with the client’s IT team. The auticon team leader is a very experienced senior software architect who is supported by up to three developers and a test automation engineer.
The auticon consultants work for the customer in an agile development team with up to 10 people. Our software architect developed an innovative, high-quality and future-proof platform that is scalable thanks to its modular structure and enables long-term use. Individual parts can be replaced without the entire system going offline.
As a result, the team produced clean code and test-driven development: “beautiful”, code created due to the high level of care and attention to detail of the autistic team and their high-quality standards and the excellent engagement of the automotive company’s IT team.
(Article first published by auticon Germany)
