Tech companies have long had programs to recruit and retain employees whose brains process information in ways that aren’t typical. WSJ reporter Preetika Rana explains why banks, retailers and others are recognizing the special skills of those with autism and other types of neurodivergence. Then, an advertising executive with autism discusses what it was like to share her diagnosis with her employer and how she uses tech to help with work. Zoe Thomas hosts.
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[00:00:00] Zscaler extended its Zero Trust architecture with powerful AI engines trained by 500 trillion daily signals to prevent ransomware and AI attacks that target business. Zscaler Zero Trust plus AI. Learn more at zscaler.com slash zero trust AI. Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Wednesday, June 12th.
[00:00:25] I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal. More companies are tapping a reservoir of talent that the tech industry has used to develop better artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and other products. People with autism and other unique minds, sometimes called neurodivergent.
[00:00:41] Today, we're going to learn more about the skills this group of people can bring to employers, the changes companies are making to keep and attract them, and what it's like to be a person with neurodivergence in today's workforce.
[00:00:57] For years, it's been known that the tech industry has a disproportionate number of people with atypical brains. Elon Musk has publicly said he has Asperger's syndrome. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has requested access to his ADHD medicine in prison.
[00:01:11] Alex Karp, CEO of AI software company Palantir Technologies, called himself a hyper inexplicably dyslexic outsider at an event last month. Our reporter Pritika Rana has been looking into the growth of this workforce in tech and beyond. And she joins us now. Pritika, every person is different.
[00:01:29] But what is it about people with autism and other neurodivergence that makes them especially suited to tech, according to the people you spoke to? Specialists say that some autistic workers have the ability to work long hours on repetitive
[00:01:41] tasks such as labeling photos or videos for computer vision systems. And of course, that is becoming very topical with AI right now. Others have a knack for pattern recognition that makes them good at identifying gaps in cybersecurity or spotting, you know, tiny errors in reams of code.
[00:02:01] We've seen that some autistic workers can also be very creative and hyper focused. So they have this ability to just drown out everything else that's happening around them and just zoom into the task at hand.
[00:02:15] One company that has really grown its neurodivergent workforce in the last few years is the accounting firm Ernst & Young. How much has their neurodivergent workforce grown and what kinds of roles are these employees mostly going to? Yeah, ANY's neurodivergent workforce has grown tenfold. And it's very interesting.
[00:02:35] While a lot of neurodivergent workers tend to be good coders, ANY has said that they've actually expanded these roles to be beyond tech as well. So a lot of employees are now working with pharma clients, are now working with retailers.
[00:02:54] People are recognizing that their talents stretch way beyond tech. That said, tech is where a lot of neurodivergent workers have excelled, partly because of the accommodations that tech companies have made to make this demographic feel more comfortable.
[00:03:12] So ANY has teams of neurodivergent employees who have built systems that can write contracts or scan reams of company documents like emails and memos to identify tax deductions, for instance. So even there you have workers who are working on building AI tools that they then are rolling
[00:03:33] out to clients from tech to pharma to retail. What types of accommodations or changes are companies having to make as they expand this neurodivergent workforce? So companies have made a bunch of accommodations. The first is just training managers to be more communicative.
[00:03:51] A neurodivergent employee might not read between the lines, might not be as responsive to reading facial cues, for instance. The people I've spoken to have said, you know, we need direct communication or sometimes written form of communication is much better than even spoken.
[00:04:11] A lot of other companies also acknowledge that some people might actually struggle with ADHD or autism or beyond the spectrum, but they might not want to report that to human resources. So now they have all kinds of tools, for instance, you know, a chatbot that can tell employees
[00:04:28] about under-the-radar benefits. So if, say, I might want noise-canceling headphones or if I might want subscriptions to apps like Headspace or Calm, I might not even know that my employer offers that. Something else that is happening is that a lot of big tech companies are redesigning their
[00:04:48] office spaces as people have returned to work. Salesforce, for instance, has redesigned its Chicago office to include mindfulness rooms, focus pods, libraries with seats where employees can customize details down to the lighting. Those are some of the ways in which companies are accounting for their growing neurodivergent workforce.
[00:05:10] How are those changes affecting the rest of their workforce or their potential hires? SAP's head of neuroinclusion said that actually they found that things that are helpful to their neurodivergent workforce are actually helpful to the rest of their employees as well.
[00:05:27] For instance, at first SAP would tell managers with neurodivergent reports to be very clear and direct in giving feedback. This year they started telling all their managers, they said, wait, why should we leave anyone guessing?
[00:05:42] Microsoft found that when they're interviewing neurodivergent candidates, they tend to do really well if a recruiter gives them an overview of what the interview might look like. So just mock questions ahead of an interview.
[00:05:55] So they're more prepared and sometimes those applicants tend to get more nervous or tend to freeze during interviews. Now they've started offering mock interview questions to anyone who requests them. We're talking about this greater number of industries focusing on or being more accepting of neurodivergent
[00:06:12] hires, but tech has really embraced people whose brains process information in atypical ways for a long time. What is it about the tech industry that has led to this? For years, the tech industry has recognized that creativity and innovation, there are different parts to
[00:06:32] that. And we've seen some of the biggest innovators, maybe they were socially awkward, but they had brilliant minds that were wired in a way that made them think differently, that made them look for solutions that typical minds weren't thinking about.
[00:06:48] So sometimes typical minds might be conditioned to think of how do you get from point A to point B in a very linear way. But atypical minds might think of new and exciting ways that is not a linear approach.
[00:07:01] Tech has really seen the promise that neurodivergent and the talent that neurodivergent employees can bring to the table. That was our reporter Preetika Rana. Coming up, as companies learn what changes to make for their neurodivergent workforce, individuals are
[00:07:18] also learning how to advocate for the accommodations they need at work. We'll hear from one of them after the break. Cyber attackers are using AI and creative ways to compromise users and breach organizations.
[00:07:36] In a security landscape where you must fight AI with AI, the best AI protection comes from having the best data. Zscaler has extended its Zero Trust architecture with powerful AI engines that are trained in tune by 500 trillion daily signals.
[00:07:52] Learn more about Zscaler Zero Trust plus AI to prevent ransomware and AI attacks. Experience your world secured. Visit zscaler.com slash zero trust AI. Rachel Lowenstein used to beat herself up for being unable to think on her feet during group meetings.
[00:08:16] In 2020, at age 30, she was diagnosed with autism. She set about figuring out what accommodations she needed for her job at advertising agency Mindshare. I spoke with Lowenstein, Mindshare's global head of inclusive innovation, about sharing her diagnosis with her
[00:08:32] employer and coworkers and about some of the technology that helps her at work. Rachel, why did you decide to tell your employer about your diagnosis and how did it feel to do that?
[00:08:42] Yeah, I mean, the reality is, is that a lot of autistic and disabled people do not disclose their disability, as you might know. For me, I sat with the information for a while before I disclosed to anybody professionally.
[00:08:55] I think I told some people in like a very close circle of friends and maybe one or two people professionally. The reason why I felt comfortable and decided to disclose is because I suddenly realized that I was doing my best
[00:09:12] work by accommodating my disability and advocating for myself without even really realizing that I was doing it. So for me, I need remote work. I need to be able to work from home and control my social environment, my sensory environment.
[00:09:26] How did your employer and coworkers react when you told them about your diagnosis? There was this curiosity that came from my team. It was quite a privileged and fortunate circumstance where when I told my leadership at the time, there was almost this
[00:09:42] pause and this question of what do we need to know to make sure that you're comfortable and can do your best work here? And then what I heard almost very quickly was there was a lot of other neurodivergent and autistic people that I was
[00:09:54] working with that didn't even know. I didn't know that they had ADHD. They were autistic. They were dyslexic and seeing me advocate for myself so publicly and vocally across social media and in the workplace, it gave them the courage to do the same.
[00:10:08] And that's something that I am hopeful we'll see more of in professional spaces. Do you use any tech or tools or programs in your day-to-day work to help with your autism? Yeah. Generative AI is actually a pretty powerful tool for accessibility. I use ChatGPT almost every day.
[00:10:26] I use a tool called Goblin Tools. Goblin Tools has a suite of tools that I use, one of which is it breaks down tasks for you.
[00:10:34] So you type in, let's say you have a big research project you need to do and you aren't sure exactly what the steps should be.
[00:10:41] You can put in what that research project is and it will break down in like painstaking detail every single step that you need to take. Sometimes I use ChatGPT to decode tone in an email.
[00:10:52] I personally have a hard time reading tone of voice and miss maybe subtext that my other people might be able to immediately spot in an email.
[00:10:59] Or I might use ChatGPT to adjust my tone of voice in an email since I can be direct, I can be blunt, which I own that and I like that about myself.
[00:11:07] But sometimes in the workplace there's accommodations that need to be made based off of other people's communication preferences. That was Rachel Lowenstein, Global Head of Inclusive Innovation at Mindshare. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Katherine Millsop.
[00:11:25] I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening. Zscaler extended its Zero Trust architecture with powerful AI engines trained by 500 trillion daily signals to prevent ransomware and AI attacks that target business. Zscaler Zero Trust plus AI.
[00:11:51] Learn more at zscaler.com slash zero trust AI.