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Saturday, July 14, 2007

that settles it

I've always wondered whether there was more autism in Silicon Valley and Redmond.

Just spoke to Carolyn a few minutes ago. She says Microsoft has an "autism benefit." They pay 100% of costs for placement of employees autistic children in ABA programs.
at

5 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 15, 2007 at 5:50 AM

    Wow.

    What's your take on that?

    And where the heck has Carolyn been? We miss her!

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 15, 2007 at 8:41 AM

    Carolyn has news!!!

    (Don't know if it's ready to be public....)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Catherine JohnsonJuly 15, 2007 at 8:44 AM

    I think most of us (speaking for the global autism ummah) assume there's a connection between autism and geekery....

    Whether that's so or not, I don't know.

    Years ago the New Yorker ran a feature in which they put Bill Gates' characteristics side-by-side with Temple's.

    point was: cut from the same cloth

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  4. CarolynSeptember 19, 2007 at 8:09 PM

    It's true... 80% coverage for your ABA program through Microsoft. Parents all over the country mortgage their lives away to pay for ABA for their kids; school districts fight like dogs in court not to have to cover it. We are talking about 10-30K a year.

    But Microsoft pays. They've been paying for at least ten years, which was when I heard of it (maybe Google is doing it now too, because they have to compete with MS for people).

    I could have had a program in Boulder during the whole 16 months I've been part of MS, but it never occurred to me to try, and it would have been hard to set up in Boulder.

    So this by itself would have been a good reason to move to Redmond, even without the career benefits.

    ReplyDelete
  5. CarolynSeptember 19, 2007 at 8:12 PM

    There are tons of autism spectrum kids here in Microsoft central. It's incredible. Ten out of the 13 kids in Ben's 'organization' class (i.e., resource room down time) have Asperger's Syndrome.

    But even the people here on the Microsoft autism listserv aren't sure about the connection between autism and geekery. They point out that with 79K employees, assuming half that many kids (probably reasonable), given the base rate of ASD, you'd expect 300 or so Microsoft families with ASD. And there are that many people on the listserv.

    But I'll bet there are many more people who aren't on the listserv.

    ReplyDelete