Investigating the Experience of Autistic Individuals in Software Engineering

TL;DR

This study explores the strengths of autistic software engineers, such as logical thinking and hyperfocus, highlighting how these qualities can positively impact software engineering activities and inclusion.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on autistic engineers' strengths in software engineering, emphasizing their skills and preferences often overlooked in prior research.

Findings

Autistic engineers excel in logical thinking and attention to detail.

They prefer written communication and remote work environments.

High comfort levels with AI systems were observed.

Abstract

Context: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) leads to various issues in the everyday life of autistic individuals, often resulting in unemployment and mental health problems. To improve the inclusion of autistic adults, existing studies have highlighted the strengths these individuals possess in comparison to non-autistic individuals, e.g., high attention to detail or excellent logical reasoning skills. If fostered, these strengths could be valuable in software engineering activities, such for identifying specific kinds of bugs in code. However, existing work in SE has primarily studied the challenges of autistic individuals and possible accommodations, with little attention their strengths. Objective: Our goal is to analyse the experiences of autistic individuals in software engineering activities, such as code reviews, with a particular emphasis on strengths. Methods: This study combines Social-Technical Grounded Theory through semi-structured interviews with 16 autistic software engineers and a survey with 49 respondents, including 5 autistic participants. We compare the emerging themes with the theory by Gama et al. on the Effect of Neurodivergent Cognitive Dysfunctions in Software Engineering Performance. Results: Our results suggest that autistic software engineers are often skilled in logical thinking, attention to detail, and hyperfocus in programming; and they enjoy learning new programming languages and programming-related technologies. Confirming previous work, they tend to prefer written communication and remote work. Finally, we report a high comfort level in interacting with AI-based systems. Conclusions: Our findings extend existing work by providing further evidence on the strengths of autistic software engineers.