I'm less interested in reading articles and pointing out how they're so-totally-completely about me!!! and more interested in finding a resource to identify and suppress the aspects of my personality that people find unsavory at will. Example by example. Mind you, I like me, but in a lot of situations I have no idea what I'm doing since nothing comes naturally. I don't know when to say hi, when to say bye, when I should talk about so and so holiday everyone cares about that's coming up. Asking people about their vacations. And it goes on. It occurs to me that I don't say "I hope you feel better" to someone because I know my opinion or hopes have no tangible effect on reality, and if someone said that to me I'd basically just filter it out as being irrelevant like some kind of crazy robot, but to a normal person I bet they think my silence is actually me wishing them the plague? And so forth.

RE: Francesca, I have had that point brought up to me when I made my discovery. That I'm just making an excuse up to be a jerk.

The hilarious thing about having aspergers is, people who don't have it assume that you inform them because you want empathy, which in their mind you do not deserve since it's not like you've got a truckload of it — when in fact you just want to explain to them your astounding discovery.

That probably doesn't make sense to you, because you're not from outer space. But it makes sense to someone, I assure you.

Tell you what. When the company is losing a million dollars for every hour the corporate network is down, I'll just let the much more likeable, but totally clueless and incompetent co worker fix it himself.

We'll see how much of the company is left when he gets it done.

Thanks for making it acceptable for management to discriminate against us Aspies, for as long as the companies manage to survive the rule of the likeable but incompetent.

I think this varies a lot depending on the environment. I work in an engineering organization where (at least at the low/mid levels) having the right answer is paramount to anything else. There are quite a few people who can be very difficult to deal with. They go unchecked because they are among the best in the company at what they do. Their ability is never questioned and they are consistently called into projects that demand quality. The bottom line seems to be: A lot is tolerated if you can produce the goods. I find this consistent in a lot of companies with engineers.

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Joe, current management research shows that companys suffer  more than they benefit from keeping around a genius who is difficult to deal with. Bob Sutton, professor at Stanford, has a bunch of this research in his new book The No Asshole Rule. The people who always have the right answer always think they are the exception. But they are not. In order to maintain a highly productive workplace, everyone needs to be nice to eachother, not just the dumb people.