Neurodivergent Brains Build Better Systems (2025)

Source: Hacker News

“A former manager once described me as a ‘purist’. It wasn’t the first time a colleague alluded to my obsessive way of thinking, but it was the first time someone used it as a compliment. It got me thinking: what if neurodivergent ‘defects’ are the exact architecture the world’s systems need?”

Neurodivergence Is Often Pathologized

You may have heard that you’re too rigid, too blunt, too obsessive. These traits can irk neurotypical humans, but they can be assets in the right context.

• My friends and family have the patience of saints for putting up with my idiosyncrasies.
• I have built and worked on some of the strangest, most exquisite, and highly scalable software systems.
• Those systems were masterful because they were built by rigid, obsessive, and blunt people.

These traits:

1. Build stable infrastructure
2. Write clean code
3. Destroy inefficiencies

Thinking Styles

Business‑facing roles often favor the neurotypical style, but creative fields—including software engineering—flip the script.

A Real‑World Example

I once managed a team shipping production code under a horrendous deadline.

• Time: Final day, ~6 PM, midnight deadline looming.
• Situation: We were wrapping up systems‑integration tests. My finger hovered over the Deploy button.
• Interruption: The quietest, shyest engineer on the team said, “Wait, we can’t deploy this yet.”

He had noticed a subtle UI inconsistency: a button’s shade of green differed between screenshots and the staging environment.

• Investigation revealed we had tested an older version of the software, not the exact version we were about to ship.
• Deploying the current version would have introduced multiple hidden bugs.

That was bottom‑up thinking in action, saving our reputation with the customer.

The Distraction Economy

Nearly everything in the modern world seeks to rob our focus and divide it among a million shallow things.

• Neurodivergent people don’t just focus; they obsess.
• This obsessive focus is a rare skill in today’s environment.

I have met neurodivergent individuals who:

• Created their own programming language.
• Composed and recorded full albums of music in a single week.

Elite Engineering Cultures & Environment

One neurodivergent‑friendly office illustrates how environment can amplify productivity:

• 5‑day in‑office policy with an open‑office layout but a monk‑like observance of silence on the floor.
• Lighting: Warm‑colored, diffuse, extremely dim.
• Meetings: Held in sound‑proof phone booths or conference rooms.
• Cafeteria: Located in a separate building to avoid smells crossing into workspaces.
• Desk arrangement: Pods of four facing outward; no one sits directly across from another.
• Workstations: High‑backed chairs, adjustable privacy panels creating semi‑enclosed spaces.

These conditions enable some of the most elite engineers to write superior code.

In contrast, many offices suffer from:

• Harsh lighting.
• Extremely loud conditions.
• Unpleasant odors.

Such environments make hyperfocus impossible, yielding only middling code.

Manual, Repetitive Processes: A Pain Point

Imagine you have a machine that can automate tasks at any scale, yet you’re asked to manually transfer numbers from one system to a spreadsheet in another.

• One‑off manual work is tolerable.
• When it becomes the norm, neurodivergent employees resent the grunt work.

Why That Resentment Is Valuable

• Neurodivergent engineers have a lower tolerance for “bullshit.”
• They automate sooner, turning impatience into a forcing function for compound productivity gains.

Recommendations for Leaders

1. Identify and eliminate manual, non‑specialist processes.
2. Automate 90 % of the “necessary” processes with dedicated teams.
3. Automate 9 % of the remaining processes via focused automation squads.
4. Allow the final 1 % of truly human‑necessary tasks to be handled by neurodivergent employees, minimizing disruption to their flow.

If you don’t have neurodivergent people in leadership looking out for redundancy opportunities—anything involving spreadsheets, intranets, or internal apps—you’ll never notice them, fix them, and you’ll leave a ton of work output on the table.

ROI Perspective

• Aggressively reduce grunt work to boost software ROI.
• Having neurodivergent executives ensures that this voice is represented at the C‑suite level.
• Without that representation, neurodivergent staff burn out, costing the company untold billions.

Conclusion

So if neurodivergent t… (the original text cuts off here; the concluding thought appears to be that organizations should actively seek and empower neurodivergent talent, especially in leadership, to unlock hidden productivity and innovation.)

Why aren’t companies optimizing for neurodivergent talent?

The legacy corporate environment was built for neurotypical workers.

• Old‑school office: My father’s office had an opaque door that closed. He didn’t have an MBA or an advanced degree—just his associates. He worked in the Rust Belt, not a major U.S. city.
• Today’s office: Even directors or “heads of” departments in affluent U.S. cities sit in noisy open‑plan spaces. If you’re lucky you might have an assigned desk; most offices have embraced hot‑desking. When you do have a private office, there are usually windows that let passers‑by peer in.
• Privacy: You’re not entitled to your own space or privacy unless you’re in the C‑suite. This is penny‑wise, pound‑foolish, and outright classist.

Presenteeism

Presenteeism is prized in many corporations. If you’re not physically present, leaders claim they can’t know you’re working.

I once worked with a peer leader at an organization that required three days in‑office. He bragged that he came in four days a week, presumably hunting for a “Goodest Boy” trophy.

This mentality values optics over throughput, and the damage compounds. “Perfect Attendance” managers protect each other because any challenge to their subject‑matter expertise threatens the illusion that the emperor has no clothes. Rewarding optics year after year purges competent individuals from leadership.

As long as corporate environments stay this way, they leave massive value on the table while neurodivergent workers struggle to survive without burning out.

What Neurodivergent‑Optimized Engineering Orgs Need

1. Remote‑First

• Not always possible for every company (e.g., hardware, security‑classified work).
• Almost always feasible outside those constraints.

Executives who need to see people “working” should ask whether that work produces tangible value. Note that many such executives enjoy large, private offices with opaque doors, while their employees lack assigned desks. I once worked in a hot‑desking setup and had my $300 keyboard stolen within months.

2. Cultural Discipline

• If two coworkers start chatting loudly, soon there will be four, then eight.
• A library‑like atmosphere must be the norm in work areas.

It’s counterproductive to enforce this with rigid rules. The loudest office I ever worked in had signs reminding employees to be quiet. The quietest office needed no signs; the culture itself enforced the norm. Early, influential hires should establish that disrupting focused work is frowned upon.

3. Neurodivergent Representation

• Executive leadership is heavily biased toward neurotypical people, who can socialize extensively, are less sensitive to noise or light, and thrive on the presentation‑heavy executive culture.
• Neurotypical‑only leadership rarely builds cultures that achieve technical excellence.

Whenever I’ve seen neurodivergent individuals on an executive team, the company breaks records, forges previously “impossible” technology, and makes a lot of money. Representation matters because those executives notice and eliminate inefficiencies that neurotypical leaders overlook.

---

No further posts.