Communications of the ACM
75% of Staff at This Successful IT Company Are on the Autism Spectrum
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Ultra Testing, a New York-based software testing and quality assurance startup, employs over 60 workers remotely across 20 states, 75% of whom are on the autism spectrum. Not only is the company open to hiring neurodiverse employees, but it actively seeks them out.
Though small, the company punches well above its weight class, growing an average of 50% year-over-year since its founding in 2013, with 60% of revenues coming from Fortune 500 clients and the remainder from hypergrowth startups.
CEO Rajesh Anandan founded Ultra Testing alongside his former MIT roommate Art Shectman after discovering research on the overlooked strengths common among autistic individuals.
"Individuals on the autism spectrum are more likely to have strengths around pattern recognition, logical reasoning ability, enhanced focus, and so on," says Anandan. "Based on peer-reviewed studies published in scientific journals, there is evidence that there is an over indexing of those abilities—and those very abilities are exactly what you would look for in quite a few roles, especially around quality engineering or quality assurance."
From Fast Company
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