Not neurodivergent (as far as I know) but I wanted to reflect on some of the situations my friends have been in.
Buddy has been in software engineering for about three years. Worked at a decent mid-size place during COVID, got laid off when the budget tightening hit. He's autistic but highly functioning (apologies if that's not the preferred language for it).
Every interview he's had has come down to the lack of a "culture fit." He's an extremely nice dude that loves talking about his interests and has trained for interviews extensively. But sometimes he'll look away from the camera for too long because he's nervous, or rock back and forth in his chair (very slightly) before realizing what he's doing and stopping. This is enough for the interviewers, in his words, to become visibly put off and notice it.
Because of how dogshit the job market is, he's been forced to apply for mostly on-site roles when he has previously worked remotely, largely because he was afraid of people finding him weird in an office. But with hiring teams being more picky than ever before, they seem to continuously reject him for "culture" reasons (as specified in the rejection emails) when this was never an issue for previous jobs.
The last couple times I've talked about it with him, he has sounded clearly depressed, anxious, and disillusioned. He's now talking about giving up on his career-related job search entirely and taking whatever he can get, but even places like McDonald's and Wal-Mart have tossed his resume in the trash.
Has anyone else experienced this? It seems like scrutiny of neurodivergent behaviors has become way more intense since the job market went to shit. I feel for anyone going through this. The job search is bad enough but this just sounds like a next level humiliation ritual.