A big opportunity in neurodiversity

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Welcome to Protocol | Enterprise, your comprehensive roundup of everything you need to know about the week in cloud and enterprise software. This Monday: tech's neurodiverse hiring efforts, the e-signature war heats up and the feds level big hacking charges.
Also, don't miss our next Protocol | Enterprise event on Tuesday, March 23, at 9 a.m. PT: "Leading Through Digital Upheaval." Protocol's Joe Williams will interview Honeywell CEO Darius Adamczyk on how a 115-year-old company is making the shift to the SaaS era. Register here.
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Over the past several years, top tech companies like SAP and Microsoft have expanded efforts to hire more neurodiverse employees.
The term itself matters. "Neurodiverse" encompasses those with autism, dyslexia, ADHD or other developmental conditions. The "diverse" part emphasizes these conditions as differences, not disabilities.
The opportunity is immense. An estimated 80% of neurodiverse individuals are unemployed or severely underemployed.
Wired once called autism "the geek syndrome." That's a dated stereotype. Jobs for the neurodiverse aren't just technical.
But even SAP fell short of its ambitions. Launched in 2013, the goal was originally to hire roughly 1,000 individuals by 2020. SAP now has 185 full-time employees recruited under the program.
COVID-19 put a wrench in neurodiversity recruitment. And program leaders had to get creative.
Remote work has the same downsides for neurodiverse individuals as for most employees. The lack of social interaction can exacerbate conditions for individuals with autism, given their reliance on the community for support.
Hiring more neurodiverse individuals is just one of the industry's challenges in becoming more inclusive. But the stigma around neurodiverse conditions is fading, which is opening the eyes of leaders and prompting more focus on the efforts. Just ask David Aspinall, the CEO of Auticon US, an IT consulting firm that has a predominantly autistic workforce.
— Joe Williams
"We're moving faster now than we've ever moved, and we'll never move this slow again." ICYMI, catch a glimpse of what the future looks like for developers in this Protocol interview with Stacey Shulman, VP and General Manager in Intel's Internet of Things Group for Health, Life Sciences, and Emerging Technologies.
The new e-signature battle: Electronic signatures have been legal since 2000, but adoption has been slow. Now, after the pandemic accelerated usage, industry leader DocuSign is looking beyond the dotted line. It faces stiff (and growing) competition from Adobe and others.
How restaurants are changing: Even after the pandemic, dining will look very different. That's an opportunity for software vendors and other tech providers.
March 23: Adobe reports earnings, and Y Combinator holds its Demo Day.
"We're moving faster now than we've ever moved, and we'll never move this slow again." ICYMI, catch a glimpse of what the future looks like for developers in this Protocol interview with Stacey Shulman, VP and General Manager in Intel's Internet of Things Group for Health, Life Sciences, and Emerging Technologies.
Thanks for reading — see you Thursday.
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