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by electrograv 2434 days ago
But let’s imagine for the moment a candidate was actually rejected for being “too introverted”, as an example for the sake of this argument. Disclaimer: I’ve not seen anyone rejected for this reason explicitly, but I have heard an instance of a self-identifying extrovert reporting “organizational culture problems” to upper management which when asked for details became “while there was no bad or unwelcoming behavior of any kind (not even indirectly), the majority of engineers are too introverted and that makes me uncomfortable”.

In such a case, how is “too introverted” as a reason for rejection or even as a negative cultural connotation not overt discrimination to exclude neurodiversity?

I’d even be willing to concede that such personality-based discrimination may need to be made for customer-facing roles or roles if being charming or extroverted is explicitly part of the job description. But other than that, it seems odd to reject an engineering candidate for reasons like this.