We once had a great argument at work between HR and a senior developer, who didn’t have friends and if he had, prefered them to not work at the same company, hence answering straight 0 to how likely he would recommend the employer to his friends. He absolutely enjoyed working there nevertheless.

There's another layer to this:

First layer is "the question is about whether or not you'll steal".

Second layer is "the question is worded in such a way that yes is the only truthful answer".

Third layer is "will you lie anyways to protect yourself and your job?". Like guessing that the manager would rather deal with liars on their staff than people who might blab about shit that can get the manager in trouble. They want people who will prioritize the job over following labour laws to the letter.

also, like, how else are you going to give change

Turns out that was not their intent and I grossly over thought it.

Yeah, I fell for this when I was just starting out job hunting. It's basically a "is this your first time taking an employment test?" Test, because it's very clear they just want you to lie to them once you realize what answers are failing.

The answer is obviously yes. You have to give change.

I think overthinking on surveys might have a correlation with autism

Oh this is a huge problem in autism tests too ! "Unfitting/Inappropriate situations" : Buddy, if I knew when the situation was not appropriate for this, I basically wouldn't be autistic 🤣

This goes hand-in-hand with the questions where I'm like, "Well, I did that a lot as a child, but I don't do it anymore now." It'd be nice if the tests provided clarification at the top to indicate if we're supposed to respond "yes" to things that we used to do. Considering that childhood behaviors give more clues than adult ones, it makes sense to answer from the past. But at the same time, the test is using the present tense, so to be technically correct I should answer with what I do today. Right? Maybe they should say, "Do you, or have you ever, done blah blah blah?" The fact that this stuff isn't spelled out goes to show that neurotypicals designed these things.

I imagine that having a big ol', multi-paragraph explanation of these sorts of details might end up skipped by NTs, which maybe plays part in why these tests don't bother with that - designers are seeing it from the NT angle. However, I don't imagine such a text would scare off autistic people - more information to help us navigate an important, novel task? Yes, please! I will read that wall of text as if my life depended on it, because the ambiguous questions leave me stuck far longer than they probably should and any additional clarification would be welcome.

At the very least, maybe the laziest way (from the designers' standpoint) to resolve this, would be to include optional "additional information" boxes so we can relieve these anxieties by explaining the conditional nature of some of our answers. Yeah, a simple scale is easier for documentation and diagnosis, but that sort of simplicity doesn't track with how brains (and many things) actually work. Humans are complicated. Neurodiversity is complicated. Anything related to mental health at all is complicated. Perhaps we shouldn't be looking for the simplest route to understanding each others' brains, but the route that more accurately conveys our brains' nuanced topography.

Do neurotypicals really not consider such things? I feel like anything I ever say I think through a million different ways it might be taken.

A lot of tests are simply worded poorly.

Just asking for opinions on these forms and questions would probably be a more accurate way to gauge autism anyway. Never met a fellow autist that didn't have something to say about how annoyingly imprecise these forms always are

The issue with asking about the test taker is that it's often hard to have a frame of reference - whatever you're used to is normal. There's not really an easy solution.

The real test is taking the test

the thing is neurotypical people don't have as much awareness of the imprecision of language, they just assume they know what you're saying if they are familiar with all the words you use. this has caused me no end of problems when I say something and the person I'm talking to just chooses an interpretation and assumes thats what I meant and runs with it. half the time that ends up in some kind of minor or major disagreement that could have been avoided if they just asked for some clarification. the really annoying part is it doesn't seem to matter how precisely I formulate my sentences, how much I hedge against misunderstanding, because sometimes people just make shit up that they think I might say even if it has nothing to do with what I actually said. watch it happen here lol.

I don't think this is so much autism as just caring about details.

Most people figure out the context and fill in the details.

I'm reading this wondering if this is tounge in cheek, or if you really have no idea how you really just doubled down on that autism.