Differences between Neurodivergent and Neurotypical Software Engineers: Analyzing the 2022 Stack Overflow Survey Article Swipe

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Pragya Verma , Marcos Vinicius Cruz , Grischa Liebel ·

YOU? · · 2025 · Open Access · · DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2506.03840

Neurodiversity describes variation in brain function among people, including common conditions such as Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and dyslexia. While Software Engineering (SE) literature has started to explore the experiences of neurodivergent software engineers, there is a lack of research that compares their challenges to those of neurotypical software engineers. To address this gap, we analyze existing data from the 2022 Stack Overflow Developer survey that collected data on neurodiversity. We quantitatively compare the answers of professional engineers with ASD (n=374), ADHD (n=1305), and dyslexia (n=363) with neurotypical engineers. Our findings indicate that neurodivergent engineers face more difficulties than neurotypical engineers. Specifically, engineers with ADHD report that they face more interruptions caused by waiting for answers, and that they less frequently interact with individuals outside their team. This study provides a baseline for future research comparing neurodivergent engineers with neurotypical ones. Several factors in the Stack Overflow survey and in our analysis are likely to lead to conservative estimates of the actual effects between neurodivergent and neurotypical engineers, e.g., the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and our focus on employed professionals.

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Type: preprint
Language: en
Landing Page: http://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03840
PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.03840
OA Status: green
OpenAlex ID: https://openalex.org/W4416073810

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OpenAlex ID: https://openalex.org/W4416073810

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2506.03840

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Title: Differences between Neurodivergent and Neurotypical Software Engineers: Analyzing the 2022 Stack Overflow Survey

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Type: preprint

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Language: en

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Publication year: 2025

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Publication date: 2025-06-04

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Authors: Pragya Verma, Marcos Vinicius Cruz, Grischa Liebel

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Landing page: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03840

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PDF URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.03840

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Open access: Yes

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OA status: green

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OA URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.03840

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Cited by: 0

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