> Does it really matter, if he/she can't look you in the eye or can't understand the social hierarchy and games played in the office?
No it does not matter whether they look it the eye. Many of them can do that tho. Yes, it does matter that their communication toward junior or customer communicate disdain and lack of regards, to the point where juniors were afraid to speak or have ideas, despite them not really wanting to cause that. It does matter that they confuse own preferences with objectively better. Inability to imagine themselves in shoes of someone else leads to unwanted unfairness.
It does matter that others are suddenly required to put up with insults and have to send a lot of time learning how to communicate and solving problems for that person. All those being symptoms of autism.
Yes, if other collegues have high social skills a lot of that can be mitigated. But when it is not the case, the communication can become quite toxic.
I worked with people on spectrum and they were benefit to the team. But the framing in which they "don't play politics" and thus it is all sun and roses is not accurate. It is naive. You have to learn to predict problems and have to spend additional time to solve them. And you have to put them on position that is not freaking set up to fail.
People with autism suffer from consequences of all that and should be helped. So does often those around them.
