Ask HN: What is a physiically disabled person to do in this job market?

My anecdotal experience has been that the demand for data science/analytics jobs has cratered for the past couple years. Probably has something to do with AI, but even before ChatGPT it felt like the data science demand was vastly inflated. Financier capital in America is over, the era of lean startups is here to stay for quite some time.

Unless you're interested in applying your statistics knowledge to the military industrial complex or AI market, I'd probably recommend diversifying a bit. My honest $0.02.

Current data scientist here, working for a cloud consulting firm. Two things stand out from my experience: (1) my company isn't hiring, while the DS team is doing fine revenue wise, the rest of the company is doing poorly; so uncommunicated moratorium on hiring; (2) I interviewed at an AI company that I'm currently subcontracting under - and they like me - and I didn't get past the first round because their requirements are so high right now (aka I did mediocrely on one interview and that was enough to tank me).

All this is to say, GenAI is booming but there's competing factors going on for businesses to hire.

Also a different take, look for contract jobs. As with (1) above, my company isn't hiring FT but they're open to contractors.

I wish you luck.

write a book, consult on book

You mentioned you had CP and you walk with a cane. But didn’t mention if it affects your speech or your hands.

You know this I’m sure. But most people don’t know that CP affects different people differently. I have left hemiparesis CP that really only affects my left hand and very slightly my left foot - i walk with a slight limp. But properly conditioned, I’ve run a 10 minute mile up to a 10k.

I’ve been working professionally since 1996 across 10 jobs from everything from startups, to boring enterprise jobs to BigTech and full time for consulting companies. My last three jobs have been remote as have been the interviews. No one had the slightest clue about my having CP since going remote.

Why do you think it’s your CP and not just the market sucking for everyone right now?

Why do you have that you are “physically disabled” on you LinkedIn profile? Don’t do that. You are giving people a reason to discriminate against you unlawfully.

Second point: if you are just blindly submitting your resume to job sites/ATS’s you have already lost. I’m very credentialed in my field and I heard crickets from fire bombing my resume in 2023 and last year when I was looking for a job back to back. But that was my plan C while I was going through the interview processes based on my network and a targeted outreach where I had the exact set of skills and specialized experience that were looking for and responding to inbound recruiters.

But if your skillset is generic, you have to lean on your network, every open req gets hundreds of applications within a couple of days - LinkedIn shows you.

The market is very difficult right now from my experience. Some people I know have been out of work since the start of the year and still haven't found anything.

I think once IRS section 174 is overturned the market will get better.