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Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

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Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#91

Post by gwbas1c »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #78
zieben wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people with disabilities who fall through the cracks because they’re able to work, just not to the artificial availability (and suffering) standard required by the modern labor market. There’s a difference between being able to do useful work and being able to survive the nightmare of a modern-day corporate job where the work demands themselves are low but the emotional labor i…

It really is. I’m able to work with ADA accommodations, but finding a job I can manage is difficult. It takes me 3~6 months for me to find a job each time I’m out of work. Finding a specialist to manage the medical side of my disability is similar. Through fortunate circumstances (and inheritance), I have successful career and enough energy left over to have some kind of life. If I lived in Europe, the amount of sick…

> It takes me 3~6 months for me to find a job each time I’m out of work.

It takes me 3-6 months and I'm not disabled.

That's pretty much the norm in tech, unless you fit into the very small group of people who get lucky and find a job overnight.

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#93

Post by gwbas1c »

nicoburns wrote: post #9

You don't say what your disability is (or how it impacts your ability to work), so it's hard to be specific. But my general advice would be just to talk to more companies. Not every company will be open to this, but some will and you just need to find those companies. Get in contact with companies that are hiring for roles that require the kind of skills you have even if the working arrangements they're advertising a…

One thing to add: You (OP) might make enough money with full-time (or part-time) work that it's "worth it" to lose your disability benefits.

(Granted, it's worth finding out how easy/hard it is to reactive them.)

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#94

Post by sandworm101 »

toyg wrote: post #81
ceejayoz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure what the rules are, but perhaps you could set up a corporation that takes on the freelancing jobs and then pays you a salary of $1,200 a month? No, that'll lose you the benefits. https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/cfr20/404/404-1575.htm "We will evaluate your work activity based on the value of your services to the business regardless of whether you receive an immediate income for your services." SSI is delib…

Hard thresholds on benefits just suck. They should always, always be progressively tapered, in a way that incentivises work. Otherwise you're just creating a permanent class of people without any incentive to contribute to the society that keeps them alive. I know someone with similar problems in the UK: they are part-time, but working more hours would mean paying more in childcare and lose benefits, ending up with l…

Retired rich people. Whenever a system it setup to help poor people, a harsh system of cutoffs is needed to prevent retired people from qualifying for the benefit by moving money around on paper. The problem is that we have far too many systems to allow relatively well-off people to "zero" their on-paper income, even their personal assets, during retirement. Entire industries exist to facilitate such trickery (see every other TV commercial on CNN/MSNBC/FOX).

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#95

Post by ricardobayes »

vbezhenar wrote: post #52
nfriedly wrote: post #27

For what it's worth, I used to do work on freelancing sites ~10 years ago and just tended to ignore the race to the bottom. I initially charged $50/hr, and regularly raised my rates so that I was up over $150/hr by the time I stopped doing it. Of course I got passed over for a lot of jobs in favor of cheaper folks. But the jobs I did get were from clients who actually respected me. Also, more than once, a client who…

I tried for months to find a job in freelance site. I ended up doing someone's home work for symbolic price ($50 or something like that), got 5 stars and that's about it. Any work with reasonable pay (few thousands of dollars for few weeks) was overflooded with offers (like 200+ offers). I wrote my offer, tried to customize it, few times I even made some small demo to show off my interest but to no success. In the en…

I'd encourage you to still apply for anything that's fresh, regardless of how many applicants are there. I've been in a hiring position from these sites and 99% of the proposals are fake/canned. The thing is you need to have demonstrable track record to get going on these sites. I'd say it takes about 5-10 of those "small and crappy" jobs so people can see you're for real and serious.

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#96

Post by kraussvonespy »

COBOL. Spend a couple of months getting back into the coding mindset by digging into COBOL, then find a local company that needs help maintaining old COBOL programs. I've gotten calls from local colleges asking me if: a) I want to teach COBOL courses as adjunct (nope) or b) if I'd have any interest in helping to maintain for them or other area employers (not yet but maybe someday).

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#97

Post by dev_tty01 »

mcv wrote: post #77
phphphphp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t describe it as weird because people who struggle with a disability can lose their confidence over time in things unrelated to their disability, but I certainly agree with your point: if somebody could write code 5 years ago, they can do it today. Modern technology is just old technology with some different bells and whistles, the principles are all the same, and as has always been the case, most code that…

I once knew a guy who was severely spastic, bound to a motorised wheelchair, could barely move or talk, but inside his head he was really smart and good with computers. Despite his complete disability, he was able to land a programming job with a company willing to accommodate for his disability, and he did very good work there. Then the department where he worked was disbanded and everybody was laid off. All his cow…

The fundamental problem is that the government is using earnings as the metric for evaluating disability. That might work ok with manual labor, but not so great with non-manual labor jobs.

As others have pointed out, there needs to at least be tapered thresholds with a significant deadband (in dollars and time) so someone can get some career inertia before being cast out of the system. Beyond that, we should be able to provide some help even after someone starts earning. Living and working with a disability is damned expensive, not to mention the horrendous stress of worrying about whether one can meet expectations at work.

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#98

Post by erellsworth »

I did about 6 months as a part time TA for a virtual coding bootcamp a while back to earn a little extra cash. The pay wasn't great, but it was easy work and not too many hours. Might be ideal for someone in your situation.

On a side note, this is why means testing kinda sucks. Sorry that you have to deal with it.

Re: Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income

#100

Post by ricardobayes »

dsego wrote: post #57

You could try Toptal. It's a bit different from other freelancing sites.

I run far, far away from companies that openly advertise that they hire the top X percent of talent. There should be talent agencies dedicated for the "rest" that still generate good solid value, but also don't charge top dollar.
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