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Comment by sodosopa | Hacker News Reader

What has your company done to enable workers with a disability?

Any company that allows for remote work likely enables a whole class of workers with various disabilities.

You'd be surprised, in my experience, most jobs aren't flexible on schedule or understanding when you have regular doctors appointments. Chronic medical conditions and disabilities can require many regular appointments. I have 2-3 appointments a month and that doesn't include any physical therapy I might have. My Dad has multiple appointments per week usually. Luckily I found a job that let's me work my schedule around my appointments.

Really? You’ve had jobs where going to the doctor a few times a month is a deal breaker for the company?

This type of thing could easily be negotiated early on in all the startups I’ve worked for. Even non dev employees.

Even worse for a remote job?

You have been lucky and have had few low-paying jobs. Most jobs I've worked in the US are like this - you are fully expected to be there 100% of the time the company thinks you should be. All else should be done on your own time around the company time. This is even more true for low-paying jobs.

It sucks for anyone with health problems and sucks for anyone with children. People lose jobs because their children are sick and because they wind up with a major medical thing that happens. FMLA only covers large medical stuff - if you've worked full time for a year for a large enough company.

Some of this could be fixed with laws that protect employees and things like that. I'm generally thankful I don't have to deal with the lack of worker protection in the US right now - it meant that breaking my elbow while working a seasonal job didn't mean I was out of an income, for example.

Someone I know recently interviewed for a company that would give them 7 sick days a year. Being chronically ill, they’d realistically go through that by the end of February. Flex time wasn’t an option either.

Only if you actually follow through and hire them. You can put in a wheelchair ramp and feel good about yourself, but probably should actually hire some in a wheelchair.

Exactly. Threads like this are an invitation for Copenhagen Ethics (i.e. "No matter how little anyone else has done, if you even do a tiny amount for cause X, you will be criticized for all you failed to do.")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10367855

I don't think that's relevant at all... my comment wasn't about the relative merits of doing or not doing something good for workers with a disability. My point was that, in their monthly/quarterly PR pitch meeting, somebody on their comms team pitched 'let's make a big deal about how we're helping disabled people' and that nobody else in that meeting said "oh, maybe let's not use the fact that we hire disabled people to advance our PR goals."

It is or should I mark that as a 'no'?

I've contracted with companies who specifically hire disabled workers. Their unemployment rate is ridiculously high (edit, I've heard numbers of up to 70%) and my leadership wanted to so something about that. I needed web usability experience added to my team, why not have someone with a disability to lead that? Guy was unemployed for a year, had a masters in HCI, this was an easy choice.

My company wanted to include our work in their diversity report, why not? They're specifically reaching out and hiring people who cannot find work, if they get positive PR for that, why the hell should we stop them? It gets more like-minded people in the company and shows others in our industry that they can do this too. It's leadership.

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