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Comment by ojbyrne | Hacker News Reader

I was once laid off from a company on a Friday but they really wanted to keep me so they told me to call back Monday to see if anything changed (very small company a long time ago). On Sunday I broke my ankle playing touch football and the doctor said I was probably eligible for disability. Called the company back on Monday, they cancelled the layoff and I went on disability for eight weeks then right back to work with them.

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Curious, what do you do? I would think that you could only go on disability if you had a job that required you to walk around, which I think would be a small minority of HN commenters.

Not the parent commenter, but I was on disability as a SWE following abdominal surgery since I couldn't drive to work and working remotely wasn't allowed by my employer at the time (2006).

So despite my job having me in a chair all day, my inability to get _to_ my job required a couple of weeks on short-term disability until I got cleared to drive.

I've known people (programmers) who were on extended periods of disability due to lower body injuries because sitting for long periods of time caused them a lot of pain / exacerbated their disability / hindered their recovery.

Understood, but I've broken my ankle before, and I can't imagine any scenario where that would apply. Heck, tons of days I program from my bed.

< Heck, tons of days I program from my bed.

I spent a couple of years often working from bed and now deeply regret it. Us programmers are sedentary enough already. Please take care of your health and stay as active as possible so you don’t end up with chronically elevated weight, BP, cholesterol, and all the other signs of metabolic malfunction as you get older.

This was before the internet was widespread.

Well, I didn't own a car at the time - commuted by bus. Good enough for the doctor to sign the letter.

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