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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

> I've been disabled since 2018, and my skills in software as such have largely become outdated.

I always find this such a weird claim. Sure, lots has happened in the past 5 years, but there's still tons of software out there that's older than 5 years, most major programming languages are decades old, and anything new can be learned.

If you want to be able to make money quickly, it's far more interesting to look at what you can do, than worry about what you might not yet know. Python is still around and still as relevant as ever.

> I'm in my early-to-mid 30s for reference. I'm not really able to get off disability as the condition is severe.

My personal opinion is that if your condition is that severe, you shouldn't have to work at all, but of course that's of no help to you right now.

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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 professionals are writing is very simple.

Technology is 90% confidence, and very little skill. The biggest challenge for the OP is convincing himself that he isn’t damaged goods who needs charity, he’s a competent developer with some restrictions on his availability so he’s available for part-time work.

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 coworkers got unemployment benefits, but he couldn't, because he was disabled. So he had to get disability instead. So he applied, and was told that this wasn't a new disability, so he had to apply for something for inborn disabilities, which was a slightly different agency. So he did, and was told that that was only for people who have never been able to work, and since he had had a job, it didn't apply to him.

Personally I think everybody who manages to work and make money despite their disability, should just be able to keep everything without losing their disability pay. We should be rewarding them, but instead we're punishing them.

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.

I'm not sure if you or your friend are in the US.

Here we have SSI (for people so disabled they were never able to work) and SSDI for people who could work and became disabled.

I have cerebral palsy and I used to be on SSI. I managed to get a CS degree and get off disability, but in doing so I 'crossed the rubicon' and 'burned the ships' so to speak, on ever going back on disability. It was scary for sure, but it ultimately turned out well. The only way I can imagine being considered 'fully disabled' again is if, god forbid, I was struck with some sort of serious cognitive impairment. I suspect the same holds for your friend.

Cool experience. I always assumed my much less serious problems were too little to get any disability. I worked full time since high school but was not allowed to graduate due to anxiety. I stopped having money by 21 and things lasted that way for over a decade. The only work I did was for a few months.

I would have been screwed and homeless without my parents house for a decade. Luckily that’s not the case any more. I’m doing a tech interview bootcamp hoping to get a solid job and keep it. Don’t have CS degree nor experience for interviews but I would get a basic programing job if I can’t finish the bootcamp. I don’t know what the problem is but whatever it is, it’s crazy.

> I'm not sure if you or your friend are in the US.

We're not. We're in Netherland, but it sounds like the US system is not all that dissimilar from the Dutch one.

Personally I don't think there should be a Rubicon; if you're severely disabled and you still manage to work, I'd like to see that rewarded rather than punished. Keep the disability pay and have something extra. The fact that you then contribute to the tax base is enough for me. There's no need to create extra pitfalls for disabled people.

Yeah, losing disability was scary. When my friends were unemployed in '08, they could turn to trades and other physical work. I didn't have that option. If I failed, I was homeless.

That was pretty much the reason why I kept living like a poor grad student for the next decade until I didn't need to work to survive.

[ActivistNote] As the inflation continues to raise prices, is it vital to put political pressure on ensuring that the state increases SS payments accordingly. [/ActivistNote]

You have the right to your opinion but it pretty close to the mythical "Let them eat cake"

In his situation he has nearly no control over how much he will get paid. You take what the government gets and that is it.

A nice thing when you are working is that you can sort of hope for a bonus, a raise, promotion etc. You have some control, yet that influence good in some jobs and next to none in other jobs.

On SS you cant really hope for a bonus. and asking for a raise aint happening either.

> You have the right to your opinion but it pretty close to the mythical "Let them eat cake"

I suspect you meant to respond to someone else or you severely misunderstand me, because my opinion is the exact opposite of that. Of course these payments (and many others, including minimum wage) should be automatically corrected for inflation, but that's apparently not happening, and as I pointed out, not of much help to him right now.

> I always find this such a weird claim. Sure, lots has happened in the past 5 years, but there's still tons

It depends a lot on what you are working on.

If you work on a big legacy system, you can probably walk in after 5 years and pick it up. Same C on an established embedded platform. And certainly, Cobol on a mainframe. Perl you are good as well

It seems like if you writing front - end code shit is changing on a monthly basis , framework come, disappear, new hotness, cargo culting. Or at least I think that is what a lot of the cursing I have heard from people who do it.

Myself i have never down that road but it seems chaotic.

I have worked a lot with C#. It has changed so much over 5 or 7 years that if you are all up on the latest changes you can write code that is not easy to read for someone a while back. (Here I am talking language changes) Of course the .Net framework has changed a lot, .core now it.

You can pick it up but it would take work.

Really it depends on what, where and how.

> It seems like if you writing front - end code shit is changing on a monthly basis , framework come, disappear, new hotness, cargo culting.

We're taking about from 2018 until now. React was already 5 years old back then. If one was a productive frontend dev in any of the popular stacks of 2018, what exactly do you think they would be missing in order to be productive today?

There are certain industries (looking at your finance), that often DON'T adopt the newest technologies on purpose. In fact, some of them have essentially "5 year plans" where they only update their stack every X years. (I put X as even in the same org the values for X may range from 1 to 10).

People familiar with older techs AND have the ability to pick up new things are very valuable.

If you are curious how to find things like this:

- look for talks by hedge funds on the tech they use

- if you see one in which your are knowledgeable, look up some of the recruiters for that firm on LinkedIn and reach out to them pointing out your expertise (bonus points for looking for a connection in common)

- go from there

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