Show HN: Remote jobs for people with disabilities
jobenabler.org
jobenabler.org
That is just a content problem, but I have mixed feelings about the site in general. As someone with medical problems that do impact my work, I love the idea of a site that has filtered the postings down to employers who will be supportive. But I don't see anything there that actually enforces that filter or proves that the employers understand the related issues. Also, the concept seems to be on shaky ground, legally, at least in the USA where employers are not privy to the medical status of their employees.
Nor am I sure exactly what the legalities are, which is why I simply said it felt "shaky". But I do know that in general, hiring processes don't ask about disabilities. They are one of the topics that are supposed to be unknown, to avoid discrimination claims. So putting up a site where the employers and candidates are volunteering to be put into that bucket is what I am questioning. IANAL, so I'm not trying to say whether the idea is OK or not... I'm just saying that I don't know how those answers would play out, but it feels like an area that deserves investigation.
https://www.disabledperson.com/
This is from the first two pages of the Google results for "disability jobs". I've excluded government programs and disability-focused sections of more generalized job boards.
I appreciate it's only a demo but your one job being not actually remote is a bit of a letdown.
The big challenge is going to be getting this advertised.
That's the web demo link above, but ftfy is a Python library you throw all your text through and it comes out magically perfect. I can copy Unicode text through (non-UTF-8 aware) VNC and completely destroy it, paste it into FTFY, and it just figures it out no matter how bad it gets.
Since I'm here, I _have_ to do this...
I copied a small piece of text back and forth through TigerVNC a few times, yielding this:
YouÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂâÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂve
Note the â - err, sorry, ’ quote character :)
(Oh hey, I made my comment get a horizontal scrollbar, without using any code formatting! Nice!)
Let me share my point of view as founder/CEO of a small startup in San Francisco, hoping that this helps.
What we do: we are building a software platform to digitize real estate properties (titles) using the Blockchain. (I know, Blockchain will solve everything bla-bla-bla... the reality is that we think this is a good use case for Blockchain technology; but I digress...)
We are a team of 3 co-founders (2 fairly technical, one business oriented), 1 lawyer (the product requires a lot of legal stuff), and 2.5 software developers.
Right now we are looking for at least one more technical person, possibly a front-end.
We have raised ~650k in an angel round, after bootstrapping for ~10 months. We launched an alpha version of the product, and we have one paying customer (a company, as we are mostly b2b at the moment).
The next few hires will be absolutely crucial for us. We can't really afford experiments. What this has to do with disabilities?
I am happy to hire anyone with the right skills, no matter his skin, gender, sexual orientation, or disabilities. Heck, we even hired Italians! (I am Italian, I can make that joke :D).
We don't mind remote people, either. We have a very flexible policy in regards to work. We are not big fans of 9-to-5 and offices.
To be able to hire someone with disabilities, we would need a healthy "inventory" of candidates. The site mentioned in this post, jobenabler.org, lists job opportunities, but doesn't guarantee a good enough list of candidates.
As CEO of a small young cash-poor startup, I have to be brutal and prioritize my time, and therefore I am not sure whether this tool is good enough to find our next hire.
Please note: I am trying to share my point of view as a potential employer, hoping that this helps the discussion.
Any comment, suggestion, or ways in which we can improve the chances of hiring someone with disabilities, please share here, or email me at simone @ fabrica.city.
On the side note, posting is free so you can post today and see if you get any potential candidates.
I have already pinged my co-founder to discuss this further.
Question: what prompted you to start this?
As far as the site itself goes - hey, go for it! But it should have a mission statement, some kind of FAQ or explanation of why that should be used instead of other sites, and more information on the kinds of disabilities being catered to in a posting (or why a job is particularly considerate of disabilities).
It is in most parts of the world, and most countries have building codes that force them to be wheelchair accessable for example.
However, I can imagine that there's a group of people for who getting to work every day is a big hassle (arranging transport, etc), and who would prefer to work from home.
Disclosing a disability during a job search is risky. An employer taking the time to say "I don't care about your disability, apply." might be the difference between someone qualified deciding to apply or not.
That fact that discrimination based on a number of factors is illegal for employers in the US doesn't change anything. People break the law, act inappropriately, and damage careers/job prospects all the time. And, unless they do something supernaturally stupid, there won't be any consequences for misconduct.
There's no harm in employers throwing "We're an Equal Opportunity Employer, and mean it" into a job post, or putting up an ad on a site like this. It shows that they're at least minimally serious about it.
It's really easy to make up a reason. "Not a good culture fit" and so on.
https://www.jobenabler.org/job?id=2
POSITION : Are you our King of Dev?
COMPANY : Member Get Member Company.
If this is a landing page to gauge interest, it's a really poor attempt and definitely doesn't belong on Show HN (per guidelines).
> If your work isn't ready for people to try out yet, please don't do a Show HN. Once it's ready, come back and do it then.
Source: Show HN Guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
In Comments
Be respectful. Anyone sharing work is making a contribution, however modest.
Ask questions out of curiosity. Don't cross-examine.
Instead of "you're doing it wrong", suggest alternatives. When someone is learning, help them learn more.
When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is. But don't be gratuitously negative.
Searched on the page but I could not find anything relating this.
It seems to be inherently problematic to do this type of focus. Putting your emphasis on the disability first and foremost tends to be counterproductive.
It also promotes a mentality that you deserve a job for your son story. This tends to work about as well as nepotism does, and for pretty much the same reason.
People may need a job even though they are disabled, but the focus really needs to be on "Well, what can you do?"
The very first problem I see with this is that it promises full-time remote jobs. Disabled people often have a lot of trouble working full-time. Many of them want part-time work.
My first full-time job was actually only 37.5 hours per week on the evening shift. That 2.5 hours difference was important. I eventually made the switch to 40 hours on the day shift and the transition was really hard. I spent weeks feeling exhausted, and this was after having that job for a while. I probably would have washed out had I started at 40 hours on day shift.
I would prefer to see a blog that explored disability issues combined with a remote job board where the listings answered the kind of questions a person with a disability might have. The blog could explore what works and why for different types of disabilities, then highlight a few current job postings.
A lot of disabled people were able-bodied until something bad happened to them. They may not know what they need to know to make life work as a disabled person. Most messages aimed at disabled individuals tell them they just can't do what others do. Figuring it all out yourself is an extra job on top of trying to make life work with a disability.
I would especially like to see part-time remote jobs and things with flexible hours.
In practice, I have found that 1099 positions serve my needs better than a "remote job." I saw how remote jobs were handled by my previous corporate employer. To my mind, it was a worst of both worlds scenario.
As a person with a disability, I need more control over my time and life and more opportunity to do things on my terms. I need control over my schedule. Jobs tend to not offer that. Certain contract positions classified as 1099 work tend to be better about that. (Which isn't to say this is always true. Not all 1099 positions are like that.)
One problem with a job: the work is structured with an expectation that you show up at certain hours and hit a certain productivity level for those hours. I like doing piece work where I know when it needs to be finished, but it is up to me when I do it and how long I spend on it.
Different disabilities will have different needs and remedies. What a blind person needs will very much differ from what I need. What a deaf person needs will very much differ from both those scenarios.
I hope you are wildly successful. Please take my remarks in the spirit of constructive feedback.
Edit: I will note that I like the name and I think the name gives it potential to become something that fits with my above thoughts about how to approach this problem space.
Related, but I've done a little bit of work with a nonprofit specialized in helping visually impaired / blind people get jobs.
Its actually requires a potentially complex solution. Website needs to have full ARIA / disability text in mind to use with NVDA screen readers. There's alot more UX and userstories in mind when it comes to building a solution for this. Not only that, a traditional job board does not really suffice IMO. It needs to be a full blown support network at least with visually impaired people in mind, there's 2 major organizations AFAIK that do this in america. The organizations does webcam-based interviews with these users, similar to more next upcoming Gen Z type hiring solutions.
I think disability job boards is interesting, but really its not that much different from a remote job for most people. Hiring companies that are accepting of flexible remote jobs are most likely equally accepting to people with nonvisually impaired or nondeaf based job board, because in the end it really doesn't make a difference to them from their perspective.
A remote job is the same, its wheel chair accessible but it does require more flexible hours. But it really shouldn't matter if you still get stuff done, and have async meeting standups, etc
Its important to note that visual impairment has a very wide spectrum of users. You have to seperate out how bad the impairment is, some can see things in low light, others have been blind from birth, while some have lost sight later in life. These drastically change userstories.
What a deaf person needs will very much differ from both those scenarios.
Visually impaired users require a much more sophisticated solution, deaf impairment I would argue not as much. They can still read a screen and communicate via slack etc, but issues with standup meetings etc.
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So the way I see it is thusly, with respect to different disability categories
- Physically impaired - same as remote jobs, but companies should have meetups done asynchronously
- Visually impaired - a company that is okay with someone completely remote and has support for aria across all the job needs. Job duties need to be very consistent, cannot be too flexible (e.g. startups)
- Hearing impaired - a company that is okay with communicating purely by slack, or accomodating this specific user with slack meeting notes, etc.
(I'm not blind, though I do have really lousy eyesight that can't really be corrected. I'm also not a developer per se.)
It's valuable to let companies in the first category identify themselves.
You guys are really awesome as I have got awesome support and people have literally answered the questions that I didnt have answers for. Thank you so much :)