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Comment by tatianajosephy | Hacker News Reader

I have a strong sense that online work - on CrowdFlower, Mechanical Turk, or Elance - could be the path forward for someone like Jaime. Please do note: I work for CrowdFlower.

The beauty of online work is its promise of operating as a meritocracy. Access to the labor market is not about who you know, or how you appear, but about your ability to perform. Everything about Jaime, from his diligence to his incredible cataloguing memory, struck me as a perfect fit for the type of work that's readily available online: data collection, cleaning and labeling.

Even better, this type of work is going to become a larger and larger part of labor market as the machine learning field grows and the need for clean training data grows along with it.

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Online work solves the problem of not having something to do, but in some sense, going on YouTube also solves that problem.

In my opinion, the value of work for someone like Jaime mostly revolves around the perception of independence (I can take the bus by myself) and the social interactions (having co-workers), and online work doesn't fulfill these as well. That Jamie has something to do and that there is useful economic output is a nice-to-have, and likely a subsidized one at that. I would not be surprised if, for example, Jamie's companions cost more ("contribute more to GDP", if you will) than Jamie earns in wages.

Why not get him an office? Either at the workplace for mentally disabled, or somewhere else. He might also be able to combine Mechanical Turk with physical work at the same place...

Researching what someone with Down syndrome did 50 or 100 years ago might also be useful. Quite a few manual labour jobs have disappeared through automation. Looking at those jobs disappearing might also inspire.

Looking at places where hand made/artsianal products or services command a premium might also help.

Or why not set up a small business tailor made to him and the things he can do? Balancing between his autonomy as a person and maximising his economic output will always be a challenge, but I could see it being worth the effort. Mostly, it could offer him a long term perspective, while at a third party he would always be in a more vulnerable position.

This scenario of "his own business" is not without a precedent. I don't have any online references, but I remember a colleague telling me about a local business like that, a woodworking shop. It was owned by a very small trust set up by the parents. The person with the mental disability loved anything to do with wood. He was hired, together with a trusted and skilled local worker a generation younger than the parents. This man slowly built a significant partial ownership stake that tied him to the business. The firm was well known and respected in and around the village where it worked.

The people you work with as colleagues are in cases like these just as important as the work itself, if not more so.

This quite possibly holds true for all people that work from home.

It will be very hard to ride the fine line between providing real work and making sure that you're not exploiting people in an already difficult situation.

If you want I can put you in contact with a lady that set up a courier service for people with what she calls a 'difficult body' that is wildly successful (it has over 1000 employees nowadays). If you feel like reading a bit about it google for 'valid express' and 'Nicolette Mak'.

Best of luck with your endeavour!

The problem is that this kind of work is very isolating, and from the article it seems that he really needs human interactions.

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