Ask HN: Disabled and out of work for years, but need some side income
I've come into a situation, largely due to how awful the rent situation is in the United States, where I pretty desperately need to maximize the amount I can earn under disability (which is around $1200 a month) without losing it.
I have 8-10 years of overall experience, and regularly program as a hobby, but I have not been employed for years.
The last job I worked I primarily wrote python scripts for automating things like data entry into a CMS and other basic front-end web development features using older technology.
What can I do to actually be able to get some side income in the software space here in 2023? I've talked with a couple companies in my situation and the answers usually are along the lines of "well we can just hire a new graduate with up-to-date experience and they can work 40 hours a week for us no problem."
I'm in my early-to-mid 30s for reference. I'm not really able to get off disability as the condition is severe.
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edit: I've already reduced expenses pretty much as much as I reasonably can do of course.
I've explored other options already as well. For things like Fiverr or being hired contract-wise on websites they seem to be races to the bottom so if I'm trying to earn $1200 a month I'm really having to work quite a lot harder and more hours than I'm really currently able to do.
I have some applications I've written that generated some interest, however if I want to make any decent money off them I would have to put an extraordinarily large amount of effort into marketing and post-release diligence which may well be past what I'm currently capable of doing.
I do tutor students as well intermittenly but it doesn't get me very much.
I've written some scripts and other little projects for people I know here and there for small amounts, but it is extremely inconsistent availability even though they trust what I deliver.
It seems like finding other leads in that regard is really my only option.
218 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 260 ms ] threadThere's also options to reposition yourself. For example, instead of development, look for QA analyst roles. This particular shift won't pay as high, but it might be a good fit for what you need and possibly be easier to land in a shorter time frame
Some suckers will throw money at that if you give it a colourful website with plenty of vague promises that you never have to deliver.
If they come to you with money in hand and are just a little intellectually lazy or have worse time management than you’d like, you can still make a mutually beneficial trade.
Only offering tutoring to the most motivated students with the best time management skills is a self-limiting market.
It might be very difficult to get back on disability benefits after they go above that limit.
This is a common trap with many disability benefit programmes worldwide - they have these inflexible hard numerical limits on earnings that effectively disincentivise people from getting back into work or becoming independent all in the name of fraud prevention. The systems lacks the flexiblity to recongise that people's health and ability to work ebbs and flows.
The moment they earn more than 1200 USD they might no longer be considered disabled by the state. The baked in assumption is that not that we should be providing an accessible offramp to independence and a fallback to support if it goes wrong, but that any demonstration of independence should be met with treating your future claims as fraud.
It might be helpful to say how many hours you can work per week, and how much you want to be paid per hour.
And SSDI is really badly set up, as other posters have noted.
It takes me 3~6 months for me to find a job each time I’m out of work.
Finding a specialist to manage the medical side of my disability is similar.
Through fortunate circumstances (and inheritance), I have successful career and enough energy left over to have some kind of life.
If I lived in Europe, the amount of sick and vacation time would allow me to actually heal between episodes. I live in the US, so I’m in a constant state of near burn-out.
It takes me 3-6 months and I'm not disabled.
That's pretty much the norm in tech, unless you fit into the very small group of people who get lucky and find a job overnight.
(Granted, it's worth finding out how easy/hard it is to reactive them.)
That being said, I wonder if you should challenge your assumption that it's out of date. I'm definitely clueless on whatever the latest JavaScript library is and whatever's going in machine learning. But my knowledge of foundational data structures, algorithms, and software development practices often makes me more valuable than somebody who is more "up to date". It feels horrible when someone uses an acronym I don't know, but it doesn't actually have much impact.
Then again, perhaps you're right and it really is causing you problems - it's hard to give specific advice on social media because the async nature prevents good Q&A. Could you find someone that will coach you on it?
If this is the case, dropping on your own could be very precarious and potentially financially devastating.
You could look at the big CRM platforms like Salesforce which require only a modified version of Java called Apex to customize. I find there are a dearth of good programmers working in the platform.
EDIT: Both of these options allow you to work remotely.
None of it is well understood and there aren't good treatments. Some treatments help some people, but it is kind of hit or miss and most of the potential treatments aren't cheap.
It is actually similar in many ways to some forms of long covid, so bizarrely, covid and subsequent research may lead to better therapies that could help her as well. At least that's the hope...
Another idea: try to find a grant for an Open Source project to document it. For a large project like Rust find something not well documented.
In my experience and of that of my friends -- we are Deaf by the way -- about nine of ten projects won't give sustenance. It's like startups, you need to try again and again. Either you will strike gold or you will have several horses to bet on.
Finally consider leaving the country. The US is good for people who are well off and not so good for the rest. With some luck you could work as a digital nomad.
Wordpress powers like 40% of the web, unless you really, really, really hate PHP, your skills aren't outdated. It's probably tough to connect to the right people but there are endless companies and individuals out there that need help with their sites that run on WP.
Just as a reminder that there's the Modern-Software-Development Paradise where you need to keep learning new technology and everything is futuristic and shiny, and then there's the Wordpress-Running-On-Php5.6 Real World which is gigantic but few people blog about because it's not fancy and it smells bad sometimes.
Or maybe a business has an existing in-house Python application they need maintained, including frequent changes made on short notice, and they don't want to hire someone at several times the cost and try to retain them. They have to find a trustworthy contractor for a long-term relationship, and you might look like that.
You could also do two of these kinds of engagements at once (to lower the cost even more, avoid any concern about looking like a de facto employee, add recent stuff to your resume faster, and not have all your eggs in the same basket).
Of course I got passed over for a lot of jobs in favor of cheaper folks. But the jobs I did get were from clients who actually respected me. Also, more than once, a client who initially passed over me for someone cheaper came back a few months later and asked me to do the job after all.
So, perhaps something like that could work for you.
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Regarding the $1,200 per month limit, I'm not sure what the rules are, but perhaps you could set up a corporation that takes on the freelancing jobs and then pays you a salary of $1,200 a month? That way you wouldn't have to turn down a job for paying too much.
Maybe have the corp owned by a trust rather than you personally?
I wouldn't want you to get in trouble and lose the disability, though, so talk to somebody who actually knows what they're talking about before doing any of this stuff.
No, that'll lose you the benefits.
https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/cfr20/404/404-1575.htm
"We will evaluate your work activity based on the value of your services to the business regardless of whether you receive an immediate income for your services."
SSI is deliberately set up to fuck people over. (Not in this particular loophole-closer, but in general. You get $900/month to cover food, housing, etc.; a pittance. A savings account balance (or any other countable assets) over $2,000 will lose your benefits.)
No. If their business brings in $5k/month, that's what the SSA will consider their income. Doesn't matter if it's just accumulating in the business's bank accounts; it's OP's income. They've seen people try this trick; it's why the provision exists.
https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/cfr20/416/416-0420.htm
> We generally use the amount of your countable income in the second month prior to the current month to determine how much your benefit amount will be for the current month.
Earning $5k in a particular month would mean zero benefit in a subsequent month, and keeping that $5k sitting in their account to tide themselves over would put them over the $2k limit on assets, making them ineligible for SSI.
> The Social Security office may approve your request for reinstatement. If your request is approved, your temporary benefits start the month following the month in which you made your request. Temporary benefits can last up to six months.
So: it’s not instant. It’s not immediate. And it risks losing the benefits altogether if they mistake a one-time contract for something he could sustain indefinitely.
It's a chicken and egg problem because it's guaranteed income. There has to be something where they can do partial work and still be on disability. This example of rising rent means for his area that amount is not enough or he will simply have to move which sucks
I suppose the OP will just have to stick to smaller jobs.
However, another thing a co-op could do is allocate work among members who do the same kind of work while respecting limits on how much work each member is capable of doing. I assume the rule's purpose is roughly, "Your benefit is predicated on you being incapable of working enough to support yourself, so if you prove otherwise, we can't give you the benefit." Limiting how much each person works seems compatible with that.
But I'd guess the work would need to be allocated based on members' actual capability, not the monthly dollar limit. If someone's work adds up to just barely under the dollar limit consistently month after month, it strongly suggests they're capable of more. Even more so if lots of co-op members have that pattern.
Such a co-op could serve a legitimate purpose because people who can only do limited part-time work may not have much opportunity. Many employers want someone who is full time. Also, some disabilities may make it where someone can only work sporadically. So the co-op could enable someone who is capable of (say) 10 hours/week to do that instead of 0 hours/week.
I know someone with similar problems in the UK: they are part-time, but working more hours would mean paying more in childcare and lose benefits, ending up with less money than before. It's just stupid.
The efforts US politicians go through to make sure that some of the people who have paid a disproportionately large amount of taxes don't get a fraction of them back when they don't need it have been valiant. Considering that you could simply tax them enough to create a universal benefit, effectively refunding part of their own taxes and redistributing the rest, I'd suggest that starving the poor is a goal rather than a side-effect.
We can't give people free college, what if people who could afford college go?
For example, Florida required drug testing to receive welfare; that program cost more than it saved taxpayers in benefits. https://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/florida-didnt-save-mone...
And yet, we have rich people using fraud to get government funds that they have absolutely no need for while the poor get exploited and starve.
The abuse is going on A N Y W A Y; it's just that people get more indignant when one of the "poors" occasionally get that extra soda out of the machine.
1. Find a lawyer 2. Consider a corporation 3. Find an external entity (friend, family, form a trust) to run business
Run all plans through lawyer and revive their agreement in writing
I don't think you appreciate how tight the budget of a disabled person on SSI is.
So my opinion: if you desperately need some money, freelancing websites are not a good option. It's more about luck and determination. I guess if I would kept applying, with time I'd find more projects, more reputation and so on, but that's not quick money.
Might be my country (KZ). I would expect people from US or EU having better implicit reputation. Also it was around 10 years ago, may be things changed.
It sounds like the OP is also in the US, so they will have that same advantage.
Look into a Special Needs Trust. You may be able to sock the money into the Trust without it becoming income to you, and thus jeopardizing your benefits. It’s usually used to keep assets low enough for benefits, but maybe there’s an income reducing benefit as well. Your state likely has multiple providers —- fees, if any, are typically quite reasonable
SSDI allows income from sources other than work, unlike SSI, which bars pretty much all income. SSDI allows you to get things like Financial Aid for school without impacting your SSDI. You can even trade stocks and gain money from stock sales and not have it impact your SSDI. Your spouse can have income and it won't impact SSDI. Most forms of income that are not strictly "work" are allowed by SSDI. SSI is the more strict of the two programs (and is more generally aimed at people who have been lifetime disabled and never worked or paid into social security).
Open source development + accepting donations seems like a sweet spot for the disabled on SSDI. You're not accepting pay for the "work" you do, thus the donation income is legally acceptable.
OP doesn't specify whether they are on SSI or SSDI, but if they had worked for years before they were disabled, its likely they were able to get SSDI.
Conversely I've known many people who come from lower class or middle class families that have hit hard times who are seriously mental ill (e.g. addicted to cigarettes but so thought disordered that it takes three hours to smoke a cig after waking up.) It strikes me as unfair that somebody who is "lawyered up" can find loopholes to protect their income whereas for many disabled people the process of applying for disability is like going to the moon or becoming a Navy Seal.
This has been an inherent flaw in our legal system since the inception of our country. We do not have a right to equal representation. The right to have representation at all is barely even a thing. There has even been some mumbling about ending the right to an attorney...
I'm not sure that's the case here. It's a matter of knowledge transfer.
Lawyers know things. People with money can afford to get knowledge from lawyers. People without money cannot afford to get knowledge from lawyers.
It's not a problem with the "system" that mathematicians know more about math than the general public, and that people who have the money can hire a mathematician to do math for them.
It's a knowledge transfer problem. How do you solve that? You can't give every person a massive book of every law when they're born. It's impractical to store, and they'd be outdated the next day. All of the laws are online for anyone to read, but who has the time?
A step towards equal representation would start by heavily subsidizing law school making them accessible to everyone. Also, we would need to fund the creation of more law schools. In addition we should fund public defenders an order of magnitude more than we currently do.
https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-law-school#:~:text....
Cornell's Legal Information Institute, for instance,
https://www.law.cornell.edu/
hasn't had the easiest time getting funding although it is produced on a shoestring and clearly delivers a huge amount of value for what goes into it.
State legislators and vendors have long tried to make people pay for access to the law, it seems in the long term courts have come to realize that there is no excuse, access to the law is not for high paid lawyers, but can and should be free because it is not expensive to provide in the electronic age and since you have to follow the law they don't need to give you the excuse that you can't afford to read it.
One of the historical high watermarks in legal history is the existence of the twelve tables, a highly condensed, shortened version of roman law which was prominently displayed in public market places and other easily accessible fora - specifically to allow non-patricians to understand and have access to the law.
Other moments in legal history have ruling classes enacting legislation in languages which the common-folk don't even speak.
We exist along a spectrum between 'everyone knows and understands' to 'nearly no one knows and understands', but don't take the difficulty of fixing the issue with the idea that it isn't a problem in the first place. It is a problem, and it's a large one.
How would you suggest it be ordered differently? I don’t know how we reliably help everyone who needs help if they’re unable or unwilling to seek help. “Moar social workers” isn’t a thing - even with funding, the people don’t exist to scale to the size of the need.
UBI etc seem like basic solutions but doesn’t really help them get help, just helps them not need help to some baseline.
It's an poverty/low income trap. If you're on disability/welfare you should still be incentived and rewarded for making money outside of your government payment.
It could be a constant thing like UBI or a gradual reduction like income tax brackets where more money earned is always more money in your pocket.
I just don't see how a person without family resources (i.e. most mentally ill patients) could ever qualify and I'm sure that's by design.
https://www.ablenrc.org/what-is-able/what-are-able-acounts/
As of right now it's only for people who acquired their disability before 26. I was born with cerebral palsy so that's how I qualified.
For example a quick search for 'Ruby Rails' and one of the top service providers lists a premium service of 'full stack development app' delivered in 3 days, and including a 15 minute consultation, a project plan, and audit, for ... $20.
I would absolutely trust someone to copy/paste a stack for me, a total idiot when it comes to the client-facing 50% of the stack, as long as they plug into my APIs.
1. Put the cheapest junior they have to install and configure their default platform for you and present it.
2. You see progress, and decide spending another $20 will get you over the finish line.
And people remain stuck on #2 forever. The more they spend, the more the sunk costs convince them to keep paying.
Usually that $20 is just to get you in the door (which is why it's hilariously low), very very rarely have I experienced that being the actual cost.
- It rewards experience though, except for niche-specific writing, does not require understanding of specific frameworks or programming languages - It is often 'important-but-not-urgent' work, so intermittent availability is less of a deal-breaker - Clear writing is very much an orthogonal skill from programming aptitude writ large, and you don't need to compete with new grads
I also find most technical documentation teams to be a lot more chill and flexible. Most of them have excellent team-minded work styles.
How to get started in this field? You can't throw a stone without hitting an OSS project that wouldn't want help with its docs. It's a great way to build up a network and some Github activity.
https://lwn.net/op/AuthorGuide.lwn
But there are also permanent type jobs. Some companies are looking for technical writers. Find them at "Who is Hiring" threads.
Expand your network a little. Ask them for their help for new jobs. You helped them, maybe they can help you?
How about becoming a (software) tester?
I've also gotten tech gigs from temp gigs - "Hey, I know I'm just a temp, but I also do tech work and noticed some things I could automate for you, if you'd like some help."
Staffing-type companies work MUCH better. Someone in IT dept is on maternity leave until March, do whatever you can to help them for two months. Shockingly you can sometimes get 2x to even 3x their "regular" pay for temp. Plenty of companies have never read their Fred Brooks and think if a project is late they can throw talent at it and it'll get done quicker (spoiler alert, more bodies = later due date every time), regardless I don't mind profiting off their project management inexperience. A permanent-ish "grind away at the desk for years" at the corporate job is probably completely off the table; look for big upgrade projects, 2am maintenance/upgrade projects, etc. Baby sitting server upgrades at 2am is not glamorous, but it can be very profitable... Even less glamorous is taking the on call shift at 2am, but when you bill per hour it feels better... I could never work on call permanently, just a few months will burn most people completely out, but this contract ends on march 31st so I can wait it out.
Recruiter-type companies are hit and miss. They usually take a HUGE percentage cut (so you're taking a huge pay cut) but its usually a fixed-ish percentage so they want you billing 40+ hours every week to maximize their cut. Its the same hoops for them to jump thru for a 3-month part time contract at $75 as for a 12-month full time contract at $175 so you're at the back of the list unless they're infinitely bored. Spoiler, they're almost never bored.
Its kind of important to note if you need to report income monthly or annually. Monthly could be tricky, annual would likely be pretty easy. The work tends to be feast or famine; think of your relationship with your car mechanic, either you want it done yesterday and him working 24 hrs/day or you have zero interest in paying him a penny; this is how your clients will look at you. So if you're close to your income budget it'll be pretty easy to not sign a short term contract for awhile or until next year or whatever. On the other hand if you have to report income monthly that might be painful as you'll run into places that bill net-30, net-90, net-seems-like-forever and you'll suddenly get a check large enough to buy a car, but it'll be one and only one check. Here's two totally different phrases "So I see your monthly income is $30K" vs "Once, one month I got a single check for $30K, but that was the only check I got for about half a year".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?