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Ask HN: How do you compete when you have pain or other health problems?

11 points by supportengineer ↗ HN
Thinking about software development in general and Bay Area in particular. How do you keep your career alive in this field if you have any health problems, particularly those of the unpredictable kind. How do you avoid looking bad, when you want to make commitments, but your health can fail you at any time?

21 comments

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shams93
If developers were unionized this wouldn't be an issue, but with the rate of outsourcing and Ai sourcing going on, human workers have never been under this level of pressure before in any post historic era.
meristohm
I'm all for unionization, but I question the claim we've never been under this level of pressure before. While there are still enslaved people now, it was more acute for awhile there, especially in the USA and colonies over here. Children used to work long days in factories. Thanks to unions and workers rights campaigns we have the eight-hour workday in the US, which still serves well enough to enrich a lucky select few.
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ggm
If you have persisting health problems and live in the US health system you definitely need to consult with health professionals and healthcare finance professionals about the best longterm choices. Moving to low health cost states may limit access to treatment longterm, staying put in the bay may cause you more stress and immediate ongoing cost but could provide better health outcomes. It depends.

I hate to say this, but your long-term health is more important than your ideation of a career path in software and its not impossible your best choice is to seek a job that leverages your skills but isn't focussed on FAANG or start up culture. One with an agency or company which has a good HMO and a good work culture.

crazygringo
Generally speaking, software development seems to be one of the most flexible careers I'm aware of in that regard.

If you miss shifts in a restaurant, you're gonna be fired. If a sales rep frequently has to cancel meetings with clients that's a problem. And if you're in middle management you've got a lot of meetings that can't be missed.

But software development is pretty forgiving, and even more so now with remote work. A lot less meetings, a lot more people working highly flexible hours.

As long as you can deliver a full time job's worth of productivity over the course of a quarter, if health concerns make your productivity much more variable so that you've got slower days and faster days, slower weeks and faster weeks -- and that your faster periods compensate for the slower ones -- you'll probably be OK. At least the places I've worked.

If your health problems and pain are such that you can't deliver a full time job's worth of productivity, or where you expect to be frequently missing whole weeks or months due to health issues, then of course that's another story.

tabigarasu
My experience has been the opposite. I had to turn down a return offer from an internship and then I had to resign from my job, both for the same reason: I had a chronic illness and they wanted strict attendance at specific times in the morning, no flexibility. My last job had daily standups and 1-2hr planning sessions every other day.

Every job I've found with flexible work schedules has been at startups looking for rockstar devs with 10 years of experience.

swatcoder
Work with/for smaller companies and develop mutual loyalty with them.

By necessity, large companies ultimately operate by documented process and this makes it hard for them to accomodate outside-normal needs unless such accomodation has been encoded in the process.

Meanwhile, small companies are still just collectives of people trying to make something happen. If you do good work and demonstrate responsibility and long-term commitment, you can usually earn plenty of affordance for whatever noise your health issues bring to individual days.

tssva
The companies I worked for which were the most inflexible and most abusive of employees were all small companies.
crazygringo
Why do you think small companies are going to have more loyalty to an employee?

That's not my experience at all. If anything, they let go of employees sooner because the small company doesn't have the extra money around to pay them. If an employee isn't pulling their weight for a couple of weeks because of health issues, the small company can't afford that, end of story.

Large corporations are actually much more flexible and able to accomodate health situations in my experience, simply because they can afford to be.

gcheong
"By necessity, large companies ultimately operate by documented process and this makes it hard for them to accomodate outside-normal needs unless such accomodation has been encoded in the process."

I would think it's just the opposite. Larger companies are more likely to have the resource to make accommodations and a process for handling accommodation requests.

smarm52
If you happen to have the right traits: white, male, can speak "business", come from a wealthy background, have a support system that actually works, etc, then it seems pretty doable.

But without those, it's nearly impossible, I can tell you from experience.

codingdave
I've been living with chronic health problems and pain for about a decade now, and I just take breaks when I need it. Being a software dev, that is fairly easy to do. Working from home makes it easy to do without even having to inform people, as taking calls from a comfy chair is a reasonable action.

But there are really two options -

1) You can do the job, with reasonable accommodations. So talk to a doctor to see what can be done to help you. Have them write a note of what accommodations you need, and give it to your company's HR. This protects everyone because the company knows your limits and it is treated as a disability, protecting you from being punished for it, and protecting them from being accused of discrimination because there is a formal record of what you need.

2) You cannot do the job, even with accommodations. Still talk to a doctor, but if you decide that you cannot do this role, you can pursue disability benefits instead of doing the work.

giantg2
I wouldn't expect HR to be helpful. I submitted a case to HR with my autism diagnosis and they told me to talk to my Manger about accommodations. Then they wouldn't actually provide any sort of accommodations. I had two manager changes since them and apparently my disability and requested accommodations were not communicated during the hand over. Now my new manager is telling me that submitting that case to HR might have been a mistake because now they have an admission that I'm performing poorly since I requested help.

Can you actually get disability if you're no longer able to perform your existing role? Or does it have to be that you can't perform any role? It's seeming more and more likely that I'm going to get PIP'd and won't be able to find another dev role. But I don't think am eligible for any kind of disability since my disability is autism.

codingdave
That isn't quite how it works - you don't ask your manager what accommodations are available, your doctor writes it out and send the formal documentation in a letter. If they refuse to give you the needed accommodations, contact an attorney. And you absolutely tell HR so that you avoid exactly what you are describing, of it becoming an informal thing that one manager has negotiated with you. HR should be helpful because this protects the company as much as yourself because there is a formal agreement in place of how to work with a disability.

If you can't do the job, disability compensation comes in two forms - SSI, which is granted if you can not hold any job (after tons of paperwork), and disability insurance, which may or may not exist depending on your benefits package. Both are a hassle and not easy to get, but again, contact an attorney. Just submitting forms and saying, "gimme my money" won't work, almost everyone needs assistance to drive those processes.

Actually, that is really the answer overall - contact an attorney. They'll give you better answers than I will anyway because despite my own struggles, I'm still just a rando guy on the internet, not an expert.

giantg2
"you don't ask your manager what accommodations are available,"

"And you absolutely tell HR so that you avoid exactly what you are describing, of it becoming an informal thing that one manager has negotiated with you."

I didn't ask. I provided the document from the medical provider to HR. HR is the one who said to talk to my manager about accommodations because HR only handles stuff like "providing extra breaks or ergonomic equiptment".

"If you can't do the job, disability compensation comes in two forms - SSI, which is granted if you can not hold any job (after tons of paperwork), and disability insurance, which may or may not exist depending on your benefits package."

SSDI doesn't cover most autism. The disability insurance is only all short-term. Even "long-term" disability insurance typically ends (or can be terminated by your employer) after 1 year if you're not able to return.

I don't really want to contact an attorney, but if they put me on a PIP I guess I will then.

ddadanddadanddd
False. If you're good you can self-medicate and still perform well above a demanding baseline. If you're not good, then yes you'd better have some of those extras.
smarm52
Wow don't get many trolls around here. Welp, guess we're waiting for your September to end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

riehwvfbk
Looks to me like you are the troll here. You just blanket dismissed the possibility of someone having struggles based on race. Disgusting.
ddadanddadanddd
Any company where legal counsel is an exceptional expense is going to be a legal shitshow. Which is every small company that doesn't have serious VC backing.
austin-cheney
Tragic.

This does appear to be a solid description of software culture, especially of the Bay Area: avoid looking bad. That describes an unintentional form of conformity, perhaps Machiavellianism. Contrast that with a near opposite subculture like military, especially of the east coast, often expressed in terms of stubborn hyper ethical deviation.

In one case the goal is either to please or save face as determined by a person’s level of agreeability but in the other case the people, especially the self, are just nameless tools to accomplish a goal such that agreeability only determines level of care.

When you learn how to recognize this in the intentions of other people you are in a much better position to manipulate the conditions to accomplish what you believe to be important.