Ask HN: What is a physiically disabled person to do in this job market?
15 amathew 13 7/14/2025, 10:50:18 PM
I am a 39 year old with cerebral palsy (use a walker due to mobility issues) who lost their job in late January 2025. I worked as a senior data scientist in the past and have been applying to analytics, business intelligence, and data science roles.
Six months later and I am still without a job.
How have those of you with disabilities overcome the difficulties in this market?
I'm totally lost and don't know how to proceed.
I've rewritten my resume and do get interviews
There were 4 instances where I went through the entire process and they ended up hiring another one of the candidates
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abraham-mathew-21221b29/
What I’m saying here is that (a) your time in the market isn’t absurd for this current economy, and (b) it’s also not provably due to your disability so don’t go blaming that without proof or you’ll talk yourself into giving up. Shits HARD right now man just keep trying and focus hard on networking and referrals. It seems the only way to get a job right now
I think once IRS section 174 is overturned the market will get better.
You know this I’m sure. But most people don’t know that CP affects different people differently. I have left hemiparesis CP that really only affects my left hand and very slightly my left foot - i walk with a slight limp. But properly conditioned, I’ve run a 10 minute mile up to a 10k.
I’ve been working professionally since 1996 across 10 jobs from everything from startups, to boring enterprise jobs to BigTech and full time for consulting companies. My last three jobs have been remote as have been the interviews. No one had the slightest clue about my having CP since going remote.
Why do you think it’s your CP and not just the market sucking for everyone right now?
Why do you have that you are “physically disabled” on you LinkedIn profile? Don’t do that. You are giving people a reason to discriminate against you unlawfully.
Second point: if you are just blindly submitting your resume to job sites/ATS’s you have already lost. I’m very credentialed in my field and I heard crickets from fire bombing my resume in 2023 and last year when I was looking for a job back to back. But that was my plan C while I was going through the interview processes based on my network and a targeted outreach where I had the exact set of skills and specialized experience that were looking for and responding to inbound recruiters.
But if your skillset is generic, you have to lean on your network, every open req gets hundreds of applications within a couple of days - LinkedIn shows you.
Same thing as a person with a social-emotional disability - get screwed. I'm being pushed out of an early career role even though I'm overqualified and producing similar numbers as my peers. I'll end up working at Walmart. Good luck.
If you have the skills, please do your best to keep applying them at a new job
It's really important not to let this wear you down and defeat you. You're worth it
I don't the interviews are going bad... it's just super competitive so companies have so many options on who to hire
All this is to say, GenAI is booming but there's competing factors going on for businesses to hire.
Also a different take, look for contract jobs. As with (1) above, my company isn't hiring FT but they're open to contractors.
I wish you luck.
This is exactly the same approach anyone else should take. Good luck.
Unless you're interested in applying your statistics knowledge to the military industrial complex or AI market, I'd probably recommend diversifying a bit. My honest $0.02.