3 ms·

I'm interested in getting more details on this. Mandatory meeting times makes it sound like you were a W-2 employee and not a contractor, and it's hard to imagi

I'm interested in getting more details on this. Mandatory meeting times makes it sound like you were a W-2 employee and not a contractor, and it's hard to imagine that an accommodation for narcolepsy would cause the employer any kind of undue burden. How did they avoid legal consequences?

sillysaurusx 4y ago
Step one was to transfer me off of client engagements entirely. No more pentesting. Which raised the question of what exactly I would do at a pentesting shop. His particular solution was to have me write security documentation and recommendations for clients deployed on Azure, then to say that the resulting documentation wasn’t satisfactory. I actually noticed one morning my access had been cut off, so I snagged a few chat messages from my laptop. I went in and was called into the side room to be lit on fire. In reality it’s not so dramatic, though at the time it felt like the end of the world. I was putting my wife through college so she could be a developer, and without a job we’d have to abandon those plans. None of that matters to an employer; they’re not here to accommodate people, they’re here to make money. And I say that with seriousness, not cynicism. Your problems are your own. When I started transitioning to that mindset, I became both more professional and tougher. I expect to be laid off within one month as of this writing, and it’ll roll off my shoulders like I’m laying in a river letting the water flow by. It doesn’t phase me, precisely because this time around I planned from day one that day next-month would come. I could have taken them to court, but I was a mess at the time. Getting on Prozac and taking care of my mental health really turned my life around.
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  What do you do now? Anything special to handle narcolepsy or just a more accommodating employer?
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    I’m a contractor at Groq working on custom ASICs for ML (at least for about the next month). The specialness was to plan my entire schedule around tuesdays and thursdays. Those are my only days with required morning meetings, and thankfully those are 11am and noon respectively. With careful planning, I’ve managed to only miss one meeting. Getting a diagnosis is the most important step. It helps you accept that it’s not your fault (a big one for me). Which lets you focus on delivering value in your niche, which is all that employers actually care about. If I’d known I had narcolepsy, I wouldn’t have tried to get into an industry so focused on client meetings. So the planning phase is pretty crucial.

sillysaurusx 4y ago

Step one was to transfer me off of client engagements entirely. No more pentesting. Which raised the question of what exactly I would do at a pentesting shop. His particular solution was to have me write security documentation and recommendations for clients deployed on Azure, then to say that the resulting documentation wasn’t satisfactory. I actually noticed one morning my access had been cut off, so I snagged a few chat messages from my laptop. I went in and was called into the side room to be lit on fire. In reality it’s not so dramatic, though at the time it felt like the end of the world. I was putting my wife through college so she could be a developer, and without a job we’d have to abandon those plans. None of that matters to an employer; they’re not here to accommodate people, they’re here to make money. And I say that with seriousness, not cynicism. Your problems are your own. When I started transitioning to that mindset, I became both more professional and tougher. I expect to be laid off within one month as of this writing, and it’ll roll off my shoulders like I’m laying in a river letting the water flow by. It doesn’t phase me, precisely because this time around I planned from day one that day next-month would come. I could have taken them to court, but I was a mess at the time. Getting on Prozac and taking care of my mental health really turned my life around.

therealdrag0 4y ago
What do you do now? Anything special to handle narcolepsy or just a more accommodating employer?
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  I’m a contractor at Groq working on custom ASICs for ML (at least for about the next month). The specialness was to plan my entire schedule around tuesdays and thursdays. Those are my only days with required morning meetings, and thankfully those are 11am and noon respectively. With careful planning, I’ve managed to only miss one meeting. Getting a diagnosis is the most important step. It helps you accept that it’s not your fault (a big one for me). Which lets you focus on delivering value in your niche, which is all that employers actually care about. If I’d known I had narcolepsy, I wouldn’t have tried to get into an industry so focused on client meetings. So the planning phase is pretty crucial.