9 ms·

More disabled Americans are employed, thanks to remote work

444 points by petethomas 2y ago

toomuchtodo 2y ago
https://archive.today/4f2Ix https://archive.today/4f2Ix
advisedwang 2y ago
One way to look at this is that some conditions are less of a disability than they used to be. In the same way that medical advances can make some diseases curable or inconsequential so social changes can also make a disease irrelevant. This is an important lesson, as it should alert us that there likely are other ways our society operates that make a disease into an impediment that could be changed. If you want to know what they are, go talk to disabled rights advocates!
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  https://www.scope.org.uk/social-model-of-disability https://www.scope.org.uk/social-model-of-disability > The model says that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference. Barriers can be physical, like buildings not having accessible toilets. Or they can be caused by people's attitudes to difference, like assuming disabled people can't do certain things. > The social model helps us recognise barriers that make life harder for disabled people. Removing these barriers creates equality and offers disabled people more independence, choice and control. > Not everyone uses the social model and that’s ok. How anyone chooses to talk about their impairment is up to them.
  - squigz 2y ago
    I'm not trying to deny there are plenty of barriers for disabled people in society, and we should certainly try to reduce them... but I think even in an ideal society, being, for example, blind, or deaf, would still be very difficult. I think pretending that it's all about how society reacts to us is ignoring the reality of disabled people's lives. (I'm disabled myself, in case it matters)
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > even in an ideal society, being, for example, blind, or deaf, would still be very difficult Correct. The technological model OP posited would involve technologies that let blind and deaf folks navigate the world. The social model hits a barrier at that point.
    - wizzwizz4 2y ago
      That's why we have the disability / impairment distinction. Many impairments don't have to be disabilities. Some are, inherently. I'd argue that deafness can be completely mitigated by societal improvements, for most purposes except birdsong etc. and certain genres of music. Blindness is more difficult (e.g. vision is useful for navigation, and we can't choose the surfaces in a forest to make echolocation easier), but in principle computer technology can help with that. (I'd say a decent automated audio description is still a hundred years out, but we'll only get it if we make progress.) Certain mental impairments (e.g. some depression, some sensory issues) have no known mitigations, even in theory, so remain disabilities in all circumstances.
      - squigz 2y ago
        You're focusing on mechanical issues and ignoring social issues. You mention birdsong, and certain genres of music... what about your partner's voice? Your child's laugh?
        wizzwizz4 2y ago
        I count those in the same category as birdsong. You can see, and/or feel, laughter. There's an equivalent to "voice" in every mode of communication I'm aware of (speech, sign, romantic chess, oil-on-canvas…). There's the inherent disability of not being able to access those modes of sensory experience (and I'm not belittling anybody's desire to experience them who can't) but the social impact of the impairment is incidental and avoidable. Perhaps these things are culturally significant, above and beyond their inherent social value, but that isn't intrinsic or necessary.
    - Doxin 2y ago
keeptrying 2y ago
That is really freaking cool. Creating a platform that's location independent really helps people with disabilities. I do think LLMs by enabling people to work indepedently (in adiditon to remote) should add degrees of freedom that would help people with disabilties. LLMs should enable this by easing creation of work contracts (ie allow more accomodations by changing contracts), automation of most of most business operations, ability to quickly get to "average level" on a lot of business concepts, automation of finances (eg: using Runway). Hopefully the creative piece of building a business will no longer get drowned out by the operational pieces.
- keeptrying 2y ago
  Whoa - Can anyone explain why I'm getting downvoted?
  - nickff 2y ago
    Probably because you're bringing LLMs into a conversation when there's no clear link, and adding nothing else to the conversation.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      Your assertion that it is unrelated is true, but doesn't explain why someone would take time and effort out of their day to press an arbitrary button. If one was concerned with the conversation, that time and effort would have logically gone into actually adding to the conversation.
  - avgDev 2y ago
    We are talking about remote work. Not AI and Not LLM. Your comment is completely off-topic.
  - hoppyhoppy2 2y ago
    "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jebby 2y ago
I'm one of them. I'm pretty terrified that the gears of capitalism will eventually lead to remote work being outlawed.
- brink 2y ago
  It's capitalism that created that remote job in the first place.
  - wlesieutre 2y ago
    After years of companies insisting that working without being physically in the office 5 days a week was impossible, it was the government saying "Your offices are closed" that made remote work at all common. I know remote work existed as a small niche before that, but I can't give capitalism credit for normalizing it. Disabled people have been begging for years to have more flexible working arrangements, and have been constantly told "sorry it's impossible." But then covid shows up only for everyone to discover it's been possible the whole time.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      > I know remote work existed as a small niche before that You have to distinguish not physically being in the office from "working from home." A LOT of jobs (e.g. many sales job, on-site consultants, even my oil delivery guy) didn't involve being physically in the office much but weren't WFH.
    - brink 2y ago
      Covid didn't invent remote work. I had been working remote for almost 10 years before Covid arrived. It merely accelerated a force that was already in motion.
      - ragestorm 2y ago
        "I know remote work existed as a small niche before that, but I can't give capitalism credit for normalizing it".
cut3 2y ago
Remote work is very inclusive.
GarnetFloride 2y ago
Surprise, surprise making it easier to work allows more people to work. Taking a phrases I read about the latest iPad. If they stop neutering the workplace by not allowing remote work then more people will work. Sort of like how cities are neutered because they are car centric and not people centric. And it’s not just the currently disabled but caregivers as well. I had a PM that was caring for aging parents and we could hear her feeding them as we were on calls trying to unbork a business process that wouldn’t let us give customers the software licenses they paid for. This is a good thing but there are some people who hate the idea of remote work because they can’t comprehend a management style that isn’t their First Grade teacher’s.
- WWLink 2y ago
  > And it’s not just the currently disabled but caregivers as well. I had a PM that was caring for aging parents and we could hear her feeding them as we were on calls trying to unbork a business process that wouldn’t let us give customers the software licenses they paid for. I fall into the caregiver bucket, and I'll present an argument I was hearing a lot on linkedin and those kinda places in favor of RTO: Some companies and bosses think that if you're on the clock you shouldn't be taking care of your family. The reality is a lot more complicated. WFH means I can spend 20 minutes resolving a problem that would've taken me half a day before - driving home, resolving the issue, driving back, finding parking, getting back into the right mindset to do work, etc. It also means I can join meetings that I otherwise wouldn't have been able to join. (like in your example, the coworker feeding their parents). Admittedly your coworker should probably invest in a mute button lol. Anyway, yea, WFH is a huge enabler! But I guess some people are kinda ableist/unfair about it. It's silly. Life goes on. We shouldn't be playing this game of competing on how hard we can lick boots.
  - otteromkram 2y ago
    LinkedIn has an agenda to push, for sure. Screw that website. As for the, "if you're clocked in, you should be working," that would mean in-office employees are working 100% of the time they're clocked in. Have them prove that this is the case. Then look at productivity during the pandemic vs now and let then explain how WFH hampered those numbers. Just a ridiculous mindset by boomers who should have retired a decade ago.
TylerE 2y ago
Pretty much me at this point. I've had the same remote job for 9 years, and while I could work an office job at the time I was hired (I was 31 then), now at 40 and with a number of my chronic conditions rather a bit less background than they used to be. Not to mention that pretty much everything I have is either respitory, or one of the major comorbidities for COVID, which is still very much in circulation. To give one example... about 2 years ago I had to spend about 10 months on near-total bed rest to get a healing-resistant foot ulcer to finally heal. I was able to work from bed for almost all of that. If I'd been working an office job it basically would have been a choice - keep my job, or keep my foot.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  Would FMLA or ADA have helped? I believe companies would have to justify denying you reasonable accommodations.
  - TylerE 2y ago
    FMLA no because it's unpaid leave. I actually was just having to navigate that/short term disability as I'm coming off missing about 3.5 weeks from an extended period of extreme unpleasantness that ended in me getting my gallbladder 86'ed last week. ADA potentially but a lot of my stuff basically boils down to "being out of the house and active is both physically and mentally draining and more likely to get me sick with some random thing". So the reasonable accommodation is basically remote work (I'm a software dev, which is about as remote-friendly a career as it gets).
    - Jtsummers 2y ago
      FMLA also has a twelve week limit, and for "highly compensated" employees (a lot of software devs in the US would qualify) you can lose the right to return to the same, or equivalent, position as when you left.
  - SatvikBeri 2y ago
    FMLA provides unpaid leave, and usually only up to 12 weeks. I'm not sure how well ADA would apply here, but my wife had a lot of trouble using ADA to even get her employer to use video meeting software with captions (she's deaf, and Zoom didn't have captions at the time.) It eventually worked but took something like 6 months.
ricc 2y ago
Not really related to the article but I always tell myself that one of these days, I will dedicate more time working on something that improves the lives of a certain group of people with disabilities. The trigger was a single simple sentence that I read a year or two ago: “Everybody is just temporarily abled.”
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dogman144 2y ago
Civically we allegedly care about these topics, and note their solutions via remote work - disabled accommodations: this article, and anecdotes from people we know in this situation - finding some method for a dramatic enough state change in environmental conditions as to back up from disconcerting climate change barriers we’re pushing into: I can’t recall the specifics but within a week of COVID lockdowns and no commutes, carbon and pollution in atmosphere plummets - preventing sexism, ageism, and other forms harassment at work: can’t sexually harass someone quite as easily in a fully auditable zoom/slack environment vs in office. - accommodating parents and their child raising needs with policies that don’t come out of 1950: every working parent I know with remote jobs experience significant flexibility here. - affordable housing space: office space conversions are starting. The longer the debate goes on about hybrid/wfh and the above tangible proven benefits vs RTO for “The Collaboration” and “My Socialization Needs,” the more I speculate our society doesn’t actually care about the above topics, at all. Or, if we do care, this should be called out over and over and over. Bc it’s not getting discussed this way.
- squigz 2y ago
  It's not (often) workers calling for RTO. It's not hard to imagine why.
  - dogman144 2y ago
    I see a lot of workers in HN taking that position, or at least some very persistent sock puppet corporate accounts hah.
    - squigz 2y ago
      I tend to see a lot of managers calling for it. I see some workers calling for hybrid (which is perfectly reasonable) but not full RTO. Just my impressions though.
      - ghaff 2y ago
        I doubt you'd see many workers calling for in the office every day, no exceptions for in-office workers, which was mostly the norm (outside of travel and customer visits) for many professionals in, say, the 80s. However, there is a subset today that would like to see co-workers with a regular office presence.
rqtwteye 2y ago
That's very good. All the DEI brochures I have seen portrayed young good looking people of different colors. I hope we will get more diversity and inclusion for disabled people.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  Yeah, exactly. And all of them smiling, laughing, being happy. It's very unrelatable. I would like to see depressed, stressed and anxious people as well. People with crooked teeth and other normal things. I don't understand how a bunch of happy, young attractive people is a diverse group at all.
  - briffid 2y ago
    Depressed, stressed, anxious - these are temporary or treatable conditions. The diversity is for innate and permanent traits.
    - mewpmewp2 2y ago
      > these are temporary or treatable conditions Are they always?
cmgriffing 2y ago
I really wonder if some organization like the ACLU could bring cases against "Return to Work" initiatives as being discriminatory?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > wonder if some organization like the ACLU could bring cases against "Return to Work" initiatives as being discriminatory? Most people can't WFH. If the courts actually sided with that, the popular backlash would likely be so severe as to overcorrect.
deadbabe 2y ago
I’ve always liked that being disabled in America isn’t necessarily the death sentence it is in other countries that have no accommodation for disabled people.
- jlund-molfese 2y ago
  It's not perfect, but gliding around in a few hundred year old American city is way more dignified than somewhere like Paris. It's not just the generously-sized sidewalks and curb cuts, but also knowing that you can go into almost any McDonald's or Starbucks and expect a toilet you can use (Parisian Sanisettes are great, but they aren't everywhere).
faeriechangling 2y ago
Employers systemically illegally discriminated against employees by falsely alleging that accommodating them with work from home was an undue hardship, and would just point at other employers not doing it to demonstrate this. COVID forced WFH for business reasons and thus employers are no longer as easily able to illegally discriminate against their disabled employees since it's patently obvious that the accommodation is possible and it doesn't present some existential threat to a business to provide it. It's also that employers are simply more geared up to allow work from home and it's less of an actual burden in time and money.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > Employers systemically illegally discriminated against employees by falsely alleging that accommodating them with work from home If someone has a legally recognized disability that can be reasonably accommodated by working from home, that's one thing. But there's nothing illegal nor discriminatory about companies having their workforce be in the office.
  - Plasmoid 2y ago
    > But there's nothing illegal nor discriminatory about companies having their workforce be in the office. Basically, this is the disparate impact argument. You could make a similar argument about having the office only be accessible by climbing a flight of stairs.
- elevatedastalt 2y ago
  COVID acted like a coordinated forcing function. So it's unfair to claim that things would have been just as easy to move to WFH before COVID. Even the FAANGs of the world had to do a LOT of work to make smooth WFH happen, from working on optimizing capacity for teleconferencing software to actually making their corp networks work smoothly remotely at scale.
- BenFranklin100 2y ago
  I think that’s a harsh take. Your last sentence is where the balance of the truth lies: COVID was a watershed event that ushered in new technologies and practices that have made WFH more viable and generally acceptable.
throwaway14356 2y ago
it makes me wonder if we should, in stead of retire have a second round of organized education around 45-55 to prepare for a job that doesn't involve physical acrobatics that one can do from home. With laws to accommodate the process. You could for example tap into the pension for the duration of the training.
5555624 2y ago
I'm one of them. Even when still in the hospital and rehab center -- Lost my lower leg to necrotizing fasciitis and sepsis -- I was able to keep working. (And I wanted to do something.) I thought I'd be going back to the office at some point; but, my supervisor and EEO office decided I'd work from home. when I got home from the hospital and rehab, there was a letter authorizing full-time telework. I keep arguing I don't need to take our annual Workplace Violence Prevention training; but, I have to go online and take it every year. (I just took it a week ago.)
titanomachy 2y ago
This is great news. Allowing people access to high-quality jobs they were previously shut out of is objectively awesome. I’m bored by the comment flamewars here every time this topic comes up, though. I get it, some people love remote work and some people don’t. Another expression of the wonderful diversity of humanity. I just did a job search and I’m happy to report that there are still many options for either in-office or fully remote teams. Pick one that suits you and stop getting your blood pressure up over this, seriously.
- tempaccount420 2y ago
  > Pick one that suits you and stop getting your blood pressure up over this, seriously. How can you not care when companies choosing to go fully remote means you have less options to find in-office jobs?
  - titanomachy 2y ago
    I’m excited that there’s so many different options! Right now I find it beneficial to physically colocate with my team. Maybe later in life I will want to earn a living while traveling, or living somewhere rural and close to nature, and if that happens I’ll be grateful for a thriving culture of remote companies. Also I have friends who have great lives built around remote work and I wouldn’t wish for them to lose that!
  - shkkmo 2y ago
    > How can you not care when companies choosing to go fully remote means you have less options to find in-office jobs? The world is not designed to be optimized for you, nor should it be. I think it is the height of selfishness to push for a world only suited to your preferences with no concern for those with other preferences or needs.
DoreenMichele 2y ago
The internet is generally a huge boon for many people with disabilities. If you write code, blog, etc. please do what you can to be compliant with online accommodation. A handicapped person who can use your widget -- say, a blind person -- will be thrilled and loyal. If they can't and are forced to try to go somewhere in person or something because the online option doesn't work, this may be a huge hardship and may outright cut them out of being able to do certain things at all.
one_buggy_boi 2y ago
Happy to see this. The push to RTO seems to just be a front for legal constructive dismissal of expensive employees. These jobs are immediately being backfilled by remote employees on the otherside of the world. The FTE to third-party ratio is growing exponentially, it's becoming way more common to see things like a 1:5+ fte to 3p ratio.
egberts1 2y ago
Something for those who are disabled and collect Social Security Disability (aka green check) or Social Security Income (gold check) and is pretty much mostly young and pre-retirement-age disabled folks: if your income goes over half of what you take in from Social Security, your eligibility will be "threaten" and re-evaluation WILL occur, often with reducing benefits until you earn twice what SSA gives you. So, if the job doesn't pan out, you are going to be in a rather severe financial bind for quite a awhile until those re-applied benefit(s) restarts for you. Hence, many disabled are looking for work that do not pay more than $800-1200/month (USD) ... just to avoid their re-evaluation trigger.
- ksaun 2y ago
  I don't know about SSI, but this isn't accurate for SSDI. For SSDI, if your earned income is more than $1110 in a month (for 2024), then you consume one of your 9 trial work months. That $1110 threshold is regardless of your SSDI payment amount and it is adjusted annually. The trial work months are to allow disabled persons to attempt to return to the workforce without risking losing their social security benefits if it proves unsustainable for them. (The specifics are a little more complicated than what I've described.)
  - mminer237 2y ago
    Even after using up your trial months, there's not a penalty unless you go over $2,590, IIRC
  - egberts1 2y ago
    Of course, the halfway amount is precisely pegged to your current level of SSA benefits.
- navjack27 2y ago
  SSI = Supplemental Security Income
  - hansvm 2y ago
    I think that's the point. Supplementing up to a given minimum has counterintuitive incentives, causing the program to pay more in aggregate than if it had looser caps (and linear scaling) and let more people work and earn slightly higher incomes by reaping the benefits of the program.
OJFord 2y ago
It's only inertia that makes 'remote' not default in this technological age. Of course some prefer the office (some of whom from their own inertia), some jobs genuinely need to be or benefit from being done in a shared office space, but for the absolute vast majority of roles the office was always about needing to pass paper documents around, or needing expensive and fixed equipment that is a telephone line or computer.
dangabled 2y ago
[flagged]

444 points by petethomas 2y ago

https://archive.today/4f2Ix https://archive.today/4f2Ix

One way to look at this is that some conditions are less of a disability than they used to be. In the same way that medical advances can make some diseases curable or inconsequential so social changes can also make a disease irrelevant. This is an important lesson, as it should alert us that there likely are other ways our society operates that make a disease into an impediment that could be changed. If you want to know what they are, go talk to disabled rights advocates!

wizzwizz4 2y ago
https://www.scope.org.uk/social-model-of-disability https://www.scope.org.uk/social-model-of-disability > The model says that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference. Barriers can be physical, like buildings not having accessible toilets. Or they can be caused by people's attitudes to difference, like assuming disabled people can't do certain things. > The social model helps us recognise barriers that make life harder for disabled people. Removing these barriers creates equality and offers disabled people more independence, choice and control. > Not everyone uses the social model and that’s ok. How anyone chooses to talk about their impairment is up to them.
- squigz 2y ago
  I'm not trying to deny there are plenty of barriers for disabled people in society, and we should certainly try to reduce them... but I think even in an ideal society, being, for example, blind, or deaf, would still be very difficult. I think pretending that it's all about how society reacts to us is ignoring the reality of disabled people's lives. (I'm disabled myself, in case it matters)
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > even in an ideal society, being, for example, blind, or deaf, would still be very difficult Correct. The technological model OP posited would involve technologies that let blind and deaf folks navigate the world. The social model hits a barrier at that point.
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    That's why we have the disability / impairment distinction. Many impairments don't have to be disabilities. Some are, inherently. I'd argue that deafness can be completely mitigated by societal improvements, for most purposes except birdsong etc. and certain genres of music. Blindness is more difficult (e.g. vision is useful for navigation, and we can't choose the surfaces in a forest to make echolocation easier), but in principle computer technology can help with that. (I'd say a decent automated audio description is still a hundred years out, but we'll only get it if we make progress.) Certain mental impairments (e.g. some depression, some sensory issues) have no known mitigations, even in theory, so remain disabilities in all circumstances.
    - squigz 2y ago
      You're focusing on mechanical issues and ignoring social issues. You mention birdsong, and certain genres of music... what about your partner's voice? Your child's laugh?
      - wizzwizz4 2y ago
        I count those in the same category as birdsong. You can see, and/or feel, laughter. There's an equivalent to "voice" in every mode of communication I'm aware of (speech, sign, romantic chess, oil-on-canvas…). There's the inherent disability of not being able to access those modes of sensory experience (and I'm not belittling anybody's desire to experience them who can't) but the social impact of the impairment is incidental and avoidable. Perhaps these things are culturally significant, above and beyond their inherent social value, but that isn't intrinsic or necessary.
  - Doxin 2y ago

keeptrying 2y ago

That is really freaking cool. Creating a platform that's location independent really helps people with disabilities. I do think LLMs by enabling people to work indepedently (in adiditon to remote) should add degrees of freedom that would help people with disabilties. LLMs should enable this by easing creation of work contracts (ie allow more accomodations by changing contracts), automation of most of most business operations, ability to quickly get to "average level" on a lot of business concepts, automation of finances (eg: using Runway). Hopefully the creative piece of building a business will no longer get drowned out by the operational pieces.

keeptrying 2y ago
Whoa - Can anyone explain why I'm getting downvoted?
- nickff 2y ago
  Probably because you're bringing LLMs into a conversation when there's no clear link, and adding nothing else to the conversation.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    Your assertion that it is unrelated is true, but doesn't explain why someone would take time and effort out of their day to press an arbitrary button. If one was concerned with the conversation, that time and effort would have logically gone into actually adding to the conversation.
- avgDev 2y ago
  We are talking about remote work. Not AI and Not LLM. Your comment is completely off-topic.
- hoppyhoppy2 2y ago
  "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jebby 2y ago

I'm one of them. I'm pretty terrified that the gears of capitalism will eventually lead to remote work being outlawed.

brink 2y ago
It's capitalism that created that remote job in the first place.
- wlesieutre 2y ago
  After years of companies insisting that working without being physically in the office 5 days a week was impossible, it was the government saying "Your offices are closed" that made remote work at all common. I know remote work existed as a small niche before that, but I can't give capitalism credit for normalizing it. Disabled people have been begging for years to have more flexible working arrangements, and have been constantly told "sorry it's impossible." But then covid shows up only for everyone to discover it's been possible the whole time.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    > I know remote work existed as a small niche before that You have to distinguish not physically being in the office from "working from home." A LOT of jobs (e.g. many sales job, on-site consultants, even my oil delivery guy) didn't involve being physically in the office much but weren't WFH.
  - brink 2y ago
    Covid didn't invent remote work. I had been working remote for almost 10 years before Covid arrived. It merely accelerated a force that was already in motion.
    - ragestorm 2y ago
      "I know remote work existed as a small niche before that, but I can't give capitalism credit for normalizing it".

cut3 2y ago

Remote work is very inclusive.

GarnetFloride 2y ago

Surprise, surprise making it easier to work allows more people to work. Taking a phrases I read about the latest iPad. If they stop neutering the workplace by not allowing remote work then more people will work. Sort of like how cities are neutered because they are car centric and not people centric. And it’s not just the currently disabled but caregivers as well. I had a PM that was caring for aging parents and we could hear her feeding them as we were on calls trying to unbork a business process that wouldn’t let us give customers the software licenses they paid for. This is a good thing but there are some people who hate the idea of remote work because they can’t comprehend a management style that isn’t their First Grade teacher’s.

WWLink 2y ago
> And it’s not just the currently disabled but caregivers as well. I had a PM that was caring for aging parents and we could hear her feeding them as we were on calls trying to unbork a business process that wouldn’t let us give customers the software licenses they paid for. I fall into the caregiver bucket, and I'll present an argument I was hearing a lot on linkedin and those kinda places in favor of RTO: Some companies and bosses think that if you're on the clock you shouldn't be taking care of your family. The reality is a lot more complicated. WFH means I can spend 20 minutes resolving a problem that would've taken me half a day before - driving home, resolving the issue, driving back, finding parking, getting back into the right mindset to do work, etc. It also means I can join meetings that I otherwise wouldn't have been able to join. (like in your example, the coworker feeding their parents). Admittedly your coworker should probably invest in a mute button lol. Anyway, yea, WFH is a huge enabler! But I guess some people are kinda ableist/unfair about it. It's silly. Life goes on. We shouldn't be playing this game of competing on how hard we can lick boots.
- otteromkram 2y ago
  LinkedIn has an agenda to push, for sure. Screw that website. As for the, "if you're clocked in, you should be working," that would mean in-office employees are working 100% of the time they're clocked in. Have them prove that this is the case. Then look at productivity during the pandemic vs now and let then explain how WFH hampered those numbers. Just a ridiculous mindset by boomers who should have retired a decade ago.

TylerE 2y ago

Pretty much me at this point. I've had the same remote job for 9 years, and while I could work an office job at the time I was hired (I was 31 then), now at 40 and with a number of my chronic conditions rather a bit less background than they used to be. Not to mention that pretty much everything I have is either respitory, or one of the major comorbidities for COVID, which is still very much in circulation. To give one example... about 2 years ago I had to spend about 10 months on near-total bed rest to get a healing-resistant foot ulcer to finally heal. I was able to work from bed for almost all of that. If I'd been working an office job it basically would have been a choice - keep my job, or keep my foot.

paulryanrogers 2y ago
Would FMLA or ADA have helped? I believe companies would have to justify denying you reasonable accommodations.
- TylerE 2y ago
  FMLA no because it's unpaid leave. I actually was just having to navigate that/short term disability as I'm coming off missing about 3.5 weeks from an extended period of extreme unpleasantness that ended in me getting my gallbladder 86'ed last week. ADA potentially but a lot of my stuff basically boils down to "being out of the house and active is both physically and mentally draining and more likely to get me sick with some random thing". So the reasonable accommodation is basically remote work (I'm a software dev, which is about as remote-friendly a career as it gets).
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
    FMLA also has a twelve week limit, and for "highly compensated" employees (a lot of software devs in the US would qualify) you can lose the right to return to the same, or equivalent, position as when you left.
- SatvikBeri 2y ago
  FMLA provides unpaid leave, and usually only up to 12 weeks. I'm not sure how well ADA would apply here, but my wife had a lot of trouble using ADA to even get her employer to use video meeting software with captions (she's deaf, and Zoom didn't have captions at the time.) It eventually worked but took something like 6 months.

ricc 2y ago

Not really related to the article but I always tell myself that one of these days, I will dedicate more time working on something that improves the lives of a certain group of people with disabilities. The trigger was a single simple sentence that I read a year or two ago: “Everybody is just temporarily abled.”

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dogman144 2y ago

Civically we allegedly care about these topics, and note their solutions via remote work - disabled accommodations: this article, and anecdotes from people we know in this situation - finding some method for a dramatic enough state change in environmental conditions as to back up from disconcerting climate change barriers we’re pushing into: I can’t recall the specifics but within a week of COVID lockdowns and no commutes, carbon and pollution in atmosphere plummets - preventing sexism, ageism, and other forms harassment at work: can’t sexually harass someone quite as easily in a fully auditable zoom/slack environment vs in office. - accommodating parents and their child raising needs with policies that don’t come out of 1950: every working parent I know with remote jobs experience significant flexibility here. - affordable housing space: office space conversions are starting. The longer the debate goes on about hybrid/wfh and the above tangible proven benefits vs RTO for “The Collaboration” and “My Socialization Needs,” the more I speculate our society doesn’t actually care about the above topics, at all. Or, if we do care, this should be called out over and over and over. Bc it’s not getting discussed this way.

squigz 2y ago
It's not (often) workers calling for RTO. It's not hard to imagine why.
- dogman144 2y ago
  I see a lot of workers in HN taking that position, or at least some very persistent sock puppet corporate accounts hah.
  - squigz 2y ago
    I tend to see a lot of managers calling for it. I see some workers calling for hybrid (which is perfectly reasonable) but not full RTO. Just my impressions though.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      I doubt you'd see many workers calling for in the office every day, no exceptions for in-office workers, which was mostly the norm (outside of travel and customer visits) for many professionals in, say, the 80s. However, there is a subset today that would like to see co-workers with a regular office presence.

rqtwteye 2y ago

That's very good. All the DEI brochures I have seen portrayed young good looking people of different colors. I hope we will get more diversity and inclusion for disabled people.

mewpmewp2 2y ago
Yeah, exactly. And all of them smiling, laughing, being happy. It's very unrelatable. I would like to see depressed, stressed and anxious people as well. People with crooked teeth and other normal things. I don't understand how a bunch of happy, young attractive people is a diverse group at all.
- briffid 2y ago
  Depressed, stressed, anxious - these are temporary or treatable conditions. The diversity is for innate and permanent traits.
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    > these are temporary or treatable conditions Are they always?

cmgriffing 2y ago

I really wonder if some organization like the ACLU could bring cases against "Return to Work" initiatives as being discriminatory?

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> wonder if some organization like the ACLU could bring cases against "Return to Work" initiatives as being discriminatory? Most people can't WFH. If the courts actually sided with that, the popular backlash would likely be so severe as to overcorrect.

deadbabe 2y ago

I’ve always liked that being disabled in America isn’t necessarily the death sentence it is in other countries that have no accommodation for disabled people.

jlund-molfese 2y ago
It's not perfect, but gliding around in a few hundred year old American city is way more dignified than somewhere like Paris. It's not just the generously-sized sidewalks and curb cuts, but also knowing that you can go into almost any McDonald's or Starbucks and expect a toilet you can use (Parisian Sanisettes are great, but they aren't everywhere).

faeriechangling 2y ago

Employers systemically illegally discriminated against employees by falsely alleging that accommodating them with work from home was an undue hardship, and would just point at other employers not doing it to demonstrate this. COVID forced WFH for business reasons and thus employers are no longer as easily able to illegally discriminate against their disabled employees since it's patently obvious that the accommodation is possible and it doesn't present some existential threat to a business to provide it. It's also that employers are simply more geared up to allow work from home and it's less of an actual burden in time and money.

Aurornis 2y ago
> Employers systemically illegally discriminated against employees by falsely alleging that accommodating them with work from home If someone has a legally recognized disability that can be reasonably accommodated by working from home, that's one thing. But there's nothing illegal nor discriminatory about companies having their workforce be in the office.
- Plasmoid 2y ago
  > But there's nothing illegal nor discriminatory about companies having their workforce be in the office. Basically, this is the disparate impact argument. You could make a similar argument about having the office only be accessible by climbing a flight of stairs.
elevatedastalt 2y ago
COVID acted like a coordinated forcing function. So it's unfair to claim that things would have been just as easy to move to WFH before COVID. Even the FAANGs of the world had to do a LOT of work to make smooth WFH happen, from working on optimizing capacity for teleconferencing software to actually making their corp networks work smoothly remotely at scale.
BenFranklin100 2y ago
I think that’s a harsh take. Your last sentence is where the balance of the truth lies: COVID was a watershed event that ushered in new technologies and practices that have made WFH more viable and generally acceptable.

throwaway14356 2y ago

it makes me wonder if we should, in stead of retire have a second round of organized education around 45-55 to prepare for a job that doesn't involve physical acrobatics that one can do from home. With laws to accommodate the process. You could for example tap into the pension for the duration of the training.

5555624 2y ago

I'm one of them. Even when still in the hospital and rehab center -- Lost my lower leg to necrotizing fasciitis and sepsis -- I was able to keep working. (And I wanted to do something.) I thought I'd be going back to the office at some point; but, my supervisor and EEO office decided I'd work from home. when I got home from the hospital and rehab, there was a letter authorizing full-time telework. I keep arguing I don't need to take our annual Workplace Violence Prevention training; but, I have to go online and take it every year. (I just took it a week ago.)

titanomachy 2y ago

This is great news. Allowing people access to high-quality jobs they were previously shut out of is objectively awesome. I’m bored by the comment flamewars here every time this topic comes up, though. I get it, some people love remote work and some people don’t. Another expression of the wonderful diversity of humanity. I just did a job search and I’m happy to report that there are still many options for either in-office or fully remote teams. Pick one that suits you and stop getting your blood pressure up over this, seriously.

tempaccount420 2y ago
> Pick one that suits you and stop getting your blood pressure up over this, seriously. How can you not care when companies choosing to go fully remote means you have less options to find in-office jobs?
- titanomachy 2y ago
  I’m excited that there’s so many different options! Right now I find it beneficial to physically colocate with my team. Maybe later in life I will want to earn a living while traveling, or living somewhere rural and close to nature, and if that happens I’ll be grateful for a thriving culture of remote companies. Also I have friends who have great lives built around remote work and I wouldn’t wish for them to lose that!
- shkkmo 2y ago
  > How can you not care when companies choosing to go fully remote means you have less options to find in-office jobs? The world is not designed to be optimized for you, nor should it be. I think it is the height of selfishness to push for a world only suited to your preferences with no concern for those with other preferences or needs.

DoreenMichele 2y ago

The internet is generally a huge boon for many people with disabilities. If you write code, blog, etc. please do what you can to be compliant with online accommodation. A handicapped person who can use your widget -- say, a blind person -- will be thrilled and loyal. If they can't and are forced to try to go somewhere in person or something because the online option doesn't work, this may be a huge hardship and may outright cut them out of being able to do certain things at all.

one_buggy_boi 2y ago

Happy to see this. The push to RTO seems to just be a front for legal constructive dismissal of expensive employees. These jobs are immediately being backfilled by remote employees on the otherside of the world. The FTE to third-party ratio is growing exponentially, it's becoming way more common to see things like a 1:5+ fte to 3p ratio.

egberts1 2y ago

Something for those who are disabled and collect Social Security Disability (aka green check) or Social Security Income (gold check) and is pretty much mostly young and pre-retirement-age disabled folks: if your income goes over half of what you take in from Social Security, your eligibility will be "threaten" and re-evaluation WILL occur, often with reducing benefits until you earn twice what SSA gives you. So, if the job doesn't pan out, you are going to be in a rather severe financial bind for quite a awhile until those re-applied benefit(s) restarts for you. Hence, many disabled are looking for work that do not pay more than $800-1200/month (USD) ... just to avoid their re-evaluation trigger.

ksaun 2y ago
I don't know about SSI, but this isn't accurate for SSDI. For SSDI, if your earned income is more than $1110 in a month (for 2024), then you consume one of your 9 trial work months. That $1110 threshold is regardless of your SSDI payment amount and it is adjusted annually. The trial work months are to allow disabled persons to attempt to return to the workforce without risking losing their social security benefits if it proves unsustainable for them. (The specifics are a little more complicated than what I've described.)
- mminer237 2y ago
  Even after using up your trial months, there's not a penalty unless you go over $2,590, IIRC
- egberts1 2y ago
  Of course, the halfway amount is precisely pegged to your current level of SSA benefits.
navjack27 2y ago
SSI = Supplemental Security Income
- hansvm 2y ago
  I think that's the point. Supplementing up to a given minimum has counterintuitive incentives, causing the program to pay more in aggregate than if it had looser caps (and linear scaling) and let more people work and earn slightly higher incomes by reaping the benefits of the program.

OJFord 2y ago

It's only inertia that makes 'remote' not default in this technological age. Of course some prefer the office (some of whom from their own inertia), some jobs genuinely need to be or benefit from being done in a shared office space, but for the absolute vast majority of roles the office was always about needing to pass paper documents around, or needing expensive and fixed equipment that is a telephone line or computer.

dangabled 2y ago

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