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41 points amathew | 10 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom

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/

1. scarface_74 ◴[] No.44566668[source]
You mentioned you had CP and you walk with a cane. But didn’t mention if it affects your speech or your hands.

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.

replies(1): >>44568042 #
2. xena ◴[] No.44568042[source]
Please do not abbreviate Cerebral Palsy.
replies(1): >>44568064 #
3. scarface_74 ◴[] No.44568064[source]
Am I really being chastised for abbreviating something I’ve been dealing with personally for 51 years?

Please don’t tell me you are one of the “allies” making sure we engage in “right speak”.

replies(4): >>44568180 #>>44568561 #>>44569712 #>>44569870 #
4. DeepSeaTortoise ◴[] No.44568180{3}[source]
IMO it's a joke. Like Rossmann refusing to call his wiki the "Consumer Protection Wiki".
5. ◴[] No.44568561{3}[source]
6. muzani ◴[] No.44569712{3}[source]
unfortunately the abbreviation is shared with many others

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cp

replies(1): >>44570027 #
7. Moomoomoo309 ◴[] No.44569870{3}[source]
Yes, because "cp" is code for "child porn".
replies(2): >>44570017 #>>44587404 #
8. scarface_74 ◴[] No.44570017{4}[source]
Anyone can understand what CP is in context.

Should UCP (https://ucp.org/) change its name?

So this is the same performative “allyship” BS that I found disgusting when I worked at BigTech (I am very much a minority, FWIW).

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cp

And Easter Seal - an organization to help the disabled (including me when I was a child), uses the abbreviation “CP”

https://cpfamilynetwork.org/resources/resources-guide/easter...

9. scarface_74 ◴[] No.44570027{4}[source]
I’m sure in context people know I wasn’t talking about cheese pizza…

And the abbreviation is used by Easter Seal - the very organization that helps people with disabilities - including me when I was a child in the 80s.

https://cpfamilynetwork.org/resources/resources-guide/easter...

10. segmondy ◴[] No.44587404{4}[source]
you are weird, when I see cp the first thing I think of is the copy command.