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by jondubois
3666 days ago
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Yes, it must take a massive amount of internal strength and drive to be able to become a good software engineer while blind. They deserve the highest respect. Not only do they have to be good at programming, but they have to be excellent salesmen too (in order to convince potential employers). Interview processes are quite cold/inhuman, but if you're blind, you really need to create a 'human connection' with your prospective employer in order to offset the 'perceived risk' that your disability brings. If a blind person is competing with other fully-able applicants, it's easy for the employer to subconsciously fallback to a 'safe option' (it's a natural human instinct to avoid unknown risks) - That's why the 'frantic' follow-up communications are so important for a blind person - It's to make sure that the employer doesn't fall back to making 'subconscious' decisions. |
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Unconscious bias often limits your potential opportunities. I remember when I was looking for a job change one of the interviews I had was with a subsidiary of SAIC in India, the telephonic technical interview went very well and they invited me for in-person round. I did have mentioned visual impairment on the resume in the beginning but guess they didn't understand it or likely never bother to read resumes carefully.
When I reached there the HR got confused–they didn’t know what to do – so they asked me to give a written aptitude test (this was specifically mentioned not to happen as I’d already qualified the technical round). Good that I went with my brother who assisted me as scribe and then another technical interview happened with a team lead which also went well. They informed me that their dept. head would take a decision and get back to me.
If you're wondering whether they got back no that line of response meant that they didn’t expect person like me and weren’t interested.