[k2052]

This is a tip for everyone struggling to find someone to hire; look in a different pool of candidates and be willing to accommodate them. For example, you can find a lot of very skilled developers that are disabled.

I know a lot of people that have been coding professionally for 10+ years, have popularish open source projects, been lead devs at startups etc; yet feel stuck in their current jobs or even struggle to get hired. They would instantly job jump to something better or would love to switch from contract work to something with good health insurance/benefits. You just have to be a company willing to accommodate them. And accommodating their needs requires far less investment than paying FAANG level salaries to attract the same Sr engineers everyone else is competing for.

You can find engineers.

[randrews]

How exactly do you do that? I work for a company also struggling to find good senior developers and since the team is 100% remote, it's not like we'd have any idea if they were disabled or not...

[yurishimo]

First, I would post a detailed list of your benefits package. This package should include 100% fully paid for health insurance that requires zero additional money from the employee except for perhaps prescription co-pays (not to exceed $20/ea or something).

You should also have a generous time off package and generous/unlimited sick days allowance. In Europe, this is already the norm. If I'm sick for 2 weeks in bed, I still would get paid. Obviously I need a doctor's note after a 2 or 3 days, but that shouldn't be an issue if they really are that ill.

Finally, really take a hard look at your expectations for when work will be completed. If you have a team of 10 devs and 2 of them really only work on average 10 months a year due to their disability, can you justify that to management and still meet your deadlines? Preferably, you work in a field where the deadlines are all made up and you can build in generous buffers.

This is true in industries like gamedev already. The game is sometimes done months in advance of the launch (or should be, ideally) and then marketing takes over while the team transitions to writing DLC or working on the next project.

It's laudable that you'd want to take on hiring people with disabilities but you must be realistic with what you are getting yourself into, especially if those disabilities are chronic in nature and require frequent visits to a doctor.

In return for providing all of these benefits, you will gain some of the most loyal, hardworking, and compassionate team members and all around great human beings. I have friends with such disabilities and it's not a secret who the good companies are to work for. By providing excellent benefits like these, you'll also attract a lot of other great talent and perhaps make new business partnerships because of the network influence of your engineering team. It's well worth it, in my opinion.

[BadCookie]

Some ideas ...

- Do not put requirements into the job description if they aren't true requirements. For example, "ability to lift 25 pounds" is one that I see a lot, along with various other physical abilities that I don't think devs working from home actually need regularly.

- Offer extra paid (or unpaid!) time off, a 4-day work week, or other types of schedule flexibility.

- Minimize the required travel or indicate flexibility in this area for disabled applicants. (In-person meetups and adventures sound fun and totally reasonable for most able-bodied people who can travel alone, but for a wheelchair user who needs a personal care aide, your quarterly off-site to go skiing at Tahoe is, well, not a great fit.)

I'm answering mainly from the perspective of a physically disabled person with mobility issues. I'm sure people with other sorts of disabilities would come up with a very different list.

[kayodelycaon]

More ideas...

- On-call. Some people require a regular schedule with a limit of 40 hours per week.

- Allergies. Dog-friendly is not friendly to people allergic to dogs. And yes, your "hypoallergenic" dog will still give me an asthma attack.

- Dietary restrictions. Makes anything involving food the opposite of fun. (I'm allergic to milk proteins and cross-contamination can make me very sick.)