I’m Ok and Doing Well

In my last post a couple of years ago I was struggling with my eye pain and didn’t post again. Well I’m OK and actually a few weeks later things got better and I’ve been stable ever since. I’m using 300% magnification and that is working great for me. So I think of those 2/3 months, back in 2014, as a hiccup. Yet again I have my osteopath to thank for helping me improve my neck mobility which in turn has reduced my chronic pain to bearable levels where I can be productive at work.

I’ve been promoted since my last post to Software Architect and I  really am happy in my work and my life. The truth is that moving to screen magnification from a screenreader has made my life easier and allowed me to go further. It is easier to do my job, of that I have no doubt but I believe using a screenreader was critical to me reaching this level in my career.

The Screenreader Made Me the Man I Am Today

Yes using a screenreader is hard, yes there are limitations to what you can do but there are also positive side effects as a result.

I worked harder at being technically superior to my colleagues to compensate my weaknesses. I listened to technical podcasts and listened to technical books. Reading database scripts was easier than reading the entire code of applications so I decided to become a database expert. I listened to deeply technical books about the inner workings of databases, books on database performance and the SQL language. The funny thing was that I really didn’t have an opportunity to put all that knowledge to work in my small team but I carried on regardless.

After reaching a good level with databases I studied a wide range of other technical areas and never gave up. In the end I had totally outmatched the technical skills of my colleagues and was almost on par with them when it came to speed of work output. However due to my skills I was able to produce results that they were never capable of because they simply didn’t know the technologies like I did. In my current job there has been a huge need for database skills and it was those skills that gave me my first good publicity in the software development department.

Now that I am using a screen magnifier I haven’t stopped dedicating lots of time to learning and study and my technical knowledge and skills have continued to grow. Now three years after starting my current job I have moved from developer to technical lead to software architect and I put that technical success down to the dedication that using a screenreader forced into me. I just don’t think I would have had the stamina and will power if I was a normal sighted guy.

If I was still using a screenreader today I doubt I would be architect but I am pretty sure I would still be the most kick-ass database expert in the company and have had a vital role. The great thing about working at a large company is that there are more opportunities for specialists. I would have doubled down on databases and made sure that when people needed help on a difficult database problem they would reach out to me without even thinking.

New Blog

When I used a screenreader my visual impairment formed an integral part of my life and my daily thinking. Now my eyes have improved and I can use screen magnification and it is not the focus it once was. I will write new posts in the future when I start work, eventually, on my HTML diagrams project which I still really want to do. In fact if anyone out there wants to help, or may be contribute as part of a university project or something it will probably give me the boot up the arse that I need. Get in touch!

I have a new blog where I am writing about technology and teams, check it out at http://jack-vanlightly.com.

I have written a post about my set up using a screen magnifier and special sun glasses, check it out at http://jack-vanlightly.com/blog/2016/7/2/5-tricks-for-people-who-are-hyper-sensitive-to-computer-screens

Take care everyone!

Hanging on by a thread

I have had to put my Visio diagram project on hold as I have unfortunately had a flare up with my eye pain. I was working on it here and there after work until about 5-6 weeks ago. 6 Months ago my eye pain eased up a bit and it started to improve slowly and I was really hopeful that I was on the way to a miraculous recovery. However the improvement plateaued from about the beginning of February and then in late March it suddenly deteriorated. I tried to carry on working but after a couple of days I was forced to go on sick leave. After three weeks my doctor told me she wouldn’t sign me off any longer as no eye pain or headache lasted longer than 3 weeks in her opinion. I tried to explain that mine had lasted 8 years and that chronic pain that lasts years is real but she wouldn’t listen. I changed doctors and my new one, while a much better listener, told me that even though he believed I was telling the truth, the computer system would not allow him to extend my time off. It was logged as a headache as that was the only thing they could enter it as seeing as I have no diagnosis. Apparently there is a built in limit of 3 weeks for headaches in the Spanish health system.  So I have been forced back to work.

I thought I was going to last about an hour before the pain got to me but I have managed to struggle through each day for the last two weeks. The pain is so high that I can’t think straight and so my attempts to switch back to a screenreader have failed. I need a really clear head to keep track of the code I write when I code with a screenreader and in my current state I’m just not up to it. But my boss got me a massive new screen and I have put the magnifier up to 400% and with that I am just making it through each day.

So until my eyes settle down again which will be weeks or months based on previous flare ups, my Visio project is on hold. It is not dead though, and over the previous few weeks although I haven’t been coding I have been thinking about how I am going create the ability for blind people to draw diagrams.

So wish me luck, I’m down but I’m not out.

Visio diagram to HTML project

I’ve been in my new job just over four months and it is going really well. A few weeks ago I got promoted to technical leader of a small team of programmers which was a big surprise and I’m loving the new role. I’ve been working some really long hours the last few weeks as I have inherited a large project that is coming to an end and the deadline is near. So I got a surprise when a lady from Canada emailed me about my post about diagrams and the challenges of dealing with them at work. She is a project manager and so diagrams are part of the corporate world in which she works.
My solution in my last job was the create HTML diagrams specifically structured for my screenreader. I would get some help of a colleague to explain the diagram and then I would write the HTML by hand. Then because writing HTML is tedious I designed a short hand which was quick to write and wrote some software to generate HTML from that. This was OK for me but for most non technical people it isn’t a great solution. I got good feedback on the HTML diagram itself though, it is just the method of creating it that needs some work. Luckily, I have worked on two projects in my last job where I had to build software to read and write Microsoft Excel and Word files. It isn’t too difficult and I wondered if I could build software to read Visio diagram files. It turns out that it isn’t that hard. And so a project is born.
I am now working on a website where you can create an account, upload Visio diagram files and use your screenreader to navigate the diagrams using headings and links. Boxes will be headings, lines will be links, box text will be paragraphs and any type of grouping of boxes will be described too.
Later versions might read other diagram file formats and even be able to auto-generate diagram files for you. That last one is a lot more complex however so will be a possible feature farther ahead.
So far I have only been researching the file format and have not written any code yet but I hope to start very soon. My job is very demanding on my time plus I have a young family so time is short.
If this site would be useful to anyone then please do contact me and may be you could help me with things like testing, designing better HTML structures, provide real-world example diagrams, or even give this project a name. As always you can contact me as thebanqui@gmail.com

A big thank you to my osteopath, Katy McConkey

As I said in my last post my eye pain is easing after 7 long years and in this post I want to thank the person who is behind this miraculous recovery. My osteopath is Katy McConkey who has her own practice called Osteopatia del Mar here in Barcelona. I have seen many osteopaths in my search for a cure for both my eye pain and my neck pain and none has made any impact but her. I have gone the alternative therapy route many times, often in desperation at the lack of understanding and lack of interest I have received from the nation health systems of either the UK or Spain. I would say that I am now a connoisseur of treatment methods such as chiropractory, shiatsu, acupuncture, acupressure, nutrition and osteopathy. I have always found osteopathy to be the most effective for my neck though nothing ever touched my eye pain.
I want to talk a little about my treatments but I need to point out I am a computer programmer and not a trained osteopath myself so everything I say is just my perception of how things went.
Katy’s methods were very different to other osteopaths. I had gotten used to the usual methods of spinal manipulations, cranial massage and deep muscle massage. But I found myself in a new world with Katy and received treatments I had never had before. From the first visit and all vists since then she has taken a much more systemic approach, looking at the body as a complex system, interconnected. When she hasn’t been able to relieve tension in one part of my body she starts working on another part which she says is linked. Like occasions that I have had tightness in my back that she couldn’t touch then she would work on my chest, shoulders and relieve it from there.
She designed a six treatment series for me where we concentrated on neck and upper body flexibility and stretching out my quite rigid fascial tissues of my neck, arms and chest. All my previous osteopaths were strong men who could manipulate any part of my spine with ease and focused heavily on that. However Katy, with me at least, focused more on tissue quality, flexibility and looked my localised pain from a more systemic view point. She also set me stretching exercises as homework which I religiously followed. In the first 4 weeks I was spending about 2-3 hours doing stretching every day. I think this played a large role as Katy knew which stretches were right for each period of the treatment and I did it all and then some.
In total I have had seven treatments and am now only seeing her every 4-6 weeks. Everyday my eye pain eases a little more. Two weeks ago I was taking a painkiller every evening after work because 10 hours of eye focusing was hurting. This week I am not taking painkillers after work and I am even typing out this blog post without my screenreader. I still have the magnifier at 300% with colours inverted but I have reduced the magnification at work to 250%. Compare that to 3 months ago, back then I would have had more pain after 60 seconds of eye focusing than 10 hours now.
So thank you Katy. You have changed my life. If you need a great osteopath and you are passing through Barcelona then please check her website for details.

 

Have I found the cure for my eye pain at last?

I haven’t posted for 10 weeks and a lot has happened. In the weeks after my fiasco with the false start where I last 5 hours in the job I was quite depressed and even fatalistic about my future. My eye pain levels were high and the trend was towards having ever more pain hyper sensitivity to light and eye focusing. I kept thinking that things would deteriorate until I would have to give up all notions of a career.
Then two things happened. First I got a job, this time one that was compatible with my disability. It is a good job working as a programmer for a transport company. Then after about 2 weeks in the job my eye pain started to ease. In the second week I realised I had been looking at my screen for about 3 hours each day. Usually I can manage about 5 minutes over a day before the pain gets too much. In the third week I was looking at the screen for most of the day and by the fourth week, this week, I have not used my screenreader once at work. It really is incredible. I wear sunglasses and have the Windows magnifier on at 300% with colours inverted. I am using a mouse for the first time in years.
At first I didn’t tell anyone, not even my wife as I was afraid that if I told anyone about it that it would somehow be taken away from me again. But three weeks into this recovery I am feeling more confident and beginning to think that this might be permanent. There is no way I could have looked at the screen for more than a couple of minutes in a row, with sunglasses and magnifier and all, just 4 weeks ago. Each week it is a little less painful. I still get pain but it is tolerable and I make sure I stop doing screen work when I finish work. I am writing this post using my screenreader as my eyes are feeling sore and tired from the day’s work. But tomorrow they will be rested and ready for another day’s screen work.
This beginning of a recovery pretty much confirms the cause of my eye troubles. The pain started 7 years ago, 3 months after a neck injury. The neck injury never healed and I have had neck pain and stiffness ever since. I have always thought they were connected but my doctors were never interested in the connection. Three months ago I decided to see another osteopath to help ease my neck pain. I had seen osteopaths before but without significant improvement. This time however the osteopath treated me very differently and focused on improving my neck mobility which was quite restricted in movement. I saw Katy every two weeks and did all my stretching homework she gave me. I have been spending every evening stretching for about 2-3 hours. Although much of the neck pain persists it had eased and my neck mobility is better than your average person now. After a few minutes of stretching I can almost touch my ears to my shoulder. Now just as the pain appeared after my neck injury, my eye pain is slowly easing now that I have made significant progress with my neck.
I am planning a break from my blog while I am in this weird but wonderful period. My wife says it is like a cloud has lifted and that she sees the old me before the pain got really bad. I desperately hope this recovery holds and continues to improve. I’ll update the blog with news soon.
I also have a project that started over a year ago which I put aside when the pain got really bad. It is a website for hosting screenreader tutorials and I have a bunch of tutorials that I have written. It needs some work but I would like to start working on that again sometime in the future. So more news on my recovery, my job and my project soon.
Take care.

Triumphs and failures

It has been a few weeks since my last post and a lot has happened. Things have been quite hard and I am flipping between being on tops of things and feeling like I am sinking.

The good news is that I received a job offer. I accepted it but unfortunately there was miscommunication at the interview stage and it turns out the company didn’t understand how restrictive my disability was. On my first day it was obvious after only a few hours that I couldn’t do the job I was hired for. The job was helping develop some complicated industrial automation software. I could do the programming work but part of the day to day work was operating the software in order to test the new code. The software was totally inaccessible so I couldn’t perform testing which is a critical part of the job. So I lasted 4 and a half hours which officially my shortest job.

Although this experience was a bit humiliating and frustrating it has showed me that jobs are out there and although this one didn’t work out there will be another one out there for me in the near future. I have also learned the lesson that not everyone understands the capabilities of a screenreader. I don’t think I explained how I work in enough detail and it happened that the interviewers made some assumptions without me realising. I guess I also felt that hammering in that I can’t do certain things would just put them off so I didn’t explain in enough detail exactly what kind of things would not be possible. I wanted to focus on what I could do and what my strengths are, not my weaknesses but this experience has taught me that the interviewer needs the full story, both the good and the bad. I definitely don’t want to go through a false start like this again.

But this has been hard for me to deal with the last few weeks, in fact this experience was today and I already have gotten over the shock and surprise. What has been getting me down the last few weeks and what the cause of my brief hiatus is my pain level. Over the last 3 months I have gone through another deterioration. So far I have experienced about 4 major pain level shifts. I am in a plateau most of the time then every few months I experience an escalation and enter another plateau at this new pain level. I haven’t been wanting to think about it but I have been forced to recognise that my condition seems to be progressive, I seem to on a downward trajectory and this is really starting to worry me. The pain is quite bad all the time now and is extremely sensitive to the trigger action, focusing my eyes, and I wonder how long till the next deterioration. Coupled with extra pain is an accompanying deterioration in my logic thinking powers. Each time the pain worsens my head gets a little more foggy. This was having an impact on my performance in my last job, being finally honest with myself. So now I don’t know that I am even capable of being a programmer. May be I can still do it now but will I still have enough logic thinking left to be a programmer in 2 years time? I don’t know and this has been making me pretty depressed. So I am flipping between bouts of depression and feelings of optimism.

A few weeks ago I was at a king of breaking point and I declared that I was done with computers for a while and vowed not to touch it. I needed a rest from my worries about job, computer use and thoughts of the future. So I put my laptop away and didn’t touch it for weeks. I have to say that I didn’t miss it in all that time. I have been spending all my evenings exercising, stretching and listening to books. I have totally put work, the future and my disability out of my head and focused on life itself, spending time with my wife and kids, getting my body healthy again after putting it through so much stress. I have picked up my computer now to write this post but then I think I might take another week without using the computer and spend a little more time getting my head straight. The pain has not gotten any better and I am no closer to working out what my future is but I have lost the sense of sinking and the feeling of deep anxiety.

I still can hardly believe that I started a new job today and I am already unemployed again. I am sure I will find the right job though, and even if I only have another 2 years of programming in me that at least gives me time to move into a less logically intensive career. Who knows, the doctors might even find out what is wrong with me and cure me.

The main takeaway I have from today is brutal truth during the interview. Not everyone knows what screenreaders are. What tricks interviewers with me is that I look totally normal, I see my surroundings fine and there is no indication that I have a visual impairment. So I need to be more explicit so they realise the extent of my limitations.

Promising interview

Yesterday I got a call from one of the recruiters who interviewed me to say that their client wanted to meet me. That interview was today.

Overall I think the interview went well and at the very least I think I am a strong contender. They have already interviewed a few applicants but haven’t found what they are looking for. I am in the second round of their searching and there are two other applicants being considered. I’ll know in a few days whether I got the job or not, or if there is a second interview to attend.

I do think this role fits me well, it matches my personality and much of my experience is relevant. I think that is half the reason for feeling that the interview went well. The other 50% is that my preparation the night before and on the morning of the interview ended up helping me massively. So I wanted to share the preparation activities as I think it might be useful to someone. None of it is ground breaking or original but I don’t think everyone always does this.

So here goes:

1. I spent a few hours researching the company. That means its history, the market it is in, where that market is heading, how the company fits into the market and where it is positioning itself and who its main competitors are. I also spent a lot of time learning the main key acronyms and terms of that industry.
2. I looked at the technology solutions the company produces; these are the technologies I would be working on if I got the job. I called a couple of contacts in the software industry who I thought might be able to help me understand this technology space a little better, from a high level. Kind of understand the most pressing design concerns, best practices and so on.
3. My wife decided to investigate the key company people based in the office where I was due to have the interview. She was able to find out some super interesting nuggets from LinkedIn. From her research I found that my interviewer had some similar interests to me regarding team process and as soon as she showed me what she had learned I knew I was in a stronger position.
4. My wife looked up on Google a list of interview questions for the role that I was being interviewed for. Then we practised these interview questions over and over again. We critiqued and developed my answers repeatedly until we were happy with the content and tone. In the end we had to stop as my throat was getting sore and we didn’t want me to lose my voice the night before the interview.
5. On the morning of the interview I downloaded and listened to a couple of podcasts that I thought were highly relevant to the position I was going for and listened all the way to their office.

Of the above I would have thought all was pretty obvious except for researching the background on key managers in that office of the company. At that point we only knew the name of one interviewer but knew there would be more than one.

In the end there were two interviewers and both were among the people my wife had researched. I had the information in notes in my pocket and had memorised it all on the trip to their office. This helped me a lot as I was able to tailor my answers to them a bit more. I didn’t exaggerate anything, but I did emphasise some things that I might have left out entirely.

In the end I suspect that the interviewers got many of their interview questions from the same list as I did. Many of my best answers were ones that I had already honed with my wife the night before while others related to things that my phone calls with software developer contacts had covered.

Without this preparation the interview wouldn’t have gone nearly as well and now that I know more about the role I am so happy that I spent an entire day preparing. I really really want this job.

Just got to cross my fingers now and wait.

Finally, I wanted to say how my visual impairment affected things. As I have said before, my visual impairment is not obvious unless I am actually using a computer when you see me. I was so engrossed in the interview and the discussions I almost forgot to disclose my disability. Unfortunately this was right at the end as we were about to stand up and leave the meeting room. I told them about the disability and how I have been working productively with it for a few years now. Their reaction wasn’t positive or negative. They seemed to weigh it up and then we wrapped the interview. I don’t know what that means but I do know that I wish I had disclosed a little earlier. I didn’t want the last words of the interview to be about a disability but about my experience or about the job I was going for. So I have learned that lesson and will try and find an opportune moment to disclose a little earlier next time.

I just hope that this is my last interview, crossing fingers and toes.

Job search update

I have been going through some highs and lows with the job searching but today was definitely a high.  I was contacted by a software consultancy firm about a job vacancy on Friday. It was the HR manager and she found me on LinkedIn. I responded suggesting a telephone call and she replied asking that I attend an interview. I had this interview today and it went better than I expected. I was super nervous and my stomach was tied in knots. I had all these scenarios where the interview would be drawn into a long and prolonged interrogation about my eye issues. I was terrified and I am usually pretty confident in interviews.

In the end the job vacancy is at a client company and the consultancy is just acting as a recruitment agent in this case so the interview was a non technical HR pre interview but regardless it went well. We reached the end of the interview and I realised I hadn’t disclosed my disability so I just came out and said it. To my surprise the HR manager seemed to get excited and asked me about it. It turned out she is visually impaired with a lack of central vision. She was really happy to share stories on accessible technologies! I couldn’t believe it.

Talk about softball first interview.

The good news is that I will now be presented to the client as a job candidate and my visual impairment seems to be a non-issue so far. I have to wait till September for the next stage though as it is the summer and key people are on holiday.

I got home and my wife and I did our regular job search. I emailed an agency regarding one very interesting role and I got a call 5 minutes later asking if I could attend an interview the same day. So I went down to their office and had another pre interview. It went really well and this time I disclosed my disability near the start of the interview. The recruiter was fine with it and was eager to put me forward.

So now I am waiting for interview dates for two jobs. Both jobs look interesting and both are much more suitable for me than my last job, being more pure programming jobs. That means that I should have a smaller amount of variety in my work and can hone my skills with a smaller set of tools and processes.

July and August, I have been told today by both recruiters, is pretty terrible for job hunting though. It gets really hot here and everyone leaves the city for the coast. It is just too hot with too few people working to get very far with job searching. But despite that I have had two interviews, albeit recruiter interviews after two weeks of searching. I have other things in the works, talking to other recruiters by email so I am hoping for more interviews soon. I will try and be better at updating the blog on progress. I have been consumed with job finding activities and self-development. I don’t feel so nervous now that I have had two easy going interviews. I know it will get much tougher when I interview with the end clients but I think I needed these soft ball interviews to help break the ice a little bit. I need to relax a bit and not let my imagination get carried away with interrogation scenarios.

This evening I’ve had a night off the job searching and had a couple of beers but tomorrow I will get back to my job searching, open source project work and self-development. Gotta keep at it every day until I sign that job contract.

Finding a job – The Battle Plan

It has been a few days since I got laid off, I have had some time to relax and clear my head. I am now ready to put together my battle plan and get started on it. Some parts of the plan I have already put in place and others I am just writing now.

The first step was to write a new and up to date CV. I thought long and hard about what kind of job I want and what technologies I want to work with and have written a CV that complements this future direction.

However before I send off my CV to agencies, load it up on job boards etc I need to do two things.

1. I have a little personal project, a little computer program I wrote, that helps me analyse database performance. The existing tools are visual so I wrote one that outputs screenreader friendly HTML. In my line of work owning or contributing to open source projects is a big deal. Open source means that the code is hosted somewhere publically and that other coders can contribute to the code. People who are interested in using the program can download the code, compile it and have their own working copy of the program.
2. Send the CV off to family and friends in the tech industry for feedback.

Once the project is open sourced and the CV is ready I will create accounts in various job boards and upload the CV there.

I will update my profile on LinkedIn and see if there are any groups that I think would be useful to join.

I also have contacts in the tech industry so my CV will go to those people.

There are meet up groups in the tech industry called usergroups. They are usually targeting a single technology or area of technology and have events every few weeks or months. These groups are great for learning more about specific  technologies but more importantly they are a great way of networking. Attending events and talking to other software developers and companies that attend has the potential for finding a job. I will join a few of these usergroups and start attending events.

I will start applying to jobs on job boards. This could land me interviews and also make more job agencies aware of me.

Once I have got all these actions going I will continue to improve my open source project. I have a few ideas of different accessible interfaces that I would like to implement. This will help me by giving me a more powerful tool, it will help me learn new technologies and will also make the project more interesting to other coders and any potential employer that reads the code after seeing the link to the project in my CV. I will also search for other open source projects that look interesting to me and see if I can contribute code to them. This will help me learn further and I can also add to my CV that I am a contributor to a project as well as having my own.

There are also technologies that I have identified that would better suit a screenreader so I will be spending time learning these technologies better so I can improve my chances of gaining a job where these technologies are used. Part of this self development will be listening to software development podcasts. There are a bunch of podcasts I haven’t listened to regarding technologies I think may be important for me. I will not learn the details of how to develop software with these podcasts but I will learn more about the current direction of the technologies, key components and get an idea of the culture around them.

So essentially there are three main threads of action: searching for work, showing off my skills in open source software projects and self development.

Below I summarise my battle plan.

• Open source my database performance tool.
• Write my CV.
• Send off my CV to key contacts for feedback.
• Create accounts on job boards and upload my CV.
• Update my LinkedIn profile
• Send off my CV to key contacts in the tech industry so they might forward it on.
• Start attending technology usergroups
• Apply for jobs on job boards.
• Continue to work on my open source project
• Find another open source project that I can contribute to.
• Spend time on self development.

Finally I would like to talk about prior disclosure of my disability. I am not planning on disclosing my visual impairment before any interviews; I don’t want to be discounted before I even get the chance to sell myself in an interview. One of my strengths is that I am pretty confident and generally do well in interviews. I will disclose my disability during my interviews at the point I feel is most suitable. It is not obvious when meeting me that I have any visual problems so it will be up to me to actively disclose it during the interview. How I do this I don’t know, I think it will depend on the interview and I don’t need to have a specific plan for how I will do this. Whatever seems most appropriate in the interview.

I have already published my software project to an open source host and have a first draft of my CV. I have joined three usergroups and already attended one meeting. The meeting was fun, I learned a little but didn’t find any choice contacts. These events will probably not be my most promising job seeking activity but there is the chance still and I need to cast my net as wide as possible.

Looking at the above I think this battle plan would work for anyone who works or wants to work in software development. For those who have not yet worked in the software industry and who have little personal experience programming then the open source software aspect of the plan will be the most challenging but also the most important. Open source is a big deal in this industry and is a great place to learn. If anyone is looking at this battle plan and thinking it would help them too but are not sure about open source then feel free to email me and I would be happy to help you get on your feet.

I will update the blog soon with progress and any interviews that come along.

Been fired.

My fears have come true, I have been laid off.

It was on the cards so I am not surprised though I am still a bit shocked. I came into work on Friday to find a meeting request in my inbox between HR, the CTO, my line manager and myself for the following Monday. I knew instantly that I was out. I had been expecting this day since the new technology was confirmed but expecting it and then it happening are a bit different I suppose. I tried to contact HR and my line manager to get some information before the Monday meeting but no one was available. I ended up sweating it for the whole weekend and then by then I was grasping at the idea that may be they were going to promote me not fire me. I couldn’t tell my wife as I didn’t know 100% I was definitely getting fired so I tried to forget it and enjoy the weekend as best as I could. It would be the last weekend without stress for my wife and kids before the bad news.

On Monday morning I came into the office and walked into the video conference room and waited. Within a few minutes the HR manager arrived in person and my manager and CTO joined on the VC unit. Then the HR manager started talking and her first words were “unfortunately” so I knew for sure in that instant that I really was being fired, then I heard the words “it has been decided to terminate your contract”. Even though I knew it was coming at this point it was a hard blow.

I don’t want to go into the details but you can be sure that they didn’t say that they were letting me go because of my disability though I do believe that is the case. Whether that is legal or not here in Spain I don’t know and to be honest I don’t have the gumption to fight it. I guess the company was worried so they provided me with a generous severance package which I have agreed to.

The rights and wrongs of it all I don’t fully know or understand at this stage. However the company has gone to great lengths to make sure that I am provided for and with 2 years of the Spanish unemployment benefit available to me I am in no immediate financial straits as I had feared.

I had worked at this company for many years and all I can say that I feel right now is shock. It seems weird and unreal to be typing this and not be at work. I won’t be talking to my work buddies every day and my deadlines are no longer my deadlines. I feel like I am in the twilight zone.

Part of me feels sad at leaving but another part of me feels an excitement for a new stage in my life. I have always embraced change and every time major changes occur I feel a sadness for what I have lost but find that the excitement of starting off something new far outweighs it. Now I am looking at my career anew. To a certain extent I have the power to change the direction of my career if I want to. I think there are areas of information technology that would be more suitable for using a screenreader and so I now have the freedom to go and find a job more suited to me. The next job I start I will start with a screenreader which I think should make a big difference to my job satisfaction. I started my last job without my disability and spent most of the next years just trying to keep up with my old duties and speed. It wasn’t the ideal job for me once I started with a screenreader.

At this stage I am not discounting a career change whether it be major or minor. The critical factors are: being able to perform the job with a screenreader without a large amount of friction and whether the job is challenging and interesting. Probably I will stay in software as it is a major passion of mine but there are many sub specializations and adjacent career paths.

For the next few days I plan on just sitting back and enjoying the summer weather. I will stay at home with the kids and take them out to the park and down to our local café. I will take the dog up into the forest and explore a bit and just let things settle in my head. Once I am ready I will form a battle plan for finding another job. I already have some ideas of what I need to do.

Right now I am in too much shock to really take in the situation. This will be my first experience of looking for work with a visual impairment and it could end up taking a long time. Having work experience and a university degree will be a help but I really don’t know how much difference that will make. I guess I’ll only find out once I start interviewing.

As I type the end of this post it is 9pm, it is 30 degrees with a steady breeze and I can smell the pine of the nearby forest. So I’m going to take a glass of red wine with my wife now and just enjoy a summer’s evening, battle plans will come in a few days.