Hey lovelies  

We'd like to ask you all for your thoughts, suggestions, and ideas to help us resolve an ongoing issue.

The issue

At a high-level, we are a neurodivergent (AuDHD) spoonie with a mixture of health issues that are preventing us from being able to get or do a "typical" job and earn an income.

By "typical" job, we mean one where the company and role just aren't well-suited to many folks who are disabled (including being neurodivergent), have support needs, and/or have other health issues.

Most "typical" jobs broadly:

  • Have fixed hours (start/finish times and total working hours required).
  • Require a minimum fixed amount of time in a physical office.
  • Require a lot of interaction with other people (including colleagues).

... and so on, so you can probably understand how difficult it is for us to find any suitable paid employment that we can do 😅

This is made harder by the fact that:

  • We only know how to search for "typical" jobs.
  • There is zero support within the UK for finding suitable employment outside of "typical" jobs.
  • The welfare system within the UK is fundamentally (and intentionally) broken

The request

We have zero idea where to even start, so we are genuinely asking for your input and recommendations here.

We have decent reading comprehension, writing ability, and neurospicy pattern recognition, but we also have an inconsistent level of executive function and energy (physical and mental), so we can't do a job where we have to clock in and out at set times, even on a part-time basis.

Even whilst writing this post, we're already out of spoons and on to knives today, meaning that we're pushing through to ask for help.

Any suggestions will be appreciated, and we'll add additional details to the post based on any questions or thoughts from others 🥺🫶

Thank you in advance for your thoughts, as well as your empathy, understanding, and kindness  

#AskFedi #GenuinelyAsking #GetFediHired #neurodivergent #neurospicy #AuDHD #ActuallyAutistic #ADHD #spoonie #disability #disabled #LateStageCapitalismSucks

Edit 2025-11-27:

Thank you for replies so far. There has been some confusion, which may be due to poor explanation on our part, so we wish to add some further details to clarify some points.

The issue is a health, disabilities, and support needs one, rather than not being able to find a job that meets our skillset.

We're not asking directly for a specific "typical" job, as we cannot work those kinds of jobs.

We're basically asking for advice on where to start in light of all the various issues we have that are preventing us being able to do any form of "typical" job.

There is a slim chance we could recover enough to do some form of "typical" job, but that could take another 6+ months, a year, or longer. And even if we did recover, any "typical" job would burn us out again within a year, possibly worse than now.

We've not listed specific skills, as we're trying to get help on the first steps, rather than which jobs to look for. That said, we're going to clarify outright that we cannot program at all, we've never been able to learn any computer languages, and we lack the underlying talent. Again though, the issue isn't our skills (or lack thereof): it's a fundamental query about how to go about trying to earn income when you're unable to do any kind of "typical" job.

@SleepyCatten did you consider software development, system administration, that type of job?

@menelion Very much so many times, but we sadly never found a way into it and -- as much as it hurts us to admit it -- we don't have the underlying talent or knack for it.

We locked ourselves out of any STEM jobs by decisions we made in 2000 when picking A-levels, where we were gently "encouraged" not to take Mathematics at A-level by our secondary school and sixth form, where we'd only achieved an A grade (modern day grade 7) at GCSE level.

We have previously done administration jobs (not system ones), but the jobs always ultimately burnt us out due to corporate culture, management, work hours, etc.

We're thankful though for your thoughts, just to clarify 🫶🩷

@SleepyCatten I was asking because well, if say I hired you, I wouldn't ask for fixed hours or any BS like that, just rough deadlines had to be met and some rare meetings or, if not suitable, detailed emails/chats in Slack. that would be it. But if it's not appealing, don't go for it, my highest recommendation, just don't. You have to love it, otherwise it's only pain.
@SleepyCatten well, what do yall do? Yall programm or do electrical work? Do you have a trade or skill set (b/c that will help determine what jobs you could do)

@spycrab That's a complicated question to answer. We've never had a single thing we "do". We've worked in various sectors over the last 2 decades (banking; education; financial services admin; charity admin), but all our jobs have been pretty low-tier.

In answer to your other questions, no to all of them.

The issue for us isn't that we don't know our skillset though: it's that we have no idea of any way to bring in income any more, where our health has slowly and permanently worsened over time.

@SleepyCatten I don’t have any ideas, just boosting for visibility. The annoying thing is that these requirements aren’t hard to meet if employers would give people a chance

@SleepyCatten is working for yourself an option? That works well for me, partly because I can be very flexible around times, work from home, and rarely have to interact with anyone outside my family. The downside is that income isn't steady or always predictable.

Working as an editor or proofreader is well suited to freelance work, and I think autistic people are well suited to it (not sure if it would suit your AuDHD brain or not).

@rpbook It may end up being the only option left for us eventually. Unless there's a market for making accurate subs for content creators or something, we're not sure what we'd do though.

We've done work requiring high attention to detail (including quality checking of certain reports), but our focus is at best maybe 30-50% of what it was even a few years ago sadly.

@SleepyCatten

If you're in the UK, have you considered the civil service, including devolved sectors if you're in Scotland or Wales?

What you get depends strongly on the specific organisation, but my CS organisation employs a lot of neurodivergent comrades and has policies that could work?
- flexible start/finish hours
- flexing of hours across weeks
- open to part-time working
- very limited office working requirements
- always looking for people with general skills.

@thecasualcritic We're a trans+ fem / woman in England. The Civil Service is very much not a place where we'd be welcome, ever 😔

@SleepyCatten
I'm sorry you feel that way. I cannot know what your experiences have been, so I won't argue the point. All I can say is that in my particular employer, we have several open trans and non-binary colleagues, supported by a strong union and equalities network presence.

But not every CS employer is like that, and I completely understand you don't want to take the risk of entering a potentially hostile or unwelcoming space.

I wish you the best of luck with your quest for work :)

@thecasualcritic We appreciate the sentiment and wish you all the best 🩷🫶

@SleepyCatten gig/project based work, i.e. knowledge work - that which you don't have to punch a clock. You still have to track and account for your time, but you have more control of when, where, how, etc. Another thought is training AI. From what I've heard, that's pretty flexible.

Finding work that is consistent with one's strengths/gifts/talents is important. It's not easy, but it's important. Finding work, any work, very often involves a broad network of others watching for good matchups on your behalf. Leverage that as much as possibe.