My advice: Start your own cybersecurity company. No one will hire you for any IT position. So you need to create your own. A niche that isn't being addressed is cybersecurity offerings targeted to small nonprofits. You'd make a killing.
Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?
281–290 of 402 posts
Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think it would be silly to take the job? The second two sentences read like excellent reasons why you should take the job (even if they are just a repeat what I already said in different words). I must have missed something.
I meant silly to use exploits find while performing a pentest for malicious purposes. You get well paid and it's legal.
Then what do you need pen testers for? With an offer like that, any threats to your system will come work for you instead.
The reality is that you don't get paid well if the data is worthless. You only get paid well when the data is worth orders of magnitude more than what you're being offered. If you are inclined to break that law, that's a pretty nice carrot dangling there.
If you are so inclined, why wouldn't you take the job and report the not so crafty exploits to bring in the sweet, sweet paycheque and use the really juicy exploit to also go after the even sweeter data? It's a total win-win situation...
...unless you get caught, but if you are so inclined that's not exactly on your radar.
Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks @dang. 70 Million Jobs CEO Richard Bronson wrote a moving update for HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598978
Ah I'd forgotten. Thanks! I've added it above.
Screwed up thing is the hiring conditions today are almost the opposite of 2020, so it would work great now (lots of entry to mid level jobs open, more comfort with remote than in <2020, etc.)
Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?
#284I know this is a controversial view, but I think employers should not be allowed to run background checks unless important for the role (government work, access to children, etc) and where it is important for the role it should only return the criminal convictions that might be relevant to the role. If you were arrested for robbery when you were younger perhaps because you had a drug addiction then that person should…
It should be up to the employer. If one company thinks that a past conviction is irrelevant while other companies think a past conviction is disqualifying, then the former may get the employee at a better rate, the company will thrive depending on whether they were right, they'll have more resources to hire ex-cons, and other companies will follow suit. A blanket law that forces all companies to hire employees withou…
>The owner of a Jewish deli shouldn't be compelled to hire a formerly convicted neo-Nazi.
Who cares if they were convicted? That detail is shoehorned in here to make it sound like a good example when it isn't. Neo-nazis are not a protected class, and so the deli owner would be entirely within their rights to not hire someone on that basis, with or without a conviction on their criminal record.
And honestly how often do they get convicted of say, a hate crime, that might show up on a background check compared to the number of neo-nazis in the country with clean records, or who get acquitted, etc.?
Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [edit: after reading felonintexas let me update this. If someone point blank asks, tell them. Don’t volunteer this information. There is nothing to be gained] My Fraternity's cook, when I was in college, was a former fellon. He worked for us for a few years before he told me about his background. I don't remember the details, but we had a conversation where he mentioned he had experience in IT. Eventually he very b…
> the super-illegal (but "grey morality") thing he did I'm curious to know what he did given your description. I can think of examples of the reverse: quasi-illegal, but quite immoral.
Drugs? Contraband? Tax evasion? Insider trading? Industrial espionage? Any process crime like "lying to a fed"?
If you think about it, we have tons of laws that don't fit into the mold of "hurting specific people" - which would definitely be "black morality" to me - but are more of either "preserving the system as it is" or even "we said it's illegal and so it is". I'm not saying none of those should exist, but I definitely would be willing to look onto some of it as a morally "gray area".
Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?
#286I know a fair number of people who have had no problem after (old) drug or DUI or violence convictions, but I usually hear about them in the context of "15 years ago I...". I don't know more current who isn't just a corp to corp contractor. I know people who have pled and haven't been sentenced, or who have had relatively recent convictions, who are working as single member LLCs for clients who know details. If it's…
You know the ones that managed to get through. You don't know all the ones that tried and were denied because of it.
Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was looking for a job a few months ago, every single application required answering multiple questions about whether I'm Hispanic, and if not, which race I am. Additionally, some employers demand to know my sexual identity AND orientation, which I consider ludicrous and obscene. "Before we can consider your application, we must know who you like to have sex with!" Ostensibly this is for some kind of reporting…
I've seen so much vitriol from the pronoun army - the ones that don't need them but want to make it inclusive for the people that do need them - that I really wonder if its optional in the organizations/applications that ask like "oh he didn't write a pronoun at all! he's not a culture fit!" we've decided to move forward with other candidates that more closely align with our qualifications
> "oh he didn't write a pronoun at all! he's not a culture fit!"
I find this particularly sad because of how harmful it is to trans people, especially trans people who are not "out". Forcing such people to specify a pronoun is forcing them to choose between "out yourself to everyone" and "disavow your own identity", and feels just awful. Not to mention people in earlier stages of understanding their own gender, who may feel a pointed distaste for the pronouns that they've always used without quite understanding why.
(To clarify tone, I'm not criticizing your comment.)
Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?
#288Sounds like you're in California. I'd start by making sure you know your rights under their "Ban the Box" laws. In general I don't think an employer can ask about or consider a prior conviction until after they've made a conditional offer.
the law is meaningless. it just means they rescind the offer after doing background check.
Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?
#289I don't have much helpful to add, but I had a colleague who had a bad night, acquired some felony charges for a firearm-related assault and they got fired/blacklisted for a few years. Subsequently, they did IT contract work behind the scenes with small contractors, kept in touch with his professional network, was super helpful to the rest of us, and after serious concerns and much debate, got back into his prior care…
> I had a colleague who had a bad night, acquired some felony charges for a firearm-related assault That’s one hell of a bad night.
Some places are more willing than others to charge anybody using or brandishing a firearm, regardless of the circumstances, and sometimes those exactly are the states which charge very aggressively for it. Heck, I've heard of people just being charged for driving into a wrong state with a loaded magazine laying somewhere in their trunk. Not all laws everywhere make sense.
Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the super-illegal (but "grey morality") thing he did I'm curious to know what he did given your description. I can think of examples of the reverse: quasi-illegal, but quite immoral.
Drugs? Contraband? Tax evasion? Insider trading? Industrial espionage? Any process crime like "lying to a fed"? If you think about it, we have tons of laws that don't fit into the mold of "hurting specific people" - which would definitely be "black morality" to me - but are more of either "preserving the system as it is" or even "we said it's illegal and so it is". I'm not saying none of those should exist, but I def…
It could be “allowed a very hardy and aggressive weed to grow in an area of his property”.