Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
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Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
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Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
#2I love such stories. Right now, a lot of folks I know are struggling to find jobs, so I read the part about how he got a job the first day he was out of jail with some astonishment and nostalgia for the simpler days, when showing interest was often enough to land the job! Now, hoop number 1, the AI resume filter, is a strange obstacle that one has to jump through first.
Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
#3Thank you for sharing. Stories like yours remind us that there is good in the world, and even if it isn’t everywhere, it is still worth cultivating.
I’m a software engineer née scientist, but my spouse is a therapist who specializes in addiction. They (and I!) cherish stories like yours because we had seen up-close the struggle that so many people face.
Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
#4Thank you for sharing. Stories like yours remind us that there is good in the world, and even if it isn’t everywhere, it is still worth cultivating. I’m a software engineer née scientist, but my spouse is a therapist who specializes in addiction. They (and I!) cherish stories like yours because we had seen up-close the struggle that so many people face.
Thank you!!
Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
#5I’m curious (as a recovered alcoholic myself) how you got sober.
Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
#6Good on him and shout out for Hasura as well, probably the most pleasant dev experience I had in past 10 years. It was so good, the startup I was at dropped it because CTO got scared that there was no work for the backend devs, ha.
Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
#7[flagged]
Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
#8I’m curious (as a recovered alcoholic myself) how you got sober.
I'll be honest, a lot of it was my wife. And also hitting my lowest bottom after becoming homeless and penniless.
So a combination of looking at what I had done to myself + everyone around me and going "what the fuck." and my ever-vigilant wife who knew I had the capacity and desire to get better.
For me it really took literally losing everything.
Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
#9Your compassionate and honest story will, I hope, bear much fruit. You write well..very readable and engaging.
Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony
#10[flagged]
> sobriety doesn’t guarantee that AI companies won’t kill off what’s left of your career
The ironic thing is, I work for one of those "AI Companies" ;^)
Claude Code and Codex have done most of my work for the last year, and with the pace of AI improvement, I'm not sure that you'd need (or even want) me in the mix.
From a business perspective, it makes a lot of financial sense, too.
I'm sure it's a limited amount of time before I'm dead weight, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, and I'll figure something out if/when it happens =)