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Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?

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Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?

#61
post #40
post #37

Move to a different country. I'm in an EU country and it's really rare to see a company do any background checks at all. Be honest, if/when you're asked about it of course - but just from personal anecdotal experience, it's rare that somebody even bothers to ask. (this might vary of course from country to country)

the company might not do a criminal background check, but the immigration officer sure will... another country is very unlikely to let someone immigrate (or even visit) with a criminal record

Yeah, that’s a big one. Hell, you will most likely get grilled (and likely denied entry) by Canadian Border Patrol driving in for a short tourist trip as a US citizen just for having a misdemeanor. Not even talking about immigrating to Canada or getting a permission to work there, or more serious offenses.

I have a squeaky clean record, was driving an 8 year old toyota camry at the time, and by all accounts appeared as the most boring non-offensive person out there trying to cross the Vancouver border with my mom and sister (who were both US citizens by then too, so it isn’t like I was transporting non-citizens across the border) for a daytrip during a weekend. And CBP went on a 10-15 mins long line of questioning about what exactly I do for work (was in a somewhat niche area of MSFT at the time, so it isn’t like they would be suspicious of the employer being shady or anything like that, but also it was really difficult to explain exactly what i do for work to someone who sounded like they just discovered the existence of software engineering and have zero idea what any of it is). Only after that got cleared up and answering a few more strangely personal questions (from me, as well from my mom and sister), they let me in. For context, they were visiting me from GA, and I was the driver. The entire process took close to 20 mins. And something similar happened at least every other time I tried to cross the WA-Vancouver border.

In contrast, crossing the border back into the US was as smooth and efficient as I could have possibly imagined every single time. Despite my passengers occasionally creating non-happy-path situations for crossing the border. On that same trip I mentioned above, my mom decided to buy some really nice looking grapes and bring them back home (which was not known to me at the time). The US officer, as we were crossing the border back into the US, asked if we were bringing anything back. My mom honestly said “oh, nothing, except these grapes.” Unknown to us, those grapes were considered invasive/harmful species that weren’t allowed to be brought into the US. All that did was adding less than an extra minute to our trip, because the border officer just calmly explained to us the situation, profusely apologized, and said that our options were to either eat the grapes or watch as he throws them away into a trash can in front of us. The whole experience from start to finish took less than 2 minutes.

P.S. Major apologies for going on a massive side-tangent. All I wanted to say was that, yeah, with any sort of a criminal record (even as minor as a misdemeanor), a lot of international options are almost instantly axed at the visa stage. Way before even getting to the “will the employer be ok with my criminal record” stage.

Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Move to another country. Open a LLC and work as a contractor via your firm. Bootstrap a B2B startup, you seem to have valuable skills you can bring to market. There are many solutions but they do require you to make a hard trade off.

> Move to another country. Your plan sounded perfect except for the complete infeasibility of it. Countries don't let felons from other countries immigrate.

thank you for that, it can be really frustrating to get suggestions when people don't even know what they're suggesting.

Lets say a felon immigrates to germany. their policy is they won't ask. but if they find out you were a felon in the US, at any point in your life, they will immediately deport you. and your life in germany however much you built, is forfeit. yay! at any point in time.

that is not an acceptable risk

Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?

#63
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also consider working as a consultant or external pen tester. When we hired our pen testers, we did not run background checks on them, not least because they have no access to customer data so it's much less of a concern.

If the people you're paying to find weaknesses in the security system are assuredly never going to find a way to access internal data then how did you conclude you needed a pen tester in the first place? I mean, it's probably the right conclusion but only precisely because they'd find a way to access things they shouldn't be able to.

We spin up a clone of prod and point them at that.

Certainly if a weakness is found in the clone it's also present in prod, but that's what contracts are for. And we also review logs to make sure.

edit: a clone of prod w/ only test data in it, not prod data.

Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?

#64
There used to be a YC startup dedicated to this, which unfortunately no longer exists. I don't know the backstory on that, but I do remember that there was quite a large Launch HN thread:

Launch HN: 70MillionJobs (YC S17) – Job board for people with criminal records - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14911467 - Aug 2017 (506 comments)

I link it here in case there might still be useful information or tips in those comments. If there are other related threads, we can list them here too.

Edit: also this (via jph's comment below):

Tell HN: I'm Afraid We're Shutting Down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598978 - June 2022 (353 comments)

Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?

#65

This is a "throwaway" account for obvious reasons. I did some terrible things when I was 19 that I won't go into details, but after working as a developer for a few years, served a six-year sentence from 2003-2009. Upon release, I leveraged some old contacts to get a bit of contracting work. In time I found more contracting work, mostly working for smaller companies on a 1099 basis. (direct, not through a firm) In ti…

My job two jobs ago did start out with their eyes open. I was up front about it and it was a question on the application. I wasn't going to lie. They told me it wouldn't be a problem .... and it wasn't. Until someone else found out and wasn't so non-judgemental. that's kind of how this goes-- whoever I first start working with, whoever is doing the hiring, whatever. I get the green light. I get hired even. It's ... w…

I know it's a possibility, so all I can do is mitigate the risk. I've intentionally focused on very small companies (<5 employees typically) where I almost always report to the top. I put myself in positions where I'm not just rank and file, but am essentially a hard dependency. Also in contracting roles you're usually not around that long. It's tedious finding work, but so is looking over your shoulder.

Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?

#66
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also consider working as a consultant or external pen tester. When we hired our pen testers, we did not run background checks on them, not least because they have no access to customer data so it's much less of a concern.

If the people you're paying to find weaknesses in the security system are assuredly never going to find a way to access internal data then how did you conclude you needed a pen tester in the first place? I mean, it's probably the right conclusion but only precisely because they'd find a way to access things they shouldn't be able to.

It's relatively common to have pen testers attack a cloned environment w/ sanitized data. This is especially true in cases where your policies (or those you've agreed to from customers) require you to present evidence that you are having a pen test done every X years.

Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?

#67
Contract work is a good option for when you have any kind of black mark that recruiters are going to skip over you for.

I see a lot of people who got laid off / fired who ended up with the dreaded "Resume Gap", and it's very common to spin up your own consulting/contracting firm. That way - you can claim you were self-employed, and there's no obvious resume gap.

I'm sure it doesn't fool all the recruiters, but it's got to fool a lot of them who are lazy and suck at recruiting.

Re: Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?

#69
post #23

I 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've had four great tech jobs since I paroled ... I'm old. You want windows 3.11 for workgroups, or you want server 2019. you want *nix, you want macos, I'm into it all. kubernetes, virtualization, hell I used to run vmware GSX for companies before ESX existed. My resume is very strong, and my skills are good. and.... it isn't enough. not so far. it's going to take someone who knows from the start, somehow. I've made…

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