I’m a Startup Felon: The System Sucks
startupsanonymous.com
startupsanonymous.com
First of all, his chosen specialty is fraud prevention and security, which is one of very few areas where a background check is particularly relevant.
Secondly, formal education delivers (and demonstrates) more than just academic concepts; when he drops out of a great school and suggests that he's "a terrible fit for the current education system", I worry he's a terrible fit for us. Similarly, when he describes himself as an "MBA-type", he's missing the point of the very practical, and largely vocational, components of a solid MBA program.
Finally, when a self-professed "hustler who happens to code at a fairly competent level" without any professional training or history as a dedicated software developer asserts that he's "reverse engineered multiple billion-dollar companies tech stacks", I lose faith that he realizes how much he has to learn. Software development is hard, and expertise in massive tech stacks takes decades of focus to achieve.
To OP, as one person with a shitty history to another: stop comparing yourself with your peers of origin (felons), and start competing in the bigger pool. It isn't enough to be "better than your average felon", you need to be demonstrably better than the average Stanford-educated, classically pedigreed, natively networked elite. It isn't fair, but so long as high stakes job markets/investments are plagued by an under-investment in evaluation, reliance on pattern recognition and a strong bias towards false negatives, this isn't going to change.
So get it off your chest and make the best of the life you've got. You still have more privilege than most.
Note: This doesn't absolve US companies of their superficial biases and incredibly biased false meritocracy. That needs to change if the country wants to reach its full potential.
But he's not exactly the right person to garner sympathy when he's made hundreds of thousands of dollars and has nothing but a fruitful career ahead of him despite his criminal record.
And make no mistake, sympathy is what he wants for publicly posting this ridiculous article.
Also, stop acting like you're smarter than everyone else. Humility is a virtue in this industry. Those skills you have today might be completely useless in 5-10 years, you always have to be innovating yourself if you want to have a long successful career in tech.
So I can understand how hard it is to find a job once you get a criminal record, even something "minor", but there's a lot more to life than that.
Failing to get a college degree because "I'm a bad fit for the current education system" is a weak-ass excuse. Anybody can get a degree if they work at it. I know dumbasses who work their ass off in college to pass tests. No, it isn't always easy, but work and practice to get that piece of paper really does make a difference.
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I do think that we as a country can do better to "forgive" those with a criminal record, or otherwise stereotype them less. But being unable to complete a degree (despite having the money and resources to actually go to college) with a weaksauce excuse is... kind of bad.
Not true in any real sense. I've seen a State of Texas employee charged with a felony for making a $0.25 personal call from a state telephone back in the early 90's.
The unreal magnitude of criminalization of "normal" behavior in the US is beyond anything most people can imagine.
This is true only in the tautological sense, in which designation of something as "felony" is held to designate it as a "very serious" crime.
Beyond that, no. In fact, this is expressly recognized many places in law, such as California's three-strikes law, where a "strike" is a "violent or serious" felony.
False. It's a real problem that people think this. No wonder our justice system in the US is so fucked up. People don't even know what's happening.
How do you know that's what the author did? (it would nicely explain the situation, though)
The problem is punishment vs rehabilitation. The real issue is that we don't consider the prison time served as sufficient penalty and we continue to dog an offender long beyond what is indicated for safety.
Most research shows that non-violent offenders are actually safer than the general public if they manage to stay out of trouble for 5 years past their offense. Those people should get their record cleared at that point.
here's my second takeaway from this story: nothing is ever as simple as it sounds. there's a lot of bad decisions evident in this story that really seem to have nothing to do with that initial bad decision (credit card fraud).
I've seen it done for much more serious crimes than a credit card charge.
It's not quite that easy.
Sealing or expunging a record doesn't necessarily seal the existence of that record, oddly. So, depending upon the laws of your state, you may still have to indicate that you were a felon on applications. And many places regard a sealed/expunged record as WORSE than just listing the offense.
In addition, sealing and expunging tend to be very subjectively dependent upon the judge you appear in front of rather than objective and automatic.
Your criminal record may be sealed / expunged on government systems, but private 3rd party background checkers will continue to keep you on the books. (Depending on the state: IIRC Florida and Rhode Island make it illegal for background checks to show data that has been expunged)
Since so much of the background-check industry is private, there's no real laws that govern their behavior. Frankly, in this day and age of "big data", its safer to just assume that you're permanently on record.
Even if you do seal or expunge your names officially... 3rd party websites are under no obligation to follow the seal / expunge.
Like, sure he has a felony on his record, but he is enormously wealthy and a successful businessman who will continue to acquire more and more money in the future.
This guy is already far wealthier than most people will ever be, even with the felony on his record.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but I don't think rich people deserve sympathy the same way normal people do.
Additionally, the challenges he faces as a felon are relevant to a huge number of people in the US who are not rich, and maybe don't have the ability to reach a wide audience with what they're experiencing.
Alternately, an anonymous declaration is very hard to fact-check or put claims in context.
Did we learn nothing from Aaron Schwartz? It could be easily be YOU in his shoes at some point.
The US justice system is a very scary place and does not operate on terribly sane rules sometimes. "Innocent until proven broke" is a reality. Probation is basically a recipe for failure.
Finally, a lot of his problems stem from the fact that when he got in trouble HE WAS POOR. Had he been able to afford a lawyer (even a mediocre one) at that point, he very likely wouldn't have landed with the felony.
Rhetorical question: How many of us have done something stupid at 16-21 that could have gotten us a criminal record? For example, pot still isn't legal, you know.
> Maybe I'm alone in this, but I don't think rich people deserve sympathy the same way normal people do.
Everybody deserves justice and fairness, even those whom you don't like or sympathize with.
We shouldn't really take the shortcut of comparing our wealth to the wealth of others. Aren't shortcuts in dealing with people a problem?
That's a great perspective I hadn't considered before. You are right, taking shortcuts like that only invites prejudice and misunderstanding.
How is number of years spent working as a software engineer a baseline for measuring wealth?
He doesn't even have $200k anymore. He may be smart, but he's not rich.
You know, they really don't understand us, and it scares them. The majority of them don't even want to try - see, they're too scared of their own necks getting an axe at some point in their corporate life to understand the trap they've laid for themselves, and for us.
"We are the chosen few." You may try to hide in Byronic Hero for a while; it may help.
I hope you own it all.
/not a felon, but with a felonious heart/
P.S. downvoters: Check out James Joyce, friend. : )