Comment by hirsin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hirsin | Hacker News Reader

I think this is awesome, and I was relieved to see the focus on non-white collar crime. Some questions that I think are systemic to the entire area -

The companies hiring are at somewhat of an advantage (they can hire anyone, the employees have more limited options). How do you ensure they get a fair offer, and not, like migrant labor, receive a below market offer? Would the marketplace effect here help prevent that? (edit - looking at the website, duh, it looks like you've solved this - awesome - and found good companies.)

Your revenue model is based on companies laying to get access to these prospective employees - how do you get past the stigma (without breaching q1 above)?

I like the municipality revenue model - it would be awesome to see them as "reverse recruiters" we're they pay every time someone gets a job.

>How do you ensure they get a fair offer, and not, like migrant labor, receive a below market offer?

This will be legal employment, so hopefully the abuses resulting from migrant employment won't happen, but the salary they are getting will be below the "normal" market price, at least for a long time - and this is a good thing, since they would otherwise not be hired at all.

We can't ensure they get a fair offer, other than by providing information and access to resources to address such injustices. I judge our success one job at a time, and one repaired family at a time.

Oof - unsolicited advice, but that combined with your acknowledgement of racism in the system will have some people calling you the plantation market. Even though you're not saying it explicitly, what I just read is that implicitly your revenue model is based on giving companies access to a below market cost labor force that's predominantly POC. While I lean towards the idea that its better they have access to a job than not, I think it's also vital to pursue full wages, rather than partial wages despite their debt to society being paid.

Not below market at all. There's great demand for this labor, and it's driving wages up, if anything. The real effective response, I think, is providing training for jobs that pay much more than minimum wage. That's something we're working on, at scale. More on this at a later date.

Negative bias towards those with records--along with a healthy dose of racism--is certainly at play, but I see the zeitgeist moving swiftly in the right direction. But it's a challenge, for sure.

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