Ask HN: How has having a criminal history affected your career?
When I was 18 I was arrested for being a stupid kid and was initially charged with armed robbery. When I was arrested, I was facing 15 year sentence w/ a mandatory 5. The charges were ultimately reduced to grand theft where I was subsequently assigned probation for 4 years and a couple hundred community service hours.
I got extremely lucky, finished my community service hours within 7 months, landed a job (was a requirement, although it took nearly ~70 job applications to get one) and was able to get off probation by the end of the first year by representing myself in court for an appeal of my probation.
The experience really shattered my life (especially immediately right after getting arrested) but threw me full force into programming since I had so much free time (couldn't leave the county, had regular checkups by my PO, and was literally just fearful of law enforcement in general).
It's been 10 years since, and I'm happy to say that I've been extremely lucky that I haven't (to my knowledge) been denied a job because of my past. Although it has come up nearly every time I've landed a job. I've been able to get around it by just talking to them about the situation.
This post is inspired by the recent 70millionjobs launch [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14911467].
To me, support DURING the after math of being arrested, would have been a lot more beneficial to my overall wellbeing. When on probation or parole the system literally feels like you're setup to fail, and requires a state of organization and perseverance I've never required in my life before it.