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Comment by darkmighty | Hacker News Reader

But you're not talking about forgiveness, you're talking about forgetting. Forgiveness is when we acknowledge mistakes and give them another chance, forgetting is when we erase mistakes. Perhaps instead of artificially limiting our own memory we should be looking to learn to better forgive people in the age of perfect recall.

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Am I? Do the victims forget Mark? Do his friends and family forget what Mark did years ago? Are the criminal records also deleted?

You search For Mark Javascript, you are greeted with "You won't believe what Mark, a JavaScript Developer, did to steal cookies" headlines. A lot of the News is for-profit entertainment, it's not public record of Mark but public record of entertainment. The same "News" source might have omitted the news about Oliver the Cookie monster because he advertises a lot with them and they don't want to lose his business.

Maybe it's simply not his potential employers job to forgive Mark. The employer is put in such a position because he's exposed to information that's not his business in first place.

Basically, you can't hide the info from HR, we need HR to have a less extreme view of who is hirable and who is not.

Or maybe Mark shouldn't be anywhere near cookies anymore - unless he's shown he's been rehabilitated.

You’re an idealist, the world doesn’t work this way.

Mark paid his debt to society by time served. And if you want to not hire ex convicts, you simply ask for his criminal record. Is that not a possibility in the US?

Anyhow, Google giving you tabloids or other crap simply cannot be a reliable criminal record.

And note we’re talking of somebody that’s actually proven guilty in a court of law. What about people being the target of scandals that aren’t guilty of anything?

Recently, some states have passed laws barring criminal record requesting for employment purposes.

If you’re referring to the “ban the box” campaigns in Sf/nyc et al, I believe those just prohibit asking on the application (so the candidate has a chance to win you over), not checking for a criminal record entirely.

And if you want to not hire ex convicts, you simply ask for his criminal record. Is that not a possibility in the US?

Yes, it's possible to get criminal records in the US. Almost all major employers do so.

But is it right? I have mixed feelings. If the crime might reasonably impact the job, sure. White collar criminal probably shouldn't ever be CFO or CPA or whatever. But, if somebody got in a bar fight in college, is that grounds to never hire them? By policy, many companies will not hire somebody with ANY criminal record, no matter how serious or how old.

Sure, you can find out that information about him, eventually. But you might not find out the information IMMEDIATELY.

After the background check is completed, he may have already gone through your full interview loop, and impressed everyone, and you may just decide that you want to hire him anyway.

In a different world, you would have rejected him outright, without giving him a chance to prove himself.

I think this matters a lot.

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