In fact, in one very sad case, I showed up to my first day of work as a sys admin and was walked out after 2 hours because the HR department neglected to go over my application and see the felony checkbox until that day, despite having been hired over a month before!
https://sfgov.org/olse/fair-chance-ordinance-fco
https://sfgov.org/olse/sites/default/files/FCO%20poster2020....
During lunch, I pop my head in the manager's office, and let them know how thankful I am for the position. I'm excited to have the opportunity. Manager never had someone do that before.
Later on that afternoon I got a called in to that manager's office. Change of plans, no need to come in again. I could collect my things (what things? First day.) and go.
Getting a gig in a security context is going to be hard. While most places can't openly not hire you due only to you being a felon, that's how it's going to be. It's not great, but that's how it is.
Most of the real earners in security are making proof of concept code for vulns, and a huge swath of them are felons. Zerodium has generally the best payouts if you don't want to bother networking and building a client list. They do not care about any previous felonies. They only care that your code works. They will pay hundreds of thousands to a million dollars for PoC in some stuff. If you can find two exploits in mid-tier stuff a year, you can earn a six figure living.
There's also the crypto economy.
Another big tip is to move where cost of living in extremely low (Eastern Europe, Cambodia, etc) to make your freelance money last longer while you look for good bugs. I'm a former felon -- my felony conviction was vacated but nobody really seemed to care after I left prison by flipping the false charges on appeal that I wasn't technically a felon anymore. There were no real job opportunities and I had to make my own.
That might be your problem. From what I heard it's a more sensitive role so they will take a stricter stance.
Hell, even if you committed a murder that doesn’t make you any more likely to steal company secrets.
If that mattered, all of antidiscrimination law would be struck down.
discrimination is prohibited towards protected categories. i.e. gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation... on top of it, most of those aren't things that you choose yourself.
With the possible exception of religion (you're born into a certain culture, so "by default" you might feel affiliated to a certain religion, so asking people to renounce that would definitely be oppressive), and veteran status (which is not a protected category around the world, I think... though it is in the US)
If you self-select into a segment of the population that no one is born into[1], yet it's lawfully discriminated against (i.e. felons ITT) I'm afraid that you don't have a good case to protect yourself from such discrimination.
[1] Unfortunately, systemic racism and the plea/prosecutors/bail system make it so that people in certain segments of the population are more likely than others to end up involved in crimes.
If there never was any racism there would be no need for laws forbidding discrimination on race, conversely if we where deeply elitist based on height there could exist laws about height discrimination.
With regards to felonies the two question I consider focal are:
1) what is the long-term plan for convicted criminals, and
2) how much extra-judicial/social punishment should we tolerate on non-public figures for non-public crimes.
1% of 988 murderers were arrested for a new crime (yet not another murder). Is that higher than average? It sounds like it is.
Keep in mind also that being an ex-con in a community likely puts you at the top of the PD's suspect list for new crimes, and that reintegration with society is difficult, so imprisonment (regardless of crime) makes recidivism more likely.
Intuitively, it makes sense that "statistically, it does", but if words have meaning, than "statistically" means literally there are statistics demonstrating the assertion, and so far, bupkis
More realistically, the (un)likelyhood of a felony conviction going unnoticed on a background check means that whether or not you check the box, if the employer does a background check it will become known, but some places don't run the check and some don't actually care about the results but they're required to run the check.
1. Go to a big city where software folks are paid a lot
2. Apply for roles at startups or small companies who find it hard to compete with big companies paying a lot.
3. Profit
Freelancing was the approach I saw some people do successfully, but there were lots of projects we couldn't put them on.
We even saw clients that refused anyone who had even a misdemeanor, at which point I discovered how many of our consultants had misdemeanor DUIs or arrests for various non-violent reasons.
It's very easy to get slapped with a misdemeanor in the U.S and even many other countries, often for absurd, bullshit reasons that had more to do with the mood of the authorities in a given context than a person being at all an abnormal danger to society.
There are always waivers so to speak. I've hired people that have had bad pasts, as long as they've shown they're on the right path. If we're not going to give people opportunities after they've completed what we as a society have deemed as recourse for their actions, what's the point in it all.
You may not be able to get a clearance or work in some finance positions, but there are ways.
The stigma with former felons is why there's a lot of repeat offense, why people stay stuck on the social ladder, and of course why the US' attempt at democracy is laughable.
Edit: background checks are standard practice for employees and contractors usually.
I've done a lot of consulting and small contracts on the side and have never been aware of any background checking. I don't even think most have my SSN, just the info for my bank account. And I have a pretty common name. There's convicts even in my state with the same name I can find on search. Often there's not even a formal contract, just a handshake.
Also you can make money this way all over the world.
You either haven't worked bottom-of-the-barrel jobs or lived in areas where this sort of thing wasn't allowed.
So I have no ability or desire to try to hide from my past, at this point. I'm just trying to own up to my mistakes and do better.
Have you thought about changing your legal name? It's a bit of a chore, but it might allow to permanently shed a lot of baggage if you change to a common name.
For our business, larger customer MSAs often have requirements about criminal convictions.
We additionally require -- per soc2 as well as MSAs -- to background check our contractors.
As the twitter author said, it's a thing that I could potentially work around, but there's only so many hours in the day. And I would probably have to be able to permanently guarantee that eg an employee with a felony conviction never had access to certain data.
If you know you're not going to pass the background check then you're probably better off working at a startup.
The world is a disappointing place sometimes.
If you want to minimize the extent to which people use demographics as a proxy for qualities they want to select for, then make it as cheap and reliable as possible to measure those qualities directly.
I have no idea how well that would work, but it seems like the only variable you can control.
This never gets enough visibility among freelancers / contractors / consultants - it can be really hard to get paid and for smaller amounts of money it often would take too much in legal fees to actually get paid.
This is an important one, as is a clause in your contract that will force them to pay legal fees in the event you have to sue to get them to pay.
>Don’t work until payment is made?
I'm a fan of arrangements where clients pay something up front, then receive work, then pay the rest. No client in their right mind is going to pay the whole amount up front and frankly nor should they. But, if they pay 50% up front, you do work, and then they decide to stiff you for the final payment, you'd better have a good lawyer and a tight contract.