Hacker News Reader

>>The judge did not wish to send him to prison (she said that in court) but the prosecutor insisted that the prosecution would appeal any non-custodial sentence.

Prosecution optimizing for a kill count is another problem in this system. In case of minor victim less offenses some thing like community services, fines and warnings should be the maximum punishment.

When you punish some one for life for a minor offense, then you are basically telling them they are better off trying their hand at a full time criminal career. Now every one suffers.

Though, do bear in mind you're reading the clearly biased account of the person's son or daughter, who seems to be in denial that their father did anything much wrong in the first place.

If the father worked in finance (which seems somewhat implied here) and got imprisoned for committing a financial crime, it seems reasonable for that to be an ongoing stain on his professional reputation.

I agree with you that my account is biased because I love my father dearly. However, I am not in denial that what he did was wrong. I always knew he had done the wrong thing, and he always took complete responsibility for what he did. He pled guilty and never tried to shift blame to anyone but himself. Like I said, it was out of character for him and something he did during a time of intense difficulty for our family.

This quote strikes me as something quite apropos to your Father's difficulties: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." Anatole France.

I also went to prison and have a felony conviction.

My suggestion to your father is to work for smaller firms or move to a state where background checks are shunned like California.

I did not have a single background check my entire duration living in San Francisco.

Tacking onto this, once your father's reputation is big enough even a felony conviction won't stop him from being hired at top places.

I've had offers at Google/Apple. I've worked for the Federal Avation Administration. I've been on a leadership team who's raised from A16Z. I've been through IPOs. I've gotten jobs in London and Tokyo.

Sure, it's extra paperwork when you have to explain that you're a felon, but once he's got a reputation, companies will foot the legal bill for him to join.

> Good people do sometimes make terrible mistakes.

Seems like it's not the mistake itself was terrible, more the way society treats people for mistakes is terrible.

Hmmm. How society treats people who have made mistakes? How people are treated for mistakes seems to rely on how likable a person is to begin with and how egregious the offense. So, I don’t see that critique of social forgiveness going far in broad terms.

It is a fact, however, that mistakes have consequences the costs of which can be far reaching—financially, socially, for many years to come.

Like any great fall the question is how quickly you can accept change and move forward. Even harder is to accept yourself as society has weighed your ...contributions. (Ie. corruption)

The problem then becomes, of course, how can you rebuild when your resources are also diminished (financial, mentoring, clear thinking, network).

But a really charismatic person who is just fun to be around, they’ll bounce back.

What is it about American companies doing background check? I only saw banks requiring it here.

this is to minimize the risk of internal fraud, inventory loss, potential staff issues, etc.

Its not all grim - There are some counterbalances that saavy employers can leverage. I believe some states , such as NJ, will reward employers that hire ex-felons. These amounts are quite large.

Of course, not all employers want to take the time to do an assesment of a potential hire with a criminal background.

Cheap insurance.

You can have a clear background, never be charged with a crime, and still lose your job. Happens with increasing frequency.

Does your dad have the option to get the felony reduced to a misdemeanor post conviction after completing all the terms of probation or get it expunged etc... ?

I'm not sure what the process is for the state you live in.

Very sorry to hear your story. Human curiosity - How do you earn your living?

Add payment info to your profile and I'll chip in.

Thank you but I didn't expect my comment to be voted up this highly and I don't want to take any focus away from the OP's difficult situation.

Everyone deserves to be helped out of poverty, but cases like yours show that the deck is just too stacked even against some of our brightest people. Despite being from a more stable set of circumstances and I can barely manage to get by at times (including now), if that helps. It's tragic that the very best things on this planet are being destroyed as we speak, including people like you and your father.

The father stacked the deck against himself and his family through his criminality. This has nothing to do with being a bright person (though, one that clearly wasn't bright enough to consider the consequences from committing this crime, and like, not do it).

I’d think the felony conviction has a lot more to do with employability, to say nothing of professional consequences for breaching trust (i.e., there are exceptions to asking about criminal history with respect to breaching fiduciary duty).

I am still sympathetic to your position, but I can’t see why a judge would be sympathetic to your father.

You do not know if it was a felony. I doubt it would be, due to the low minimum sentence. Also, how hard is it to see a judge's sympathy for the commenters father? He made a mistake once, and the prosecution wanted to stick it to him. The unfairness of having to jail somebody for whom prison is an out-of-proportional punishment is more than enough to make a judge sympathetic to his plight.

A financial crime involving prison time is almost certainly a felony, and misdemeanor convictions don’t usually send ref flags up.

Candidates get asked about indictments and convictions, not time spent in jail or prison.

Regarding your clinical depression, I strongly urge you to (with the guidance of a doctor) begin taking Prozac. It changed my life.

You can find a clinic that will take you for $50 or so. It's not the cheapest of options, but it's the single most impactful choice you can make in your situation. If you adhere to your schedule, and if your brain chemistry matches my own (which it might not), you'll start to be "evened out" after 30 days.

You have to take the pill every single day though, without exception. I almost didn't realize the Prozac was effective at all, because the first time I tried it, I was inconsistent.

People seem to hate this advice and reply aggressively each time I give it, but the moment I see "clinical depression" I will continue to give it. If the doctor notices any problems, they will take care of it.

Strongly urging the OP to see a doctor could be a better option instead of recommending a specific medication.

I wish I could recommend this. But the state of depression treatment is so poor, especially for people with $23 in their bank account, that it’s hard to imagine just how bad it is. I could easily see myself being prescribed one of those “horror antidepressants” you hear so much about, which simply exacerbates the situation. It becomes further complicated when you read that various doctors are essentially sponsored, and have some sort of incentive to prescribe certain drugs in preference to others.

All I can do is shout out what worked for me. I wouldn’t have believed it till experiencing it, and I felt like I lost five or so important years of my life by putting it off.

What caught my attention was that they described themselves as clinically depressed. I wouldn’t call myself that anymore, at least not in the way they did. It’s a distant memory. So, there is hope.

Thank you. I am already taking Prozac. I began taking it quite recently, and I think it is helping, a little bit.

Glad to hear it! It’s not a cure-all, but it’s a starting point. Keep up the daily dose and things will feel better in some time.

There is only one side effect I ran into, and while it’s not the happiest of things, it was worth the exchange for me.

If you ever need someone to talk with, DM me on Twitter. I’ll see it within a day at most. And my sleep schedule is erratic, so feel free to shoot me a message at odd hours.

Good luck mate. Things will get better. It’s important to not just believe that, but also internalize it. It helps to repeat it to yourself, even if it seems trite.

Thank you. You don't know how badly I needed to see the glimmer of hope you have given.

I do! I've been there. Most people on HN can't really relate to $23 in the bank and rent due. Trust me, it gets better. In a few years you'll look back on this as a distant memory.

Seriously, if you're ever in a spot where you're feeling on edge or just need someone to vent to, shoot me a message. I'm here anytime!

I don't suggest you to go to psychotherapy (I imagine you can not afford one), but some bibliotherapy could help. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=it&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Cogn... for some information

This person was in jail for killing two teenagers while drunk in his car, something that can happen to anybody, regardless of intelligence, and yield more than 6 months (12 to 30 years in his case).

For your dad, yeah that was a disaster and a sign that there's no small crime sadly.

But as for your situation, it has nothing to do with it (maybe you didn't intend to sound like your dad's mistake created your inability to have more than 23$ in your account).

It so happen that there's a massive amount of people who live in relative difficulty and are not homeless. Wake up and move on. I live my life knowing the baseline is coffee maker at macdonalds, and I'm fine with it. They can recruit people like your dad, no one has a life right to be rich and successful and it's fine to fall down and start again. My dad is rich enough, has a doctorate and a small business, and I spent my entire teenage years decoupling from my parents to be fully independent and ready to weather any storm. Sometimes it means finding girlfriends to share rent, having a weekend job, moving to a smaller city where university is less prestigious but nearly free, etc. When I realised taxes would take most of a meager salary in France with barely any tangible benefit, I burnt half my life savings (3 years of full time job at 2000 euros per month) emigrating to a tax-free jurisdiction...

When did this event happen to you ? When you were too young to be already split from them ? I really hope you wake up, find a stupid job, cut all debt that are not legally mandatory, and bounce back. There's no dirty job, nothing is beneath you and being independent is the only objective you should have. Having this attitude, btw, is 90% of whatever job interview you'll have to do.

How do you know the OP’s situation has nothing to do with their dad’s predicament? Do you realize that social mobility differs tremendously across nations? In many societies, it is not nearly as easy to escape poverty as you seem to imply. Your “baseline” might be making coffee at McDonald’s, and presumably not homeless , but not everyone is as fortunate as you. For all you know, the OP has been living their life in exact accordance with your instructions up to this point.

This comes across as a plea for affluenza.

Your father is responsible for ruining his life and making yours more difficult, not the prosecutor.

If he hadn't committed the crime, he wouldn't be imprisoned.

By your own description of events, there's not much brilliance, integrity, or goodness on display from him here.

So let us say it was totally the fathers fault. Shouldn't the fact that he served his sentence and "paid good dues" mean that still be the end of it (btw this should apply to any body having issues off their dues).

Yeah there's a sort of flaw in the fact recruiters assume jail didn't cure you of whatever put you there initially. There's a sort of obvious blame, if you screw up, on them: "you're a moron you took an ex-convict and surprise he misbehaved, you're fired, idiot".

The only thing to do is to have a contingency plan. If I go to jail for a period of time I think of what I'd do: preserve whatever savings I have, make sure my wife is at peace with it and will stay or not take everything I have, that I'm fine working in construction or bag groceries, and that I can live with nothing but books, some water, pasta and a small place because that's most likely the only way the future will look if I make such a mistake.

If you're at peace with it and understand life can turn that way, you're not even scared of jail anymore. I'll live through it and stay satisfied with whatever I find.

Especially if it's a white-collar crime like the one described. Then you just know it comes from a place of inherent dishonesty.

I'd rather hire the guy who got locked up for some raging violence in his younger years and has since mellowed with age, as one does, than some financial crook who will try some dishonest sneakery to fuck me over at the first available opportunity.