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Comment by Yabood | Hacker News Reader

Hm... Maybe I should get my story published someday too. Born and raised in Baghdad. Lived through three major wars and participated in the last one as a translator for the US army. Built Baghdad's first correctional service access database, which ended up being used at three prisons including Abu Ghraib. Spent over a year living as a refugee between Syria and Jordan before getting admitted to the US. Started with 20K of debt and.. who am I kidding.. No one gives a shit.

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interested in this story. Did you get US asylum? What kind of deal do you get as a translator for US army? Super interested in your story and appreciative if you can write a 10-min summary. Cheers!

I came in as a refugee. There was no deal; I took an English proficiency test at an L-3 Titan site and passed, then was offered a job at two different locations. One of them was the ICS (Iraqi Correctional Service), and the other was just too far from where I lived. At the prison, I discovered that someone was swapping the Pentium CPUs with Celeron and told one of the American advisors; He fired me, but later realized I knew what I was talking about and asked me if I could build a database. Fun times.

I was actually really interested. I'd definitely read your biography.

Thank you! Well, the rest of the story is pretty vanilla. When I got to the US, my best friend managed to get me an unpaid internship that later converted to a full-time job. The first year or so was tough, but I had good friends and good mentors who helped me move up the corporate ladder. I'm currently working on my own startup like most people here.

Wait a few years until the next conflict when torture is cool again.

Yeah, getting people interested in the person who writes infrastructure software for torture sites is going to be harder than getting them interested in someone who shoots robots onto Mars.

Your comment makes it sound like prisons are nothing but torture sites, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. The database was necessary to establish a reliable paper trail and prevent corruption, which was widespread.

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