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For most employers 7 vs 50 felonies will make no difference, any number that's not zero will disqualify you.

Being upfront about your criminal record (including that it looks worse than it is) and/or explicitly targeting companies that have signed up to Ban the Box and/or the Fair Chance Pledge might help.

A. I hope someone working on such apps reads this and does something about it.

B. I wonder if you can get some kind of gig work income that doesn't involve background checks.

C. I wonder if you might be able to develop some other source of income that doesn't involve background checks. (For example, I looked into panning for gold at one point.)

I'm sorry you are in such a pickle.

Hey man thanks for this...one thing I never want to do is to make a spectacle of myself and my predicament, so I am always really hesitant to bring it up bcuz, yeah, I get it I fucked up my life pretty damn good and people in general have plenty of problems themselves.

Yes I'm looking into perhaps putting together a classroom on one of those pretty killer live educational apps that are available these days. I used to teach guitar 30 years ago and I really enjoyed it, although I'm not sure I'm the best teacher ever.

I'm probably best known for having been homeless for years. I'm pretty open about it.

I wrote the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide while homeless and I still work on developing free online resources, though I still struggle to make ends meet.

Let me know if you want links to some of those resources.

Best of luck.

Have you looked into expungement? I'm not super familiar with how it works and it does vary state to state but you may be able to fix some of the issues via that route. There might be some public legal aid available to help because I have heard the process can be expensive and time-consuming.

Yes, at 8 to 30 years most of these should be expunged.

Expungement is one of those things..like "the year of the linux desktop" that always get brought up but never can actually happen.

The problem is the way the law is actually written...it 's written for a very specific use case (at least the one in Florida is) for people who committed ONE and ONLY ONE felony in their entire life (I think the Florida statue say that you can't even have another misdemeanor on your record, but perhaps I'm disremembering that).

It was never made to throw a big blanket over a lifetime of impulsive decisions like I have done. Plus, there is the problem of actually purging the perhaps 100s of private BG check database out there that various companies use that do not even advertise to the public.

Man I wish more than anything that I could just be given one chance to "start over"...you would see perhaps the most law abiding, risk adverse person you have ever seen.

I've been thru true hell with all this stuff, and people actually do change when the pain of staying the same crushes the pain of making changes.

In fact, that's the only time they do change if you ask me.

So your basically being shadow banned, for unjust reasons, from working. Contrasting with here, you cannot email hn@ycombinator to fix those issues... The Kafkaesque multiplication of felony counts done by those apps must add a layer of insults to the injury.

:(

Yeah...the just/unjust aspect is kinda of hard for me to judge fairly. I did some extremely careless crap in my life, and obviously never considered the pain of the consequences of my actions.

I totally accept that many of not most people who read my BG think I'm getting exactly what I deserve...to never be given the chance to redeem myself or to pull myself out of my shit situation.

I think that's an extremely harsh way to judge someone, and that everyone should be given an opportunity to make a living if they show they have learned from the pain of the past.

Also, considering that hiring is such a crap shoot anyway, (I read somewhere that over half the people hired as programmers today won't be at that job in a year) what is the huge deal with giving someone like me who has been in recovery for 2.5 years a shot to contribute to the bottom line?

I really am a damn good programmer, and I still have an amazing passion for building new systems using modern stacks. I am fortunate as hell that I'm apparently a "natural learner" defined as someone who spends their entire life always chasing new knowledge.

> a life fucking sentence!

reading stories like that i wonder whether in such situations it may be simpler to just start a new life by like moving to a 2nd-3rd rate country where society isn't that cruel/unforgiving wrt. priors (at least not badly violent ones) and where English (plus US passport which alone places one into higher caste out there) and technical skills take you at least into minimally comfortable existence or even much further. Countries like Ukraine and Russia naturally come into my mind, and anecdotally on a trip to Mexico i met a local consulting shop owner who was telling me how hard it is to hire there.

That takes money to accomplish, and to get money OP needs a job. Which they can't get.

At one stage wasn't it:

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

...

Anecdotally, the State of Alaska sometimes serves that purpose in the US, a place where you can go to escape your past and get a fresh start. It isn’t the easiest life but it is common enough that people there are tolerant of it, because there are so many examples among people they know. It used to be a bit like that in the rural West but I’d say less so now.

(This may not help OP, but in case anyone else was thinking thi.)

Anecdotally, Hawaii is not. A lot of people think they can "start over" there, and it's next to impossible unless you already have a salaried job lined up before you move.

If anyone moves there, I highly recommend getting a local 808 number. People there are very nice, but they still discriminate against outsiders.

> Like aren't we supposed to forgive people who have been through a lot of pain and suffering and who have learned new ways? I mean...these possession charges are a life fucking sentence!

Its cheaper to lock you up, give you a record; its more lucrative to sell that data - then it is to rehabilitate, reintegrate, and forgive.

I’m sorry you’re in this situation because it is bullshit. I’m not an expert on this, but I believe there are employers who will hire/help people with felony charges and hopefully you can find one near you.

> due to bugs in their systems and the way I've moved around a lot, it literally looks like I have about 50 felonies

I think this should be illegal - it's basically slander.

I ran a small consultancy for about 15 years and came away convinced that is the way to go for folks that can't get work because of a criminal record. Even though we were entrusted with some pretty serious information (we were in infosec), none of our customers except for one large bank and the federal government did any kind of independent background checks or insisted on any specific hiring practices. I think you probably need the facade of a brand instead of just Joe Blow, independent contractor, but most people just trusted it. We did have a few customers insist on E&O insurance, which may present some challenges, but most didn't care about any of that.

This might seem like a million miles away from where you are now, but if the skills you have or can develop are marketable it might be something to look into...if for no other reason than to give you some hope.

You have to know that I've tried, and continue, to try this, but apparently it seems like my addictions are almost certainly tied to my inability to create relationships like the ones needed to get hired like this.

Loner-ism isn't exactly the best trait for landing contract jobs, or for sales in general...just in case you were perhaps wondering.

I had a fair amount of success on the Upwork platform until some real dickweek in New Jersey destoryed my JSS score because I wouldn't violate federal law and allow them to dictate the exact hours I was to work as a 1099 IC.

Worse, I feel, is that Upwork agreed with them (of course because they have the money) about this situation that could not be more plainly written on the IRS website.

I don't know exactly how you landed the contracts you did in order to pay the bills and such, but I don't seem to have any skill with that, so while I really appreciate the brainstorming everyone is doing, people should know that I'll never give up trying to better my life and make a living doing what I love.

That's horrible. I think all of us agree and wish we could help. I would add, don't take it too personally that they don't phone back or explain. That happens at all level of job hunting. It feels offensive and rude, but it happens all the time. Keep trying and good luck.

Thank you very much for your insightful and kind words...they really do inspire me.

Its complete BS that you cant stand on the merits of now. Just so some white men can hold onto political power and insight fear into the masses to get them votes.