Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs
underdogdevs.org
underdogdevs.org
Obviously this is both anecdotal and success biased as I’d never be in a position to meet the people who don’t succeed, but not giving people a chance just because they’ve made mistakes is silly and I’m happy that initiatives like this exist when your justice system doesn’t want to reform people.
I’ve met these people in the public sector where we have policies in place to employ the people who are hard to employ and focus on not discriminating people because of what they bring. But the fact that we have those policies and that focus speaks a lot about how hard of an issue it is.
Because if you’ve committed crime, you’ll simply be considered a more risky hire, and we don’t like that. The most expensive mistake a manager can make in my country is hiring the wrong person. This is where a lot of the discrimination against former criminals, people with different sort of diagnosis’s, people over 60 and so on come from.
Often the risk assessment isn’t actually true. Because a lot of these people will be far more loyal to your organisation than a fresh hire out of university, but the risk assessment will still favour the young person, and if someone experience and “normal” in their late 30ies or early 40ies is in competition, well…
I'm even experiencing this. And I'm a "normal" person by many accounts (graduated from uni, no crime, little experience, etc.).
I can't imagine how tough it must be for people that committed a crime in the past.
Personally, I'd say good on developers for welcoming all comers. Hack the planet, you know?
Now, I'm sure there are programs to try to help ex-convicts to get into generic company roles like assistants, data operators etc.
The only difference between a programmer and a lawyer is a lawyer can't practice law on his own and get feedback without hurting anyone, and a programmer can get feedback from his laptop.
Yes, and guess where they learned it from? Regurgitation and handing in "something" on time can pretty easily get you a degree, even at a top tier school. That will get you further at most organizations than a resume with completed software projects and no college degree. Once you are in, it's easy to do enough to avoid getting fired. No one wants to take the blame for a bad hire.
After a few years, they're a mid-level engineer and maybe they make good looking diagrams. They answer all of their emails, they show up for the meetings that actual engineers don't want to attend. They have a purpose and fill a role, even if they still fundamentally don't understand what's going on.
No matter where you go, or how high up the chain you get, they will be on every team and in every meeting. What they lack in technical understanding they cover with political and social skills. Which also means they will be your management.
This is a biased data set of course but you will see similar patterns across the board. Even people with degrees, it's getting hard to break in because most companies have realized that hiring senior developers is better value for money.
In tech, you are also constantly tested regardless of how many years of experience you have. This doesn't happen in other field at the same frequency so you don't get to slack off if you want to switch jobs.
They started adding tests after this approach failed, and they're making the same mistake in a different way. Having the motivation to grind leetcode is not the same as having the motivation to finish a software project. You'll end up with a lot of people who really want the money, and will suffer any number of hoops, but in the end they really hate the work.
You have gone from saying
- "you actually have to be smart to be a good developer", to
- "Incompetent people sliding by is hardly limited to programming", to
- "I have no idea how someone totally incompetent could break through".
The original statement was not "totally incompetent people can break through". The original statement was "Are developers the new blue-collar workers?" And your response assumes that blue-collar workers are not smart. In fact, it seems like you think blue collar workers are "totally incompetent" since you created an equivalency between "blue collar workers", "not smart", then "incompetent", and lastly "totally incompetent." That is incredibly ignorant and prejudiced.
If you mean it as a proxy for salaries going down because of competition - so many engineering orgs are understaffed, I don't think that's realistic. And tech is, as they say, eating the world. Demand for software engineers seems to be steadily growing; I'm not concerned about supply catching up, at least within my lifetime.
If you're concerned about working with formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged people - that's on you, buddy. Seems great to me. (And yes, that's on most doctors, lawyers, and accountants too. The legal profession in particular, as another commenter pointed out, is awfully gatekeepy. The medical profession requires a whole bunch of formal training, which we have culturally never been excited about imposing. And so forth.)
On the other hand, the USA opens around 500,000 coding jobs per year and graduates only 50,000 CS grads. Lots of room for inviting more people into the profession.
I had to research this recently for my greencard application. More context with sources: https://swizec.com/blog/software-engineering-best-job/
anyway, there is a push to do the same for doctors [1] and lawyers [2], so your point is moot anyway. the problem is that with credentialed backgrounds it will never be as easy so it will always seem like tech is more accessible, which it is inherently.
finally, with respect to incarceration and being a part of a profession, unfortunately many hospitals and law firms will not hire felons, which is a problem in itself, but it's a fact. so this kind of website would be difficult for those fields. so even if med school and law school respectively weren't necessary, it would still be difficult. tech companies are very liberal in this aspect, actually.
[1] https://www.ama-assn.org/about/leadership/ama-s-strategic-pl...
[2] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/publications/l...
Yes, all of this come from fear of not being able to make a living as a programmer in 10 years
Caveat: I'm in the USA, so what I'm about to say may only apply here. I don't know the market for software engineers outside the USA.
In 10 years, you and I will have 10 more years of experience than we do now. We will probably be twice as valuable to a company. Anyone who joins the field today will forever be behind us in years of experience. Years of experience means nothing if the experience isn't valuable, so we need to continue improving. That's a good thing.
I don't know the exact distribution, but not everyone who joins the field today will even be able to compete with us for jobs in 10 years. I'm just guessing here, but I think the majority of people, or at least a very large minority, don't make it to senior level. Some quit and change careers, others don't want to or can't get there.
I'm in no way concerned about job security in 10 years. I see AI being a larger threat to our jobs than other developers. But I doubt it will be a threat to my career. I have about 30 years left, and each year I have more experience than before. So AI would have to overtake me at some point in the next 30 years, and in the meantime also overtake /lots/ of others. The software engineering field would be fairly decimated by AI before it took my job.
Your failure to keep two paragraphs of texts consistent and coherent badly undermines your overall point. It’s pretty clear tech as a whole is a lot less elitist than law/medicine.
People are “elitist” because there is non stop pressure to drive down wages of engineers and it’s often disguised as progressivism. It can also undermine the professional and political power of engineers if the field is constantly portrayed as easy for anyone to enter. The AMA knows this better than anyone as they’ve tightly restricted the number of new doctors for decades, so it’s highly ironic you’d even link to them at all.
>You literally directly contradict yourself. You link to two pages that have absolutely nothing to do with getting formerly incarcerated people into law/medicine, then immediately concede that there isn’t an effort to do so because they’re not welcome in those fields.
I linked to the two respective institutions that lobby for physicians and lawyers respectively. They cannot be compared to some crappy random website for ex-felons going to tech. If that's what you're looking for I can find those for you, too.
Furthermore, it's disadvantaged or incarcerated. Or do you believe that people with disabilities (as referred to by both organizations explicitly) are not disadvantaged?
> People are “elitist” because there is non stop pressure to drive down wages of engineers and it’s often disguised as progressivism. It can also undermine the professional and political power of engineers if the field is constantly portrayed as easy for anyone to enter. The AMA knows this better than anyone as they’ve tightly restricted the number of new doctors for decades, so it’s highly ironic you’d even link to them at all.
there's a lot of problems with the AMA and medicine in general but it's a profession that inherently needs to be credentialed, as is law, due to the fact that failure to perform leads to more severe consequences as compared to tech.
finally you cannot compare doctors specifically to all of tech. if you're talking about health in general there has been a huge push to get more nurse practitioners and physicians assistants in the field to replace many of the doctors that PCPs have.
When “we” (people who write code) fuck up, things like this can and have happened:
- people die of radiation poisoning (Therac 25)
- cars crash (Toyota unintended acceleration, Tesla autopilot fails)
- rockets explode (Ariane 5)
- hundreds of millions of dollars are lost (Knight Capital)
- the financial information of millions is exposed (Equifax)
Also most of us aren't working in these industries. Most software developers build consumer apps for buying stuff or serving ads.
All of Facebook was just down from a single error. No one died.
Anything that starts with 'there's a lot to unpack ' is going to be mental gymnastics communicated in a patronizing tone to defend someone's ego.
Just wanted to say I agree with all of your points and think it does tech a disservice to treat it like a blue collar job instead of a profession but at the same time the lack of professional strictness has led to alot of rapid innovation.
So it's hard to tell what's right.
Blue collar work isn’t a profession?
But there's a common understanding of the noun professional as the upper tier White collar jobs.
accountants lawyers doctors etc
There aren't similar programs for other professions you listed because (1) all of them are highly regulated and have significant education requirements as well as additional certifications/licenses/board approvals, and (2) tech is in general more progressive and liberal when it comes to social issues.
For the last part, I feel like tech has actually proven that you don't need to artificially gatekeep your profession in order to make your members more valuable. If tech was commoditized then wages would be coming down, but in reality it's the opposite.
Blue-collar worker means labor ( both skilled and unskilled ), but deep down they are nothing more than a cog in the machine ( just look at any Jira board ).
Lawyers, doctors or accountants are valued as they grow old. Programmers? apart from the anecdotes they are mostly viewed as tired beasts of burden. Our industry is infantile and as long as there's fresh meat coming-in in droves it will never change and that's one of the main reasons you are a blue-collar worker.
The golden watch is the promise of fuck-you-money. How many workers get golden watches these days?
Like not everyone needs to pass a FAANG hiring crap shoot. You can give someone useful skills with which they can earn a living.
As for accountants, well there are levels here too. Bookkeeping being one entry-level route. "Accountant" also means many things, like it's often conflated with "consultant" in, say, a Big Four (is it still Big Four?) case.
Lawyers actually do have a path to practice law without getting a law degree via a sort of apprenticeship program. It's not often used but it does exist.
And then there's doctors. If you ignore college and just focus on medical school plus required on-the-job training (ie residency program, possibly a fellowship), it can take 6-12 years to fully train a doctor.
Whatever you may think of us software engineers, we're nowhere near the same level as a doctor in terms of required training. And that's all there is to it. I mean no one figures out how to remove an appendix when they're 12 in their parents' garage.
But the US criminal "justice" system is really a human rights abomination for all the well-documented reasons (eg incarceration rate, racial bias, institutional rape, unjustifiably long sentences for possession of substances that are now legal in ~15 states, etc) but the big one is scarlet letter cruelty that most Americans seem to be OK with.
I am of course talking about the nefarious "are you a felon?" question on job and other applications. I'm of the view that once someone has served their time, you should no longer hold it over their head such that they can't get many jobs, rent an apartment, etc.
We should all be concerned about that if we care at all about recidivism. Unfortunately many Americans take a purely punitive view.
Kids arent chopping organs out in a garage because thats a future serial killer.
Kids make make medical breakthroughs all the time.
https://www.cnn.com/2014/08/14/health/8-whiz-kids-future-med...
Don't sell yourself short. I was a premed and comp sci dual degree. Computer Science was way more challenging than the pre med stuff.
> Whatever you may think of us software engineers, we're nowhere near the same level as a doctor in terms of required training.
I don't know about that.
Residency takes years, but I'm not convinced it couldn't be done faster (there are cultural reasons why it's done that way). Basically, there's a strict pecking order among residents (first years are taught and evaluated by second years and so on) and every "level" basically tries to show off to his boss (because most coveted spots are competitive).
That often degenerates into a contest of who can sleep the least and be the hero that keeps the floor from "falling apart". I've seen fourth year residents undo work from third years, who themselves re-did work the second year did, who himself re-did something the first year resident had done. Everyone "saved the day" that night, except when the attending came in the morning he agreed with the diagnosis and treatment the first year resident implemented. You get the picture.
The long years of schooling with little, expensive residency matching trips and interviews and unrelated undergrad required to even apply are all pretty good gatekeeping mechanism to keep poor people out however.
The equivalent for doctors would be nursing programs, and I'm pretty sure there are similar programs for nurses - like developers, there are a lack of nurses right now.
Is scaling a high performance financial platform that needs to have .000001 downtime simple? No. Is this program trying to train anyone to do that? No. There are plenty, and I'd argue the majority, of software jobs that are pretty simple and can be picked up by most folks with average intelligence and interested/effort.
Aren't we too eager to gatekeep the profession?
You can do it, but the fear of losing employment, housing, etc is a very real day-to-day thing I still have in the front of my mind.
Companies will hire if you use your network to make it happen.
It's going to take a movement to raise awareness about felons not being a Protected Class, and the legalized-discrimination that implies.
The way I usually phrase it is:
"What would you do if you were black/hispanic/asian and someone said:
'Yeah there's nothing technically WRONG with you as an applicant.
'But we just don't really house/hire YOUR KIND around here. Just policy, nothing personal, sorry.'"
This is just an expected occurrence as a felon, regardless of how long it's been.
But who is going to raise such awareness? Someone who can afford to lose their job?
Which unfortunately isn't me at the moment, and it sounds like isn't you.
Have you ever been so hungry that you literally had no choice in the moment between blacking out from low blood sugar or shoplifting? It's a very traumatizing experience, my time as an Emergency Medical Technician had less effects on me than abject poverty did.
Maybe just a cool guy tweeting about a cool thing.
Mainly how to get companies to give our mentees a chance.
This is an area that I know well. I’ve been working with folks like this for decades.
One huge problem with rehabilitation and reentry programs, is a fairly significant level of sketchy behavior. Many times, these efforts start from a good place, but fall victim to corruption.
It’s difficult to work with folks that have criminal backgrounds, but it can be quite gratifying. The challenges are real, but there are many, many people that are willing to work hard to climb out of a hole. It’s incredibly rewarding to help those folks.
But there are always a few that have no interest in changing their spots, and they can really piss in the punch bowl. It’s important to be ready for these people. This kind of work is not for the faint of heart. Tough room.
Also, I’m not too thrilled about the site conflating “disadvantaged” folks with ex-cons.
They are quite different. Although ex-cons are a subset of disadvantaged people, they are a pretty small percentage, and present radically different challenges from other folks that suffer from things like poverty, prejudice, and lack of opportunity.
> Also, I’m not to thrilled about the site conflating “disadvantaged” folks with ex-cons.
True, I mean "disadvantaged" people might not be selling themselves so well anyway. So people are already cautious.
1. The website is sparse because we spend our money on the mentees bills and so relied on those learning to build it.
2. As for orgs having a "fairly significant level of sketchy behavior" and falling victim to corruption, as you put it...sounds like a lot of speculation. I cant know either of those assertions as I dont have any data on it. I only know what we are doing.
3. I disagree that it's difficult to work with folks who have criminal backgrounds. I do agree that there are some who have no interest in changing.
4. The site doesnt conflate “disadvantaged” folks with ex-cons. Read it again. It says OR. Meaning you can come from either.
5. You say ex-cons are a subset of disadvantaged people and then you mention they face "radically" different challenges than folks who suffer from things like poverty, prejudice, and lack of opportunity. They face legal discrimination but thats the only difference. The vast majority of inmates come from lower socio-economic backgrounds so they face very similar obstacles.
If you have any more questions reach out rick@underdogdevs.org or join an info session some time.
I’m not some “ivory tower geek,” using strawman arguments. I have over 40 years, working directly with folks, suffering from withering challenges. It's entirely possible that we might travel in the same circles, and you may have even run across my work (most folks don't know it's my work, but a lot of people use it).
But I sincerely wish you well, and I’m gratified that you responded. You are always free to reach out (I’m easy to find), if you want to continue the discussion.
Good luck, and Godspeed.
[EDITED TO ADD] And welcome to HN! I'm looking forward to seeing your viewpoints here. You have a unique life story.
I answered sincerely and in some areas corrected you. Thats it. I didnt attempt to "out credential" you. Your post felt like it was insinuating we are shady and so I answered. Correcting you isn't a pissing match.
Had I wanted to engage in a pissing match I would have let you know that I did 18 years in prison and became a software engineer afterwards. I intimately know what it takes for our mentees to do what we are trying to help them do. I did it. I grew up in prison and then later became a developer. All that is true but I was just answering your questions and felt no need to tell you why I think I have the perspective and knowledge to do what we are doing.
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/offenderSearch/detail.aspx?Page=De...
I’d gently suggest that taking a combative stance may play well in The Yard, but is less effective, out here. Those of us that face societal challenges are best-served by playing nice. That’s one of the hardest lessons that folks in reentry need to learn.
I sincerely wish you the best. There are folks that want you to succeed, and we may not all be who you expect.
I certainly apologize for throwing shade. I have become quite cynical, over the years, and regularly encounter folks that look at people like us as “easy marks,” because society doesn’t really have our back.
Thats not me being combative. Thats just me answering what felt like accusatory insinuations. I was defensive and direct but I wasn't trying to provoke you.
Appreciate you apologizing and I understand your cynicism. Im a bit cynical with this space as well.
I assure you UD is a different thing than what you're used to. We havent even used any money for operating costs. We could but we've instead focused on getting mentees bills paid so that those who would be most impacted by the economic mobility that programming affords can focus on learning. We all have spent countless hours, all as volunteers, trying to create opportunities for folks who might not otherwise have them.
Appreciate your support and the apology.
The first comment felt like he was insinuating we are sketchy and the second that I was attempting to involve him in a "pissing contest". Neither are true and so I was defensive. I wasn't being an asshole. I was speaking plainly to those insinuations. I simply addressed where he might be wrong.
But perhaps this program is different, there's no details given for maybe good reason.
We started by trying to help only the formerly incarcerated but enough people reached out that we decided to try and expand to help more people.
We are a scrappy group of software engineers working to create opportunities for people who might not otherwise have them. Mainly the formerly incarcerated.
We are a very unique org in that we have no operating costs. No operating costs and yet we do the following....
We provide pair programming sessions all week for mentees with professional software engineers, they meet every other week with another mentor for career guidance, we have interview prep, our bootcamp partnerships provide free seats at various bootcamps, they get code assessments to determine progress by a CTO of a successful fintech company in San Fran, and a group of them have their bills paid so that they can focus on developing their skills unimpeded. Again, costs nothing, so all our money goes to the mentees bills.
We have had 16 people hired in under a year and without a website. We plan to have 6 more hired within the next couple months. Although these aren't huge numbers remember that these are folks who have done prison time, who usually dont have degrees, who come from low income, and who many times felt like giving up on their software dev aspirations. This isn't the architect turned coder...this is major economic mobility that will change entire their family's trajectory. That 16 is a very meaningful 16.
If anyone is interested in more info reach out.
on Twitter Im @RwoltX and you'll find UD at @UnderdogDevs
Or email us: questions@underdogdevs.org
It was founded by the StackExchange folks.
I wanted to work with them, but they weren't particularly interested in my tech stack (I do Apple development in Swift).
Good folks.
I became a convicted felon a hair after my 18th birthday, for a trespassing charge I received while out-of-my-mind high on drugs.
Long story short, by the time I started highschool, I was experimenting with drugs and skipping school. I was in and out of youth prison for drug-related stuff, and never finished highschool. My life spiraled out of control, in full-blown drug addiction, until I finally landed a year in jail and this felony charge right when I turned 18.
---
<Begin relevant part>
I had been doing code stuff for fun, through video game scripting (Lua, some Visual Basic) ever since I was a child and it really paid off.
Today, I have a career in a semi-well-known upstart tech company and live a life I never could have dreamed. But it could come crashing down at any moment. I'm still on felony probation almost a decade later for something I did when I was 18, due to massive debt I have to pay off.
It makes it nearly impossible for me or my wife to find housing, since felons aren't a protected class (IE, you can legally discriminate against us, unlike people with disabilities or on the basis of race).
By no exaggeration, I went through nearly a dozen interview processes while my wife I were working minimum-wage manual labor jobs on the brink of homelessness, to be given an offer letter and then rescinded due to HR blanket "no-felons" policies. "We're so sorry. We would be happy to recommend you to anyone else, though." It became a running joke. I'd do multiple interview rounds which all went well, have a good sense I'd get an offer, and feel nothing from it because I knew I'd have it yanked out from under me on a technicality.
Even today, I live in constant terror that my current employer or coworkers would find out. It's been ~10 years for christ's sake, I've never done anything else in my life. I can't express to you all how absolutely fucked it is to go to prison and become a convicted felon.
Actions speak louder than words, but I'm saving up enough to quit my job and try to secure state funding to back into prisons and teach development + give other people a reason to wake up every morning.
It's really hard not to neck yourself when you're staring at doing multiple years/decades in one of our country's fine estates.
It seems that we used to call prison "paying your debt to society", but now we as a society charge interest on that debt to insure it's never paid off. We're loan-sharking people's past mistakes, which is not justice.