Comment by buro9 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by buro9 | Hacker News Reader

You likely won't be able to get work with any firm that has customers in the financial, military, and medical spaces. This rules out a lot of sectors common to the UK and major cities. No hosting companies, Cloud vendors, service/consulting companies of reasonable size, etc.

However there are large industries in the UK that will offer a solid job, the ones that spring to mind are academia and the charity sector. These industries aren't the top paying, and that's exactly why these jobs aren't being fought over. Additionally as you'll not come into direct contact with vulnerable people or children, DBS checks are unlikely to apply and the sector based restrictions like those in the financial industry are not present.

The work in these industries also isn't the most challenging for coding, the challenge is typically it not being funded well enough and having to find cheap and pragmatic solutions you can maintain. In the charitable sector you really need to know Drupal and PHP... and then a mix of how to glue things together, run IT systems, etc. In academia it can be a real mix of work, from IT services, through to website and email services, all the way up to "PhD student knows what they want to run on a supercomputer but doesn't know how to get it to run efficiently on this (slightly older) supercomputer".

> You likely won't be able to get work with any firm that has customers in the financial, military, and medical spaces. This rules out a lot of sectors common to the UK and major cities. No hosting companies, Cloud vendors, service/consulting companies of reasonable size, etc.

What is this based on? I've had 2 checks in 19 years of working privately, including contracting for 15 of those, many of which were outside the UK. Nobody in the chain, not HR, hiring managers or recruiters are incentivized to examine a candidate deeply once they've been accepted for a role, and for contracting HR rarely even enters the picture.

In both cases where a check was carried out, it was for a company I could not recommend working for regardless of income. One of these resulted in the only time I have needed a solicitor to ensure timely payments. From this angle failing DBS sounds like it might be a blessing in disguise for OP

It's really trivial for an employer to do, and it's required by compliance regulations.

Which regulations and applying to which sectors?

FCA Screening for those working in "controlled functions" for services providing financial services.

On the strictest interpretation it isn't everyone and only applies to a few roles.

However just like other compliance it tends to be applied by financial firms in a risk-averse maximal approach rather than a minimal approach. So it's not uncommon for background checks to be applied to all staff at a company or who provide services to such a company.

I don't agree with such maximal interpretation of the compliance rules, but this is how it happens and having that conversation with HR during interviewing is just going to get you excluded.

The original poster likely wants to avoid US travel too... given that it will require a visa due to moral torpitude.

> moral torpitude (sic)

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/turpitu...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_turpitude

Turpitude: very immoral behaviour; from Latin turpitūdō (ugliness). Not a word I was familiar with - adding this comment for others.

US doesn't seem to have access to UK criminal records as I've travelled to NY without declaring convictions and been OK. No idea if just lucky or there's no data sharing.

There is data sharing, what you've done is given the US the ability to refuse access and additionally to refuse a visa - as they required you to self-declare and they consider it a fraudulent attempt to gain access to the US if you have not done so.

That they do not consistently enforce at time of entry is luck on your part in that entry instance, but either way they now have the ability to freely deny entry forever due to you not following their rules.

Sucks to be you now, the US system does not believe in rehabilitation and if you've been arrested you need a visa. You are not entitled to use the visa waiver program that exists between the UK and US and allows visa-less movement with only an ESTA.

If you want to visit the US in the future, or your career requires such visits... I suggest applying for a B1/B2 visa, if they think you're no risk they may even grant you a multi-year multi-visit one. If they think you're too risky they'll only grant a single timed visit visa, or you'll be fully declined.

It's very likely organisations in the charity sector will need to run DBS checks, even just for looking at back-end systems/data.

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