From Prison to Programming
corecursive.com
corecursive.com
Problem is that some people read his story and thinks. "Oh, so teaching felons programming is a great way to reduce recidivism".
This kind of be-all-end-all solution always fails. Some years ago journalists in the US loved to tell coal miners that they should "learn to code" when the mines shut down due to Washington politics. How hard could it be?
When media corporations started laying off journalists in droves a few years later, the journalists did not find "Learn to code" suggestions useful or even funny.
A more general solution to reduce recidivism should probably consist of two initiatives:
1) Educate felons when they're in prison. It doesn't have to be programming. It can be a craft, something academic, programming (if they feel like it) or some other skill. Whatever.
2) Reform the prison system, so inmates are treated as humans. E.g. with private corporations running prisons in the US, they have a strong motivation to create "recurring guests". Contrast this with e.g. prisons in Scandinavia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IepJqxRCZY) that have the lowest rates of recidivism.
We know how to reduce recidivism. It is not an easy "learn to code" exercise. But are the US willing to make the changes necessary to create meaningful impact on the rates of recidivism - or shall we continue to be fed "pull yourself up by the bootstraps! We found one guy who did it, and so can you!" stories?
Did this even happen? I cannot find any articles in which miners were told to learn to code. I think instead those miners were offered vocational training, which included coding. This was in 2017.
maybe this is what they were talking about
https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/dev-bootcamp-shuttering...
Then I guess you really didn't look to hard:
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/47...
snip:
"During a rally yesterday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden spoke to a crowd in Derry, N.H., a town that many miners call home. He acknowledged the economic setbacks and job insecurity that coal miners face these days, and gave them some advice: learn to code."
https://twitter.com/ComfortablySmug/status/10900807581260759...
It is two different countries and very different cultures. Just modeling US prisons on Scandinavian ones is not a solution. I could even imagine it making things worse in the short-term (a banal example would be "so the prisoners in Norwegian prisons have access to knives in the kitchen they roam freely, let's try that in San Quentin"...)
But I think we could start looking at the incentives the American prison system creates while also addressing the social issues that seems to be the root of a lot of the challenges. It is not easy and I can imagine it taking a century to solve unfortunately.
The issue here is not skilling these people in trades, it’s really about working on mental health and the underlying reasons why they are in prison. Until those challenges are addressed, these people mostly will not succeed. Many have not experienced much of a « normal » family life or friendships that promote personal growth, or mentorship.
On top of that, when many are released they have nothing. So, imagine trying to stay employed for a week when you have nowhere to live (especially hard to rent a place also when you have a record[1].
Anyway, we might know how to reduce recidivism, but society sure doesn’t seem interested in taking the steps to invest what’s needed.
[1] I recently spoke in front of the Colorado Senate concerning Assembly Bill 99 which will auto-erase the records of non-violent offenders in the state with some outcomes being that they can more easily find employment and rent places to live.
I also have wondered whether probation officers have a positive or negative impact overall on recidivism. It feels like forcing people to have an additional stress layer that can send them back to prison on top of everything else isn’t actually helpful.
> You still get free housing and food
The current "justice" system is a huge jobs program all around, and it is predicated on a persistently large mass of criminals who scare the crap out of the public. If they go away, so do cops, lawyers, prison jobs, and all the ancillary positions which feed off them. Society needs to own up to this fact and figure out what to do with all those people, especially the ones who live in rural areas which are completely dependent on prisons. I really feel the economics are what keep mass incarceration going year after year, no matter how many stories get written about it, or how awful everyone agrees it is.
I'm sorry my message came a bit across like "Just copy Scandinavia, then everything will be great". Obviously that isn't the case. My point was that there's no easy solution to reduce recidivism, but if we need to start somewhere it might be better to look into incentives created by the current prison system than learning inmates to code.
That doesn't solve the whole cultural view on inmates, the social and psychological problems that placed a lot of them in the prison in the first place, etc. etc. etc.
Do you find prisoners/former prisoners get any benefit from new labels like this?
Timpson Group uses non euphemistic language: "people who have criminal convictions", and proactively hires them.
https://www.timpson-group.co.uk/timpson-foundation/ex-offend...
Also the term "justice impacted" seems to strip us of all agency. I would like to retain at least a smidgen of autonomy in my decision making.
Being able to expunge records helps, but if you really want to help people with criminal records re-enter the workforce, you have to fix business liability insurance. Insurers often the ones forcing the issue in hiring practices by rate increase or by clauses that will not cover an ex-offender. A rate increase for a 200 employee company will cost what hiring 3-4 people costs, so everyone wants to help until they find out what the hidden costs are. In Indiana we fixed this, and it is much easier to hire people with records, and did more to help expunging records.
Removing records does not help much when asked "have you ever been convicted" and get caught telling less than the truth. The lie itself is often considered moral turpitude by the employer. Laws that make it ok to lie, never work as expected for anyone.
People seem to think everyone being a programmer is needed otherwise humanity will fall. Honestly it is one of the stupidest things I have heard.
Could more [good] programmers be a good thing? Sure, we can always do with more good programmers.
However the truth is we need more of many, many types of people. Teachers, personal care workers, doctors, nurses, etc.
Not everyone wants to be a programming. Not everyone can be a programmer.
Can I teach anyone to write Hello World or a simple number game in Python? Of course, same way I can teacher anyone to track their budget in a basic Excel file.
But I can't take anyone and teach them Excel to be a spreadsheet wizard for the finance department. Believe me I know this from first hand experience :)
What we need is an open, fair and free education system to encourage people of [almost] all ages to do what they are good at and enjoy. We put far too much positive spin on learning to code as if it is the answer to every god damn problem in the world.
How often do we see "learn to code" as a solution to jobs that have gone away for whatever reason? Over the past ~15 years I've seen it almost everywhere as literally the only advertised option for people whose profession has vanished.
All I am saying is I wish as much was invested into other re-training options as we've seen put into learn to code programmes.
Teachers I could possibly see but even then much of this has been optimized away. If you lower the bar of "learning to code" to learning excel I'd tend to agree with you. No reason to hack together a set of python scripts to grade papers, and the actual useful work of generating random test questions, etc has been automated away by software nearly every school uses.
The difference between reading, math, and programming is that reading and math are fundamental. Math teaches logical, methodical thinking. Reading teaches the ability to well...read. Programming on the other hand is a higher level abstraction of math. Mathematicians tend to become good programmers. To me, this would imply we simply need to teach more math. It's very simple to say "it should be a basic skill" but there are other, far more fundamental, skills we don't teach either. Why don't we teach machining or woodworking? For the average Joe these two would have infinitely more value both professionally and personally than learning how to fire up a terminal and write a basic python script.
The problem that "learn to code" has, and the problem your suggestion has, is that even getting someone to "get" how to code is non-trivial. Once you move beyond the formulaic "here's how to put these pieces together to make a website" suddenly everyone gets lost. I've seen this not only in people I've attempted to mentor, but also being an interviewer at a large tech company regularly seeing code camp graduates coming from fields like teaching, food, etc. These people miss the point of the exact thing you suggest: programming is a conduit for productivity in an underlying field and "learning to code" is a means to an end and not the goal.
There certainly are people "cut out to be programmers" and this societal shift to "everyone can be anything they want" has really disenfranchised a lot of people. We never want to talk about it because the idea life is fundamentally unfair is seen as taboo. But it is, and it is the reason code camps produce garbage in 80% of cases and the reason drop out rates in CS programs are so high. The high flying high school kid getting an $XXX,000 salary is an extreme edge cases promoted as a common case. The guy who automates half his job as a data entry clerk was probably fit for professional grade programming anyway. We are guilty of this perpetuation ourselves.
Before he used to have like 30 MS Word documents that acted as templates for his most common situations. He basically had a psuedocode workflow on sticky notes he already used that was really easy to turn into real python.
It's not a fabulous project or anything but he gets to spend a bit more time looking at each case, and also gets to go home sooner.
Maybe because “learn to code” really means “learn to make websites”?
I never learned how to make websites, never coded a line of JavaScript and have no idea what people who do those things are talking about with their frameworks and whatever but I know how to code so could probably figure it out fairly easily if I was motivated enough.
Maybe if they taught people how to use the language instead of how to glue together different bits of library code things would be different. Probably not a full CS curriculum but more than React in 30 days.
Ill repeat what ive said elsewhere...It is a legit path to a rewarding job which is open to those without degrees and who might have felonies on record.
Since starting Underdog Devs Ive seen it over and over. With real commitment its very attainable. We have many success stories which seem like outliers, however they consistently happen.
This isn't something Ive read, its something we've done over and over with mentees. I get that youre tired of that trite bit of advice, but its happening for a lot of people. There are a lot of people who have had their entires life changed through that skill. Definitely not the solution for everyone, but it is the solution for some.
Good to see you here in the community.
> I dont think anyone mistakenly believes that
Unfortunately many people do. I volunteer here in [redacted] teaching mostly teens the basics of programming but it is open to all and I quite often have adults that have been convinced they should know how to code by the "learn to code!" messages that seem to be everywhere the past decade or so.
Many of these people get upset when they struggle beyond the basics which is probably 60-70% of people going by how many complete the course. I did wonder if perhaps I just suck as a teacher but comparing the numbers not just across those I work with but across the whole country the figure is the same. Just seems two thirds of people can't or don't have an interest to push passed the wall once they hit it.
> It is a legit path to a rewarding job which is open to those without degrees and who might have felonies on record.
I 100% agree with you here. After all I myself have been a professional programmer for near twenty years now and love it so much I give my time to others to help them see if they have the same love for programming as I do. I have taught dozens of people from ~11 years old up to mid-40s how to code that have gone on to have careers as developers.
> With real commitment its very attainable.
This is a big point. It takes commitment. Many people can't or won't commit. Sometimes it is that they can't do it for whatever reason but many times they don't commit because they never had that spark which is clear you did. To them programming was boring. They didn't find it interesting solving some "silly" syntax issue instead they found it frustrating and would rather do something else.
> There are a lot of people who have had their entires life changed through that skill.
And that is awesome. Like I said in my first post I am very happy to see more good programmers enter the market. We need them.
> Definitely not the solution for everyone, but it is the solution for some.
The point in my original reply was that in my experience the whole "learn to code!" thing is talked about as a solution for everyone. What frustrates me is there is so much invested into the learn to code "solution" that I see hardly any other options with the same kind of drive behind it.
Now I can't talk about prison education systems as I have no knowledge of them. But I do know UK and [redacted] schools and my personal opinion it is unfairly pushed over almost everything else. Why? I am not privy to the decisions made higher up but from how I see things it is because it is cheap.
Computers are cheap, resources are almost all free or close to free (YouTube is free, books are cheap, etc), the software needed is almost always free for education, etc. It can be done pretty much anywhere you have a power socket and it doesn't require special single purpose hardware. I know you know all this getting started with Python and OpenCourseWare after all.
Simply put the financial barrier for entry to learning to code is very near zero and that is super attractive to schools.
Anyway my first comment wasn't in any way an attack on people learning to code. I apologise if you felt that it was and hopefully this reply better explains why I feel the way I do.
I am glad that learning to code has had such a positive impact on your life and wish you success in the future :)
Yes I made a mistake not clarifying I was talking in general about the push for learn to code programmes.
For people incarcerated I agree a learn to code programme makes a hell of a lot of sense however so do many other career options as Rick mentioned in his reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32705015
And you are spot on about the other options (for employment) not being discussed. I think plumbing and HVAC (here in Florida HVAC techs are in constant demand) are reasonable options to pursue for many folks getting out but you dont see it discussed as much.
Obviously the allure of a high salary is one of the reasons people talk about coding more but the consistent demand for the less discussed skills should be factored in. Its damn near a sure bet you can find work if you learn HVAC or plumbing. In all transparency I only have seen and heard of the demand second hand, I dont know for certain. Ive never done either of those trades.
and no offense taken. Nonetheless thank you for explaining further.
All of which having a criminal record disqualifies one from.
However I was not talking about those with a criminal record. Like in the comment I was replying to where learn to code programmes were seen as the "solution" for coal miners whose mines were closed.
Is it an option? Of course. Is it the solution for all? Hardly but it is often treated as one so people can say "look we told you to learn to code and gave you access to a computer and resources but you didn't do it so it's not my fault you're jobless".
To me it just comes across as a cheap and lazy way to say they 'did something' and blame the individual when it didn't work out.
Just my opinion of course, you don't have to agree with it :)
And as soon as it was turned around on the very journalists advocating for that it was deemed bullying...
Programming is truly fun for a very select group of people. (I count myself as one of those( But even then, as a job it is almost always miserable in some form.
I encourage people to check it out if its for them, I dont think they should be gaslit into becoming programmers.
But telling someone to learn to code as a career choice is only slightly less insulting than saying to learn guitar as a career choice.
Every week I teach teenagers and adults that want to learn to code. Almost all because they want a career as a software developer.
I don't see those learning to code as competition in the way you seem to think I do.
But really the issue is that every job should be a pathway to a middle class life.
If we could become software devs "by our own bootstraps" there would be no need for an Underdog Devs. Thats the point, support is needed.
Overall I agree with you though, learning to code is not some panacea to cure recidivism. It is however a legit path to a rewarding job which is open to those without degrees and who might have felonies on record.
Since starting Underdog Devs Ive seen it over and over. With real commitment its very attainable. We have many success stories which seem like outliers, however they consistently happen.
"I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?'
So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03bOrvlAyeQ
> are the US willing to make the changes necessary to create meaningful impact on the rates of recidivism - or shall we continue to be fed "pull yourself up by the bootstraps! We found one guy who did it, and so can you!" stories?
I think what the US first needs is a general cultural shift towards crime and criminals. I don't want to generalize too much, but the general attitude is that criminals are barely human monsters, and that every bad thing that happens for the rest of your life is "don't do the crime then!!!111" You know, stuff like this.[1] And don't even get me started on things like "At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt" from last week.[2]
Funny how such an allegedly Christian nation doesn't seem to understand forgiveness. Guess I didn't read the Bible right shrug.
Things are changing, slowly, but there's still a long road ahead.
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/08/...
That's dangerous. I know people who went to prison.
We want educated ex-felons, what you might get is educated felons.
>> We know how to reduce recidivism
Do we? Again, I know criminals. They're hard core. A guy says he's gonna shoot up meth every day until he dies, he's going to finance that any way he needs to, what is the known way to reduce that recidivism?
He's not advocating that we teach lock picking 101 for chr##-sake.
But it's OK because you "know criminals" so naturally that extrapolates to all criminals in perpetuity throughout the universe.
These are my friends that I'm talking about. They don't want to be, will never be, and never could be if they wanted to, productive members of society.
What's your alternative?
I can sure fire guarantee you that they'll be ill-equipped to be able to get a job with the potential to become a productive member of society, no matter what happens.
So what happens to them?
Seriously, you're making me defend meth addicts. Christ.
>> These are my friends that I'm talking about. They don't want to be, will never be, and never could be if they wanted to, productive members of society.
So right, we should’ve nipped it in the butt and cut them out of preschool. ;)
We are always looking for people who would like to get involved
the most common involvement is mentoring and pair programming
we also could use help in other areas...someone to help develop partnerships, admin, and general marketing.
as for donations ... Everything we receive goes directly to the mission. We do not take a dime to pay for any salaries. None of us do. We work as volunteers. Every penny we receive goes to learning resources and to the stipend program to pay the bills of our most gritty who are held back due to their financial situation.
Good luck for the rest
My story is homeless at 20, no friends or family, in debt about $20k and just got out of prison as a convicted felon.
Now I've built 2.5 unicorns, one of which I helped start. Right now, I've started two side projects that are nearing the $1M ARR (combined).
Programming is a great leveler in today's world. I cannot express how lucky I am to have found it early in my life.
I have a great desire to give back, and somehow fix recidivism in the USA, but it feels so unreachable. I've heard that 70M Jobs was shutting down, and I reached out to the owner, but he brushed me off in an email. At some point, I'd like to give it a real shot.
It’s a loosely collected group of mentors and mentees with a small dedicated group of full-time learners on a stipend program
The #1 challenge, by far, faced by the org is hiring and placement into companies for cohort graduates and mentees.
If you’re able, consider posting job listings in the UD slack
*I am part of the group as a mentor and its been on the whole an incredibly positive experience
I never went to prison, but similarly, I'm not sure the person I was before my software career would have faired well if programming wasn't an option. It's such a practical skill that not only can be learned for free but is lucrative and opens all sorts of doors for people to be entrepreneurs.
I hate to be one of those "learn to code" people, but sometimes it is hard for me not to evangelize. I'm of the opinion that a successful career in coding doesn't require the kind of genius intelligence that many, including a lot of HNers, think it does. Mindset is way more important than IQ, and writing "good" code isn't even that high of importance most of the time. More people can get into it than they think, and some of them should before the inevitable day that a hypothetical GPT algorithm can do everything a current day mid-level software engineer can.
Convicts really only have a few realistic options
1. Programming 2. Starting their own business
And yeah, non "AI" tech is still automation, but at least the option to be a programmer without having to be a genius with Tensorflow is still there.
I also used to think that everyone could learn to code but I came to realize that this mindset can't be learned. Some people maybe discover that they have this mindset later in life and that's why learn to code is still a useful piece of advice because it'll reach them but once you've tapped into the fixed % of the population that do have this mindset you can't expand it more.
It's not to say others are doomed, there are other mindsets that exists for every professions. Maybe some of them can become great PMs or great small business owners or accountants. But coding is out of reach for a large portion of the population just like developers tend to be very poor salespeople and couldn't "learn to sale" if their income relied on it.
In my experience, the most significant first barrier is the command line and the environment setup. This is why I always start with explaining the Unix shell and ssh. It gets a lot easier from there.
All interested in programing and in pursuing a CS degree and yet some of them wanted only the solution. They were not interested in why their code didn't work or what the error was, they wanted me to jump in and give them the solution.
It's like they liked the idea of being a developer like many like the idea of becoming a writer, but they didn't have that mindset, that stubbornness and willingness to spend hours reading some shitty incomplete readme, going through dozens of GitHub issue threads, googling compiler's errors, reading the doc, trying until it works and feeling that rush of pleasure once it compiles/do whatever you want your program to do.
And some of them couldn't grasp some basic, fundamental concepts like a for loop or accessing a method on an object after two semesters in a CS program.
10% of families account for 66% of criminals [0].
I don't know why people call it recidivism. It's family values.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/10/crime-run...
I figure any story that involves smuggling a python interpreter into prison on a USB stick seems like it might interest people here.
But I think its also an important story because it’s about how software development can be life changing and lift people up out of hard situations.
I know it’s not popular to just talk about grinding, the overwork culture is not popular. I get that, this is a different space. You want this shit? You got to grind. You’re going to have to do it on the weekends, you’re going to have to lock in. I’m sure someone’s going to be like, “Oh, no you don’t. I don’t have to. don’t put that pressure on them,” that’s fine. But to me, when you come from a background, especially if you’re a felon, but even if you’re not a felon, you don’t have a college that’s going to give you any kind of signal.
Everyone talks about the college debt but your local community college isn’t that expensive. And then, that way, maybe you could just cut your work down to 10, 20 hours and then spend the rest of time coding.
You focus on fundamentals first. Data structures, control flow, that kind of thing and stick to that for a short period of time. Maybe a month, month and a half, just do that basic stuff. It’s not popular, people want to see things on their screen, they want to say they built a thing but you’ve got to get those fundamentals first and there’s so many free options, Coursera, freeCodeCamp. And then, once you get some fundamentals, then you can decide on the platform.
And once you pick your platform, just focus and stick to it. If you’re building Ruby on Rails, do that every day but make sure you’re building it. Hands on the keyboard, watch a tutorial then do the tutorial again but change some things then try to recreate what you built in the tutorial while not looking, that kind of thing. Because that’s the main thing is getting your skills up.Dude like Wyatt Earp? The only escape from Wyatt Earp, the only safe harbor, the real place you can go, is stay right where you are, in your cell.
So this is a sick hack, that's exactly what this forum is about.
Hacker News.
On the plus side, all these years I've put to some use in learning that if nobody can help you with therapy you can still build it back up yourself. Pick from all the toolsets of DBT, CBT, read with a critical mind zen or buddhist writings, use the time to figure out what healing and coping are and how to put it in practice at every moment, and moment-to-moment. And I've only done all of that because when all things fell apart a couple people still stood by me and I figured I couldn't trust myself a whole lot more than I could trust their hearts, so I put in the work.
Doesn't exactly matter though, because prison will hit like a truck even though I was socially sentenced years ago, and pretty much every single program I've ever heard of for people "from prison" would use murder as the paramount example, but nobody will touch my kind of conviction with a ten foot pole.
All the sexual offenders I've been in group therapy with were either leaning on secrecy (jobs that don't do background checks, their names having remained undisclosed to the public, etc) or they were at the end of their rope. I have a couple people in my life who love me and am thankful for their help, but I very much suspect I'll fall in the latter category when justice officially passes over me.
The top google results for my name - even with a usual expected typo I get, lands on articles online from the day of the arrest. Only reporting on the arrest itself, therefore not declaring the guilt, but it hardly matters to any reader or automated tools that copy those articles over and over again on random blogs. It's a terrifying ride going forward, no matter how much I figure out healing and therapeutic tools.
Based upon my very unscientific sample, many of these guys were pretty smart. It makes me wonder how their environment in school (peers and/or teachers) along with social pressure put some of them on that path.
I hear if smart people are not engaged in classes, they get bored rather quickly and start doing poorly.
When I was young, I remember many times teachers would focus on the kids having a hard time learning, which is understandable. But some of the smarter kids may decide "why bother" when not given attention they may crave.
Most of my teachers understood this and got out of my way. The ones who didn't understand caused me no end of problems in their attempts to force me to conform to expectations I never signed off on. I was the smartest (read: just the most motivated) kid at most of the schools I went to and also among the most frequently written up, punished or suspended.
I had a reputation for getting sent to the office at least once every two weeks, inevitably due to some form of "willful disobedience", which was just me refusing to buckle to any perceived narcissism or institutional coercion foisted upon me. Authority figures either hated that they could not control me, or warmly accepted that if they just left me alone I would pass their stupid tests with flying colors.
It wasn't until my last two years of high school, when I was homeless and attending on my own cognizance, that teachers finally backed the fuck off and realized what they were dealing with. Except a single teacher. My transcripts were illegally altered by a teacher who felt that she had to "win" against me, and ultimately caused me 10 years of economic hardship after high school. I passed every class, had the highest test scores. and she still found a way to rob me of the multiple full-ride scholarship opportunities I had received for several engineering colleges, just to put a boot down on my face one last time on my way out. This was substantial enough to sue the school department over, but when you're homeless and your parents are drug addicts, you don't get these opportunities.
This is what an under-stimulated individual with no support structure looks like. And I felt the concerted institutional effort every single step of the way to push me down and grind me into submission, to teach me I was a criminal for thinking for myself. I have a much more tolerant view of many forms of criminal behavior because of this experience and that is no accident.
I so relate to this. The people who run schools honestly believe that they are the one true way in society and if you aren't square with them, you are literally on a criminal path. You don't believe their values? Complete anti-social. Don't find their facts fun to regurgitate on command? Clearly an idiot. These people really are brainwashed in this way and that kids get forced through that system is a tragedy.
My guardians and schools formed an ad-hoc surveillance network where they all made sure I was never drawing Bad Things, and that I was always Adequately Punished. The insanely ironic thing is that I was unequivocally the first person who would have put their life in danger to protect the lives of their peers. Because of my upbringing I have a compulsion to protect others at my expense and would never dream of aiming a firearm at someone who wasn't an immediate threat to my safety. But while white supremacists around me were sharpening their views on the playground, I was the easy target.
I obviously didn't pursue a career in art and still struggle with personal identity and creativity because of this.
Which obviously wasn't enough to live on, so I started bartering and doing work under the table. The safest kind of under the table work is work where if it's discovered, everybody involved would be 'in trouble'. That way everybody has an incentive to Shut The Fuck Up.
If you put smart people into corners, they're going to find ways outside of the system to prosper.
Edit: Also, if you have the right skills, you can make BANK, especially since you don't pay taxes on illicit income. I at one point made ~$100/hr, and I wasn't doing anything illegal.
When I was drafted (involuntarily) into the Israeli Military, I worked as a programmer. It's much cheaper, you see, to have a programmer who doesn't get paid - assuming you can filter our those teens who are good enough to be able to do the job.
Now, I was only 18 years old. During my military service, my political consciousness developed, and I started thinking about what the Israeli military was doing with the product of my work, and for what purposes. I also became quite critical of the various foreign clients of the technology we were working on. It got to the point where I not only thought what my unit was doing was illegitimate, but in fact, I lost my support for the regime.
So, I quit. The thing is, quitting mandatory military service is a bit more difficult than quitting a civilian job... and in order to quit, I had to go to prison. Or rather, officially, you can't quit, you can only be discharged; and for that to happen you have to resist enough for them to believe they won't get any work out of you, and then they typically discharge you for "inappropriate conduct", or for being determined to have an (inspecific) psychological problem.
Guys, we're good. Just look at the opportunity the government provides prison slaves, I mean inmates. Don't forget in the Feds you are required to work, or you will be shipped to a higher classification facility and receive Diesel Therapy(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_therapy ).
Unicor, the Federal Government's slave labor auction site.
USA 13the Amendment to the Constitution: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
I think they should all be separated from each other. They should be put in single cells, and given access to as much education as they want, and just basically put on time out for weeks, months, years. Let them chat with their families and understand the hurt they did. Let them meditate on what they want to do with Their lives after. But keep them separated. It makes things safer for guards as well, lowering the tension.
What we are doing now is useless, inhumane, and counterproductive.
Some may get away with breaking rules even while serving a sentence, but that same lack of impulse control is what keeps people poor. The world does not change, and people must adapt to the reality of their situation.
Worked for me.
I can also relate to the topic. I work daily with many folks that have had to rebuild their lives; as both victim and victimizer.
Tough room. Many of the folks you try to help aren't gonna make it. Some will try to take you down with them (not always the criminals, either. Some of the victims get fairly primal, as well). Learning to balance and hold your boundaries is key. Don't get punked, but also, don't let the punks stop you.
Long story. Get your hanky. Things have turned out OK, in the long run.
I salute and support Mr. Wolter, and wish him all the luck in the world.
I'll bite. True story.
This company hired a young guy. Extremely likable dude. (100% female, if that matters) HR loves him, not likes, loves him. Undenyably charming chap. He's hired in a technical position despite having no real education in IT or Computer Science, nor any previous experience.
Turns out he was involved in a fairly recent murder case, did pre-arrest and out on bail. Never mentioned any of it on his CV/application. Things only suface when his trial and subsequent post conviction jailtime comes up.
So, he hired a few other guys to break in and rob an elderly person, who had under his charms confided in him she had a safe full of shinies. Not just hired, he drove them to the site to commit the robbery. They end up killing the eldery woman during the breakin/robbery. The safe turned out to be a fancifull story the granny told the guy.
Murder wasn't solved, but his hired hands start balckmailing him, threathning to rat him out (he was a waiter in a place the elderly woman fequented, where he charmed her). As the blackmail progresses, he sees no way out and walks to the police to cut a deal.
Trial happens, he gets convicted with a light sentence because of ''çooperation'', and after not too long here he is back at the company. HR sends out feelers to the employees (it's a small company of around 50 employees), but it is clear they're still 100% charmed and the whole thing is just to see who would quit once they hired him back so they can prepare.
Now for the kicker: While he was at the company before the trial, and before the company had any idea of his past, he had pitched a SaaS market platform scheme for 'services to the elderly', involving a full database of sensitive info on elderly persons living alone at home.
After his (very) short jail sentence, he is hired back by the company on the same scheme.
Now I've always been an open minded person. I think people can change (infrequently mind you, but possible). But there seem to be too many notes here to not call it a symphony. I have worked with charming psychopaths in the past as has anyone who has been in this business for some time, and you do get better at spotting certain things.
Your thoughts?
how many charming psychopaths have you worked with ? And what have you spotted? I seriously laughed out loud when I read that.
what is the point in your comment? To try and discredit me? what for? to harm underdog devs?
you cant expect me to take that analogy serious...you compare someone who actively seeks to cause harm with someone who made a terrible choice as a teenager, hasn't been in trouble in over 20 years, and spends his free time helping people for free?
Theres no way you can be serious. you know what I think....I think youre full of shit. I think you made that story up and I think you have some personal issue with me or underdog devs. Probably why youre using a burner.
at least you think im charming so theres that
As to 'What is the point in your comment?'
I posted the experiences because it was/is a truly troubling situation for many at the company. Since this topic came up in general, thought I'd ask for advice from what I assumed people with more experience in these matters. Apparently, that is assumed bad faith. Isn't it sad that we have come to this where we can no longer can have questions or discussions? 'I think youre full of shit. I think you made that story up and I think you have some personal issue with me or underdog devs'? Seriously? I had never heard of you or underdog devs before this post.
I use a 'burner' because if I used my real account it would be very easy to find out the company and people directly involved, and that is not what I want.
And yes, you will find psychopaths in business. I don't think it is possible to have a full carreer without running into a few. And no matter how preparared you are, the best ones will fool you, sometimes even for considerable time. My advice there would be, if you see them decloack on others, do not assume they will not on you.
I feel realy sad you took this so wrong. I guess the net realy has no place for good faith inquiry anymore.
I apologize. I clearly didnt understand what you were saying.
your reason for the burner makes sense. Im just so used to people using burners to troll that I assumed that was the reason. We have had more than a few people harass us by trolling our zoom talks and our posts.
Rick was a stupid 17-year old kid who did a stupid thing, and ended up being hired as a software dev two decades later in his late 30s after growing out of his stupidness as many stupid kids do.
Your guy committed a calculated crime very recently as an adult, and generally seems like a conman and a bit of a twat from your description.
This is one of those things where the specifics just make a world of difference. "Spent time in prison" just isn't detailed enough to make any sort of judgement one way or the other.
However: anyone who thinks "rehabilitation" is the answer for all felons is full of it ([1], [2]). If they are actually psychopaths, therapy is just finishing school for them. It teaches them how to fake normal human emotions better. It gives them a better vocabulary for fooling therapists.
You need someone like Mr. Anon who can spot these con artists and see through their BS.
[1] https://www.psychforums.com/antisocial-personality/topic1931...
I did a podcast where I interviewed vets or their spouses: https://operationcode.org/podcast
Many of them were, or are, in 4-year degree programs, but some went to code schools. Some had technical careers in the military, but not all. Very few were actually in combat, but nearly all were deployed.
I found that there was very little I could teach them about programming. They already knew everything and most had jobs. One worked at Google, last I heard.
So yeah: why not prisoners, assuming they're not psychopaths just trying to amplify their evil-doing abilities?
Can you imagine "Prison to District Attorney". Or "Prison to Chief of Staff of Hospital".
I think our profession needs less gatekeeping, not more.
Less gatekeeping? Sure, bring on more women, ... and convicted sex offenders. Diversity is the fabric of the modern workplace!
Who cares?
So what is your plan for former convicts? Have them in prison their entire lives? Only give them the shittiest of jobs for the rest of their lives? Send them to Australia? Outer space?
All other things being equal, I'd rather have a former convict motivated to make the best of things than some privileged middle-class millennial who thinks the world owes them everything.
Anyway, that wasn't my point; my point is that this kind of article is harmful to our profession, not the fact that the ex cons found something to work at that they like.
Just maybe keep the past under wraps. I don't want to know. If I find out, I'm getting the hell out.
Yes, sure, "anyone can code"; I get it. Or, maybe not anyone, but a person with the right cognitive aptitudes regardless of their background.