you sound reasonable. the problem is, not everyone is all the time. people make emotional decisions that aren't even supported by laws or ethics. Some people are just mean, some people just want to see the world burn.
102 karma · joined January 3, 2024
yes. yes it was. and I just can't do that anymore. that isn't living, it's dying.
Lets say a felon immigrates to germany. their policy is they won't ask. but if they find out you were a felon in the US, at any point in your life, they will immediately deport you. and your life in germany however much you built, is forfeit. yay! at any point in time.
that is not an acceptable risk
You got new coworkers? A lot of people start digging. I don't survive that digging.
Part of the problem is I went to prison for eight years. And I am just a computer nerd with no criminal background, I've never even had a parking ticket. I act like every other nerd in a dev environment. I love hardware, I'm very passionate about operating systems, making them run juust right.
Where it's a problem is when people look me up and are like, holy cow this is a hardened criminal! but I act... so... normal. and you wouldn't guess. it actually flips people out. it feels like I'm lying about a whole lot of things suddenly. I must be. I have to be. and it goes downhill from there. Whatever trust I earned gets taken away because people are judgmental and often not reasonable about that judgement.
I've made companies a lot of money in my lifetime. I worked at places like exodus communications, netapp, netcom, @home. Some old names people prolly recognize. I specialize in storage, you want ceph? Ceph and I get along great. My last cluster was over 2 PB and it started out just 150TB.
It's simple in the end, I work for companies, solve their problems, make us all money. Should be simple right?
Only way I could collect unemployment was if I was working every week to find a new job and putting out applications, and they were helping me. but no one wants to touch me, through those channels. not so far.
I'll still have a social security number that won't change, and I'll have an alias and anyone who really wants to find my info will find it even with a name change.
What a name change does is get me off a simple google search. which isn't legal, fair credit reporting act defines very clearly what you are and are not allowed to do to investigate potential employees.
and yet, do you really think I can start any business relationship by telling someone they can't do things like look me up? It's effectively what that is, and it's unreasonable.
The industry is still stuck in a "no one knows what to do about this problem"
can't stop people from googling you. but I can change my name ... but it's not going to stop the ones who look futher. and so far, all of them have.
I have an LLC. I'm a published author, but sales are nothing I could live off of.
I'm not sure I have what it takes to bootstrap a b2b. It's why I like working with others. I literally enjoy helping other people solve problems. I was an SRE two positions ago and I took on the IT role for an extra 5k/year. and I happily answered calls to change peoples passwords, because it was a small company. and everyone really respected each other. everyone was grateful. I had cards all over my wall that people sent me, thank you cards. covering half of it by the end. this is what I need in life, all I need. I'm old enough now to know the difference between wants and needs.
I can't do it anymore. I can't try anymore. I've tried for years and years and I can't handle this rejection. I can't handle knowing at the drop of a hat I'm gonna lose my job again the moment they find out. I just can't do this anymore. I really can't. I can't be this good, this friendly to people, this competent, and still judged so badly from something that happened while I was on drugs 14 years ago. I've been clean for as many years. It doesn't matter. I've tried explaining, doesn't matter. I've treid playing dumb and hoping the background check won't find it. I've relied on the right-to-be-forgotten laws and the fair credit reporting act-- billion dollar companies still refuse to follow the procedure. they didn't get me any chance to dispute what they found, even when they said they would. And no, suing them doesn't work. No one will take the case and I aint got money for it so no.
there are no solutions. I'm paid to find solutions to any problem... and I have none. I can find none. :(
People judge harsh these days. Good luck, you need it. Even if you get a job, it's a hell of a thing to have a coworker you've worked with for 18 months walk up to you with a printout of your case, saying, is this you? and then he pretends it didn't bother him.
oh it bothered him.
they walked me out not long after that for something seemingly unrelated. that job lasted exactly 2 years.
My next, I got walked out at just 4 months for "defacing company property" yeah I wrote my name on my custom chair they ordered for me. I was financially responsible for that chair, I know because I built the inventory system to keep track of the serial numbers. Do you think this mattered? Hell no. Do you think people cared to reason? nope. they kept a straight face even, said that I was lucky they weren't calling the cops.
well joke was sort of on them. my unemployment claim went before a magistrate and he took one look and said to them, did you get him a chance to wipe it off? and I'm like "I had multiple sovants on hand that would have worked. they never even gave me a chance." and they were like "...." and that was it. ruled in my favor.
but how it left me. it just devestated me. I brought my a game to that job. I grew that company from 29 employees to 165. I had microsoft hybrid local/cloud running and the dell laptops would auto provision all the user had to do was login with their username and password. it all unfolded, installed everything they needed. a perfect image. it was done in 20 minutes. it was amazing, microsoft really has some powerful tools to help IT get new employees working fast.
it just sucks. it sucks more than anything. it's unfair, sure. the world is unfair. but it is beyond unfair. and it has cost me everything ... this latest one just... sent me into a spiral. and I just gave up. I lost all my possessions, a lifetime of them. I just walked. how can I care anymore?