Ask HN: How can felons find programming jobs?
so,<p>My heart goes out to you brother.  I can give constructive advice:<p>1.
Set your expectations.<p>Many things in life now are more challenging for you.  You&#x27;re a second class citizen now.  Expending your mental energy hating that, or feeling victimized by it, will paralyze you.  Instead, spend that energy identifying your specific challenges and planning how to deal with them.<p>2.
Expect failure and rejection.  Use each one to refine your approach.<p>Rejection is a part of life now, but that&#x27;s okay.  Just like sales is a contact game, so is the job hunt.  You may need to make 50x more applications than a non-felon to get serious consideration.  That&#x27;s not fair, but fair doesn&#x27;t matter.  Just make those application, and approach each one as if it matters.  Use your network.  Write good cover letters.  Be ready to sell yourself as someone who is a better hire.  Be ready to answer tough questions honestly, and with humility.<p>3.
Recovery from a criminal conviction is a marathon, not a sprint.<p>While you reach for what you want to happen, you need to be willing to take whatever you can get.<p>Set realistic goals.  Probation is HARD.  It&#x27;s very oppressive, but it&#x27;s a necessary component of our system.  You can&#x27;t stay free, and improve your life, if you fail at probation.  Know your conditions inside and out, better than your PO does.  Never make them question your compliance or honesty.  Put yourself out, to never put them out.<p>I wasn&#x27;t able to get back into programming until I was off probation. What employer wants to be told &quot;If you hire me, federal agents reserve the right to search your office at any time, including copying all the contents of my work computer, and all network attached data too.&quot;<p>4.
Lay the groundwork to sell yourself.<p>You need to have more to offer than a college grad with a CS degree.  Find, or refine, your specialty.  Be spectacularly good at something specific and specialized.  Be prepared to prove that value to an employer.  The downtime with no job is terrible.  But use it to improve your marketability.  Then you can reach out to people who need that specialty.  Find others with similar skills on IRC, mailing lists, boards like stackoverflow and HN.  Learn to cold contact somebody and say &quot;I see you&#x27;re into $skillset, I like what you have to say on that.  I work with it a lot too.  Do you know anybody that&#x27;s hiring with that need?&quot;  Us programmers love to make referrals... most orgs pay a big bounty for bringing in a new hire.<p>5.
Don&#x27;t give up.<p>Stay positive, especially when it hurts the most.  For your family.  For your friends, and the people around you.  Don&#x27;t become one of those guys who has given up, who is always full of victimization and anger.  On a long enough timeline, as your trouble move further into the past, you will find more success.  Give everybody a chance to treat you like a human being.  Sometimes you&#x27;ll be pleasantly surprised.<p>My background:<p>I dealt with a similar situation.  I was convicted of a sex offense conspiracy, because some people I was associated with committed some very serious crimes.  To get their prison time cut in half, they implicated several others along with them.  I had a fantastic career before the 7 years in prison.  I also had sensational news coverage.  A slow news week, my face was on the 10pm news every day for a week.  You can imagine how well that went over at the county jail.<p>After prison, life was HARD.  Those fucking scars, man.  Most people will never comprehend what you&#x27;re going through, and frankly they&#x27;re never going to care.<p>I had a similar experience with Goldman Sachs.  They contacted me and asked me to interview, because they liked my hackerrank code in a few contests.  I aced the phone screen.  They basically demanded I fly to meet them right away.  Two days later, I got a form rejection letter in E-Mail, as if I had submitted an application but was being declined for an interview.<p>After probation, I started seeking remote work nationally.  I applied to everything I qualified for on the HN Who&#x27;s Hiring posts.  It took me about 3 months to find a job.  Now I work as a full-time contractor for a small firm, with zero benefits, for acceptable pay.  They never asked about criminal history, so we never had that conversation.  I like to pretend they wouldn&#x27;t fire me, but we both know how that goes.  I&#x27;m hoping this can lead to full-time employment, or at least strengthen my future employment prospects.  But the work is really fun, and the people are great too.<p>I still live poor.  I drive a 22yr old car.  I carry a shitty old phone.  All my furniture came from goodwill for $20.  I save every dollar, because I need to be prepared for the hard times.  I can&#x27;t pretend hard times aren&#x27;t coming again, but I&#x27;m going to be ready.  I&#x27;ll greet them with a smile, like an old friend.