Career change for elderly UK ex-convict?

I'm hiring software engineers now. I've enquired with our HR team as to whether your convictions are likely to disqualify you because I've never encountered this situation before.

I'm the CTO at Savanta: https://savanta.com/. My email is ${myfirstname}.${mylastname} (all lowercase) at the company's domain. My first name is Bart. If you're interested please drop me a line and, assuming there's a possibility of us hiring you, we can have a chat - either way I will certainly let you know.

Your age is not important and, in fact, may even be an advantage for many roles. I've worked with plenty of older people and value their experience.

As long as you're based in the UK your precise location is also unimportant as our software engineering roles can mostly be fully remote.

EDIT: I've heard back from our head of HR. We review all such situations on a case by case basis so you're not by default barred from employment with us. Money laundering might ring a few alarm bells if you were looking for a job in our finance team but does not pose any inherent issue with our technology team. Therefore, if you are interested in having a conversation, please do get in touch. Either way I wish you the best with finding a role!

I've been coding for 20 years (UK) and done mainly contracting primarily in the private sector and never once had to go through any checks. Also in 99% of gigs i've taken, the number 1 factor in getting hired is "can you do the job", thats it. While obviously the industry skews very young, i've worked with plenty techies over 50 that have been hired because they have experience, and quite simply, they can do the job.

If you stick to the private sector, the convictions wont even come up unless you bring them up and i think it would be rare to come up against ageism, and if you do, then simply, you dont want to work for those companies anyway.

Talk to some recruiters, tell them your skillset and see what they've got, I wouldnt bother mentioning the convictions because i personally dont see them as relevant (because whats relevant is, can you do the job), and they'll come back with options. If they talk about government or bank work, just say you'll pass on those and would rather work for a private company. I have the same preference purely due to my distaste for paperwork and beaurocracy, private companies are easier to deal with.

I suggest trying to reframe your mindset to evidence based, rather than assumption based. Right now you're making a lot of assumptions that you wont be successful without having any evidence of such. You have a lot of valuable skills, go and assess the marketplace, in my opinion, you can be successful.

I think your solicitor and money laundering background might be valuable in the modern world trying to digitize everything.

- Have a look at LegalTech companies: https://www.maddyness.com/uk/2020/10/05/legaltech-12-startup.... I guess there is a small but existing ecosystem and community in those communities and you could get there.

- (Anti) Money laundering is a very hot topic in fintechs, and my experience is suggesting it is the most ML and AI intensive sector (trying to understand if a given transaction is related to money laundering is a non-supervised ML domain), there is a decent amount of graph algos involved and also the regulation is still quite archaic. I would say if positioned well, someone with backgrounds in legal and tech is a very valuable asset for any fintech.

I also believe your conviction could be turned into your strong asset - you already have a unique and genuine story to tell. If you are ok into public speaking, you could get a speaker slot any any AML|Legal + tech related conference.

I also believe going informal networking is more efficient then going through the formal recruitment process - this is where all your unique selling points would turn into disadvantages. Recruitment is designed to be scalable and you are an outlier there.

> I guess I'll never get a job coding due to ageism

I wouldn't assume that. Demand for coders with experience is through the roof at the moment, and from what I can tell the ageism issue is less severe in the UK than it is in the US.

I can see your conviction being an issue for data science jobs as such a job inherently requires trusting you to have access to the data. But perhaps you could find a job that's working on public datasets? Perhaps it would be worth considering trying to find a government / civil service job? They will have lots of public data, and probably have good non-discrimination policies too.

Random idea, have you tried applying at a university? Sometimes big research groups have additional employees (not Ph.ds or postdocs) who just assist in software development. Due to the low salaries they are always desperate for hiring. Also there are a lot of older employees in the IT departments at universities, so maybe ageism would be less of an issue. Not sure how they deal with ex-convicts.

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".

Are you in reach of London? If so, look at start-ups in London, there's a lot of demand for experienced devs, a lot, and while you might find ageism in some of them, in many others being an outlier or oddball is a positive advantage, really depends on the culture of the particular place. I speak as an old-git senior dev working in start-ups in London (and really rather enjoying it).

There seem to be quite a few employers in the UK that encourage applications from people with convictions:

https://www.ex-seed.co.uk/recommended-companies.html

Some of them are pretty big (e.g. Tesco) so I'd maybe try scanning their job pages and see if any of them have opening for entry level data scientists?

Lots of good advice in this thread. One thing I didn’t see anyone mention is how to explain the gap in your CV. Anecdotally, hiring committees are often sceptical about career gaps. The post says you got out of prison a couple of years ago. That’s recent enough that you probably can’t drop it off the end. (As people tend do for jobs that were decades ago.)

I can think of two broad options.

(1) Leave the gap as a gap. Accept that some companies will filter you out and many will ask about the gap at interview. You could prepare a good way to explain when asked and the story might do you favours. But springing a big surprise in an interview can go poorly.

(2) Include prison as an entry in your CV. Solves the gap problem and the “springing a surprise at interview” problem. Probably increases the “getting filtered out” problem, maybe by a lot. But it might also help you quickly discover which companies are a good fit.

Best of luck.

Try Timpsons - the cobblers.

They have a standing policy that 10% of their employee base must come from the formerly incarcerated. Most of these workers will be working in the shops, actually repairing the shoes, but I think the policy is across the business for roles in head office should be part of this commitment

I think with your legal skills you have a shot at the legal department, with programming definitely a shot in IT department.

Check out the careers page - one front page, it mentions ex-offenders. Give it a shot. Also, I've reached out to James Timpson, to see if he knows of any other UK employers who have similar commitments. Good luck!

https://www.timpson.co.uk/about/careers-at-timpson

Hi, interesting post. I don't think ageism is an issue - if you can get work done (and show it), you'll be hired. I'd suggest diving into a problem that interests you. I'm playing around with Companies House and Land Registry data at the moment. That's going to be an area you are well familiar with. Perhaps get in touch with some of the people working on OpenData stuff - Anna Powell-Smith might know someone who needs a data wrangler - https://twitter.com/darkgreener

I have a friend in a somewhat similar position - a highly educated, disbarred UK lawyer who did few years in prison. Drop me an email if you want me to put you in touch - me@alexmuir.com

One of my clients did 10 years for two charges which actually weren't true (don't mess with Texas, or at least not the people who help get officials elected!)

What we found was that many people do not care if you've been in prison, especially if you almost use that as a badge of honor. If you try to suppress it, it is used as a negative. Sure there will be people who will judge any ex-con immediately and not want to work with them, but there are also people who will judge any group (women, minorities, etc.).

So the prison time can be used to your advantage with many audiences. Resilience. Social pennance. Triumph over injustice. Whatever. Also, EVERY human worth working with understands that we all make mistakes. Some of them just cost us a lot more...

Most jobs are found by networking, regardless of the industry or skillset. So the biggest question is, what would you really like to do? I personally would argue against software development, just because I wish I had chosen something else in my life; but instead it has been the career that locks me in because it makes more money than other undeveloped skills I might have had.

This might be a strange suggestion, but perhaps there's something about your mistake you made some time ago which you learned from, and which you can use to provide a value to clients. Not saying this is the case (really), but if you were intentionally trying to shuffle money illegally and got caught, maybe you have advice for other people who are doing things that might get them in trouble. Especially with your technical interest, you might be able to help them avoid doing something stupid or even steer them away from trying. Or maybe you know better how to help them do it without getting caught. I'm not judging here, because some of the biggest global banks have made fortunes intentionally laundering money. I'm not aware of any of them being in jail...

More specifically, especially at your age, I would try to discover you passion. Then go with that. Yes we need money to live, but you can also move to cheaper places (and network/work via the internet).

I would set up my own shop under a limited company and try to land programming gigs. You can sidestep most personal checks that way.

Sorry to hear about your situation. It really sucks.

I don't have a specific answer to your question, but a couple of stray thoughts:

1. You could attempt to find an open source project of interest to you, and start contributing, make yourself part of the community, make some friends so to speak. If/when you later confide your secret, you're already known and proven yourself to the community, and will probably be received in a much more positive light.

Not sure where that leads you, but a network is always useful. Maybe you can raise money and get paid to maintain that software. Maybe your community will endorse you to your new employers.

2. You are more likely to be employed in projects that involve the penal system, in which case your handicap turns itself on its head, and becomes "insider experience". I've seen many startups and charities relating to this. Perhaps there's an ML project out there in this topic that would greatly benefit from your insight.

Look at getting involved in Salesforce. It's a cert driven technology and the cert process is actually helpful if you take the time to learn. Start with a Salesforce Administrator cert (few months to get it) and go from there. In the US, these jobs are starting in the $80K range and you can easily find remote and part time positions, maybe as a contractor for a smaller company where the background check won't come up.

Criminal record only a problem for the subset of businesses that care/check about that sort of thing, which is less than what others are saying (25 years experience in UK).

Over 60 and a junior programmer isn't easy, your salary expectations are possibly higher and your willingness to grind through problems is also probably lower, I know both of those would be the case for me, and mean no offence. So yes to be honest it will be a bit harder for you, however, its a job seekers market at present and with perseverance I don't doubt you'll find a job, and without that same grit you'd unlikely to last as professional engineer today anyways.

Most companies don't do all that leetcode stuff in UK, interviewing is still a pain though.

The smaller the organization, the more leeway they have to decide on cases like yours. Also, the less attached they are likely to be to the idea of hiring a 21-year old who will be more easily intimidated by their first boss, etc. Consider inquiring with smaller firms who need IT help. They value the independence of an older coder more, since there is not a large IT team (you might be alone), and they have less bureaucracy. Obviously, in certain industries there will be laws regarding who gets access to data that they don't have the ability to change, but in manufacturing for instance, or retail, this is unlikely the case.

Cryptocurrency startups!

Many of the company founders in this sector are skeptical of the current system of financial regulation. Tell them about your conviction up front. I’d bet many of them would be fascinated to hear your story.

Large corporate and government jobs are probably not available to you now. But, you can work for yourself as a consultant or contractor. There are pros and cons to being self-employed. Many people find it freeing, but maybe a bit less stable.

Criminal convictions just limit your job options. They are not a life sentence. If you have paid your debt to society and follow the law now, you can still have a great life. And, I hope you do.

Edit: I would also encourage you to never lie if asked about the conviction. If you lie, people will know and they won't trust you. Never lie about it.

Record: I'm not hiring now, but if I was, I wouldn't necessarily hold any of this against you. Heck, I wouldn't even know about it, since we don't do any kind of criminal screening. The main concern I'd have is whether or not you can do your job. If I did know about your past, I'd want to be sure that you would be clean moving forward. I think (and hope!) you overestimate the negative impact on your career.

Ageism: the main problem with hiring older people is that they are expensive relative to new grads. The other problem is that they are often perceived as being inflexible and lacking desire / drive.

Expense: It's a trade-off. Sometimes, you need the expertise, and it's worth the extra $$$. Sometimes, not. But in my opinion, it's almost always worth paying up (within reason) for experience. I tend to err on the side of reverse ageism, which is unfortunate for junior engineers who interview with me.

Drive: This perception is a false one, but it is pervasive in HR departments from what I've seen. If you can get through HR to the actual technical interview phase, I don't think this will hold you back, as you're clearly engaged and interested.

I think it US centric, but with the recent remote trend, you'll never know :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14911467 ( Launch HN: 70MillionJobs (YC S17) – Job board for people with criminal records )

In NL, banks have been expanding their anti-fraud division for years, maybe this would be a good fit?

Well, I'm not in your situation, only you know what is the "right" thing to do. If you don't feel comfortable working with children in their 20s and 30s, you can always try starting a business or working as a freelancer.

Here is a good starting point. https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/best-freelance-websites

Keep in mind that these types of websites always keep a relevant part of your money. Think of them as a Google Add investment. Try to create your own brand and make it clear that you have a website where they can contact you in the future.

Best of luck!

Doesn't Techstars have a program which specifically trains people to code while they are still in jail, and then helps them find work afterwards?

You could get in touch with the people who run that program, they could certainly provide leads.

Which is a great idea; because by giving someone a viable non-criminal way to make a living, they are under much less pressure to resort to non-legally sanctioned employment after release, i.e. after they have PAID their debt to society (assuming that they were actually guilty, and guilty of something which would incur a debt to society... neither of which is necessarily true for any given prisoner).

The pandemic has worked in your favour. I’ve got a >£500/day contract job at the moment with no background check, never met, they don’t know my age.

Start your own company (<£20 registration fee) then find outside IR35 contracts via LinkedIn recruiters: find a role that uses the intersection of your skills + experience — i.e: a data science contract with a law-adjacent firm. Very quick and easy, if you have skills then you’d have a job before the week is out.

Don’t reject yourself before anyone else has the chance to: the bar for these jobs is very, very low.

I'd say forget about getting "a job" and write your own apps, or do consultancy work where clients engage your company - not you.

Though I'd check about you being able to be a company director.

You don't even need to mention this stuff, and if you're not an employee I think the chances of being compelled to divulge it are low.

Especially if you're freelancing.

Secondly, if you are an employee, I think you can develop a good narrative to explain where you came from, where you are today, and how you've changed (etc), and how serious you are about putting it behind you.

You could even suggest some initial 'concessions' like a longer probation period for you, to prove your commitment and ally their potential concerns.

Hey.. ill just say look at kevin mitnick, his history and his current company (KnowBe4): he is an exconvict criminal hacker that nowadays gives security talks and has this great security company.

I'm not in the uk but here in Mexico most finTechs must adhere to a though AML regulations. In a past startup, my team had to implement an AML system to catch high risk transactions, flag them and eventually report them.

Maybe not as a full time employee, but you may be hirable as an expert consultant, with strong tech knowledge .

Best of luck!!

Can you email me? Check my profile and add an "a" between the dots in my email. I don't have a big gig right now but can tell you more and present myself.

I've been a contractor in the UK for a good few years, and never had to have a DBS check until I got a job that was primarily fixated in the finance industry. This includes when I have previously worked for a few different e-commerce sector clients. Data science is particularly used in Marketing companies, and I doubt they'll care about your previous convictions.

Setup a Linkedin profile, be open about your conviction it will reduce your long term stress once you land a job. Get involved answering tech questions on either Linkedin or Stack Exchange.... this will give your technical prowess authenticity. If you still can't get a job consider volunteering as a way to get a reference, again be open about your conviction.

Unless you want to work in finance/insurance/schools or something similar you won’t be asked to do a DBS - I’ve not been asked if I have any convictions for any role that wasn’t in finance.

There is a massive shortage of people now in data (engineering/scientists/etc)

Go contracting, they are much easier to get and once you have a couple under your belt it gets much easier.

A friend of mine had a class a drugs possession conviction that was unspent at the time he was applying for jobs as a graduate. He just lied on the form about criminal records. Small firms don't bother with checks. Obviously this doesn't apply to financial institutions etc who do check.

He's still employed now and has had a fairly decent career.

I did many interviews in my previous workplace, and we never cared about age when recruiting. My colleagues were between 20-something and up to retirement age (I'm now in my late twenties). The most exciting and valuable people I've worked with were the latter. The more senior people always brought a ton of knowledge to the table and were often able to draw parallels between the stuff we were solving now with things they had already solved 20 or 30 years ago. I would not worry about your age, and your troublesome past adds some spice and a different perspective to life, and I'm sure most companies will embrace your talent.

Feel free to send me a note on chris *at** dataespresso *dot** com, and I can share with you some info about my previous employer and possibly make an introduction. They have offices all over the UK, and I think you'd enjoy working there.

Is finding work for ex-convicts with coding skills a startup opportunity? Perhaps doing coding jobs for small businesses?

You write most importantly about ageism and then by the way about “dont fancy doing all the BS prep needed for interviews anyway”

I’ve worked with plenty of non management engineers in your age group in corporate America. Absolutely none of them got their job by trying to skip what the rest of us have to do to interview. There’s your problem

Try NICE Actimize and some of their competition. Financial crime detection software for financial service organisations. They need to read financial regulations from FCA / EU, SEC etc like MIFID 2 and turn them into pattern detection software. Your data science interest would also be very relevant there.

Just adding at the end, I reacted immediately to the matter of principle that my company would never take a principled or fundamental view of excluding you from consideration from employment, and in trying to make it as clear as possible, everything else fell from my conscious consideration - for the simple reason that you have a very strong fit indeed with the requirements that we have for the future. Now I have re read your post, please let me try both to play down our commercial potential at the same time as bidding you by all means do drop me a line. I can't discuss openly what needs to happen in our position, but on the face of it, if all goes well then I would probably be disappointed if we never found out what the possibilities may be. Whatever happens, very best wishes from me.

In the movies you’d be the guy who gets hired by MI5 to route out criminals syndicates etc…

Older recently released USA ex con here. I recently gave up finding a job and am trying to start my own business. At the halfway house the only job I could get was at a recycling plant (aka sorting garbage) and came up with a idea for really simple machine recognition that would eliminate that manual process and maybe even allow for powerful applications in the larger world. I have simpler short term projects to hopefully make money, but having a larger 'mission' helps me keep going on the bad days. Keep your head up and stay strong brother! I see you.

Seconding the suggestions that you may be able to turn your history into an asset in the right hands. It might be worth taking a look at some of the IT suppliers for the prison system. Unilink are one I am aware of - they do self serve kiosks that are in use in a number of prisons in the UK for stuff like canteen orders and visit booking. They look to be recruiting at the moment as well, so getting in touch can't hurt! https://www.unilink.com/vacancies/

> But I like stats ML and data so I'd love to try for that.

Building some reputation on an ML/AI/Data site like Kaggle might be helpful to get noticed.

https://www.timpson-group.co.uk/timpson-foundation/ex-offend... Timpson's have a very strong reputation for offerening employment to marginalized groups. I'm sure they have a back office operation that drives the shoe repair and key cutting shops so they may be worth investigating.

You don't even need to mention this stuff, and if you're not an employee I think the chances of being compelled to divulge it are low. Especially if you're freelancing.

Secondly, if you are an employee, I think you can develop a good narrative to explain where you came from, where you are today, and how you've changed (etc), and how serious you are about putting it behind you.

You could even suggest some initial 'concessions' like a longer probation period for you, to prove your commitment and ally their potential concerns.

You don't even need to mention this stuff, and if you're not an employee I think the chances of being compelled to divulge it are low. Especially if you're freelancing.

Secondly, if you are an employee, I think you can develop a good narrative to explain where you came from, where you are today, and how you've changed (etc), and how serious you are about putting it behind you.

You could even suggest some initial 'concessions' like a longer probation period for you, to prove your commitment and ally their potential concerns.

The problem is the system. A jail term is supposed to be the full "payment" of your "debt to society", but once you have a conviction on your record, you are doomed, regardless of whether or not you are at risk of recidivism.

https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2015/12/10/former-inmates-sti...

I am the founder & CEO of Judge.me and we're hiring senior software engineers.

No issue with your background as long as it has nothing violent in it.

Please see careers.judge.me if interested in working for us.

You should go web3.

There are incredibly few lawyers who know anything about crypto and huge demand.

You can also join DAOs etc and earn significant amounts of money for your effort versus who you are.

If you want to do web3 code go to https://buildspace.so/ and you'll be in in a few months max.

I'm happy to have a chat about some of our web3 stuff too, semantic [at] gmail

You could try freelance projects on upwork or fiverr. It will help fill out your resume and put food on the table while you're looking for a longer term position. If you get enough experience and/or develop the relationships you could start your own contracting company. Target small or medium sized businesses that may not check into you as an individual (versus the company).

Google "Ban the box" a scheme at least some employers including my own use. Which looks to not take into account in the early stages of the recruitment process about criminal convictions.

I am no expert on but I believe it works quite well. By allowing people in situations like yours, at least getting a chance to get a foot in the door.

Of course some roles may not be available.

Good luck in your search.

When it comes to ageism Work From Home certainly helps. All interviews are online and i wear wig during interviews and thankfully my skin is not wrinkled so much. Also with the current progress in AI i am betting on wrinkle free video masks softwares in the near future. I will never go back to full time office jobs.

Just one thing, regarding your age: your age brings wisdom to the table. Things that we have seen, encountered, overcome can never be replaced or thought by any kind of diploma. Most of my coworkers are 15-20 years younger than me. I'm the oldest one in the company and I don't feel discriminated.

As a coder who just got out of jail himself, I was never asked for a background check for any development job in the UK. Maybe if you were going for a military/intelligence contractor position, but otherwise, I've never even heard of a British firm doing a criminal background check.

Just my 2 pennies.

How's your Perl?

You can work via an contracting/recruiting agency very likely. Many of them dont do background checks and companies assume that they do. You probably have skills that would be relevant. You would just need to find the right one.

If any humor any allowed here, a manager of small would company would probably behave like this https://youtu.be/OYEMcX8dj5M

Sir, salute your effort. I'm no expert but have you thought about freelancing? Also you can start on Twitch if you haven't already. You can practice your skills there and meet and connect with people.

Can you get work permit for other European countries? There are more cultures that have different approach to ex-con than evangelicals, I'd try with some of that if you can

Go to India and work as a contractor. You'll be considered a huge deal due to your age and they won't know anything about your convictions.

Probably not what you want, but webdev skills are more marketable for freelancing, which seems your better chance of avoiding deep scrutiny.

Best of luck.

No problems with age. Hope to be hiring fairly soon - optimisation and statistics - happy to chat.

Learn how to write phone apps and sell them on the App Store. You can be your own boss.

Move to another country. You conviction history probably won't follow you there.

I worked fro the UK to the US. Did not have to do any DBS.

The most hassle has been taxes and HMRC.

Become a product expert. Salesforce admins are in huge demand. SAP is another.

I’d hire you - we all make mistakes.

Contact info in my profile if you fancy chatting more.

Start a Ltd company and use that to find work on Upwork.

What are your contact details? We are hiring.

Freelance software development and use an AI generated photo of a person in their mid 30s.

Ironic that the easily available jobs for you would be illegal underground ones.

I'm confused. You say that you're an ex-solicitor that is over 60 and served time for some "White Collar Stuff" as well as being convicted for money-laundering and you just got out of jail two years ago?

What exactly causes someone seemingly so successful to fall down so far? Greed? Drugs? Illness?

As far as the age situation goes, depending on how much over 60 you are...That could mean 80 and I wouldn't normally think that but well...but in any case if you are healthy you probably have another 10-15 good years ahead of you.

If you are currently working on completing a masters degree for interest sake, I assume this means you have a means of support in place and are not supporting any dependents.

I would think that looking into charitable organizations may be a good fit for someone with your past who is wanting to give back to society. I would not be looking for a career as I think unfortunately that ship has sailed and possibly sunken after crashing into the penitentiary's rocks.

Working or volunteering for a charity might make up for some of the "White Collar Stuff" in the grand scale of things (Especially if that "stuff" resulted in putting Widows and Orphans into the Poorhouse/Workhouse).