I'm so depressed and lost, friends. This has not been an Incredible Journey.
About two years ago I was raked over the coals and charged with a white collar computer crime. It was highly-publicized and described in a less shimmering light than what actually happened, as most press releases by the justice department are. My current arrangement with the government involves "special projects" on an as-needed basis, which is why I’m not incarcerated.
I was employed throughout the turmoil — being charged (though, never indicted), and ultimately pleading guilty to a single count of computer intrusion. (In this case, computer intrusion was defined by a cURL request, changing a single query param; no other charges were pursued.) My employer knew the details, kept me on as long as they could: they are currently operating in a shell capacity as of late Q2 due to being unable to raise a round.
During my search for work I’ve always disclosed that I have baggage and can’t pass a background check. Even with this, I’ve had offers put on the table, only for them to be terminated or rescinded at some point. It's not because I'm not telling the whole truth: when people ask, I tell; if they just say "oh what'd you do" and I say "well, according to the government, this, but this is the real story" it's found to be fascinating, sad, and annoying at the same time.
All I know is to be transparent with people, so manipulating the story or the details is difficult for me — I have autism, and my entire existence lives to be transparent and logical because that's just how I'm wired.
I really don’t know what to do at this point. I have rent that’s due, and nothing to fall back on: no assets to cash out (legal defense cleaned me out completely), I live off ramen like a founder, I have the bare minimum everything already. I don’t have any family to go to — my mother, and my only, passed away about this time a few years ago. My friends: well, I am usually the person that is supporting them when they are in crisis.
I am not used to being in crisis.
Being autistic makes it particularly difficult because I'm already so awful at advocating for myself. Perhaps the most frustrating part is that I outwardly appear neurotypical.
Freelancing sites like Upwork are probably my next go-to, even if it rattles my pride and my usual rate, at least I won’t be homeless and starving. I thought I’d post here in case anyone has any resources or ideas I haven’t thought of yet.
For the last 15 years I’ve been building MVPs and shaping up Ruby/Rails applications, working at some big-name Rails shops, many smaller YC companies, and everything in between. I'm active and relatively popular in the open-source Ruby/Rails world, and my side projects here have been met with great admiration. But I'm still in this position. With the tech stack I've pigeoned myself into, I’m unfortunately a one-trick in regard, but at this point I’ll take anything I can get. My next stop is retail, if I can even pass a background check.
Redacted resume, if anyone can help: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gZ_-spX5F2sIyJUuL7firQbWK9xNrSYZ69O_xackCjQ (context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37265203)
My email, for this journey, is lostrubyist@gmail.com
Get rid of the emojis.
The "Bugs and Features" section should not exist.
"Hi mom (very dead; very sad)" is completely inappropriate.
You say you are "Very detail oriented," which is incoherent, since someone who actually was detail-oriented would not have omitted the hyphen.
You say you are a "Voracious writer," which is incoherent, since someone who wrote a lot would know that that the word "voracious" relates to consumption, not production.
The story about sticking a fork in a light socket is inappropriate and weird.
This résumé is fundamentally inconsiderate. It appears to be intended to make people feel ill at ease. I strongly recommend you reconsider it.
ALSO: I don't know you, but I can't shake the suspicion that the résumé and the cURL incident are related, i.e., that there's fundamental TPJ issue preventing you from understanding how your actions will come across to others.
You think this is funny, but you sound like a nut. If you're convinced you're actually actually funny, go try stand up. Good luck.
If you are actually autistic like you say, that would explain why you don't get it.
Just cut that out. You can't really afford to turn people off when oh yeah I'm also a felon.
Perhaps also broaden horizons to typescript and (pains me to say this) react.
Good luck.
Edit: just looked at your resume. It is a bit ... fruity - might be worth sticking to something straight-laced and focusing specifically on skillset until you are out of the danger zone.
Can you form a company and do contracting work instead? It's more work to get work, but maybe they don't need the background check. The companies I've worked with seem to hire contractors more freely than employees.
I was a short order cook to fill the gap after graduating with my BSEE...
You have a lot of personality red flags front and center for some reason (e.g. "Hi mom (very dead; very sad)"). I'm not at all surprised you can't find a job with this resume.
I’m not too bad at concealing this stuff and promoting the good parts after a bit of practice. Let me know if you’d like a review and some advice.
The reality is that us neurodivergents are lucky if we find work where people accept us, and sometimes we have to suck it up and conform effectively in order to make a living. If most teams I’ve been on knew the real me, well, they’d find a way to disappear me pretty quickly. Sometimes you don’t want people to know the real you. That’s not an insult at all so much as an observation of how things go.
Either way, they certainly pay better than retail.
Best of luck, friend; I hope you're able to turn this challenge into an opportunity
They originally got fame because they were grad students trying to live off of tiny wages, so they calculated the most efficient foods in terms of calories per dollar. They have expanded since then, but the basic concept is still there.
A recruiter could be an excellent ally for you.
Are your friends even aware of your situation? Have you given them the chance to offer help?
Last time I found myself in a similar situation I told everyone about it. A friend of mine who is bootstrapping a startup offered me some work for enough money to cover my month's expenses. I'm sure his team could have done the work themselves, but he had the work and had the budget and wanted to help.
Given your legal circumstances, you might want to look into moving over to contracting/freelance/consulting anyway. You're less likely to deal with the taboo of your legal situation when engaging as a representative of a company on equal footing. Start with leveraging your network, then LI, then finally hit up Upwork and the like if you're still not finding anything.
2) Your resume feels a bit unprofessional; while I like authenticity, you can show that in person during the interview, I wouldn't recommend doing it in your resume. Your resume should be way more boring than it currently is.
Remember that the point of a resume is not to get hired, it's to get to an interview.
I would remove anything that "show's your personality" that's not an achievement.
Freelancing sites like Upwork are probably my next go-to,
even if it rattles my pride and my usual rate, at least I
won’t be homeless and starving.
It's time to call that in. Get your friends together and tell them that this time you need their help. Don't face this alone.
And judging from your resume - and I mean this with all kindness - you may need some mental health support. I don't know how it works where you are, but are there public or charitable options for this? Please: try to find some help. I suspect you may need this before you can find solutions to your more tangible problems.
I wish you well.
You’ll probably need to get a temporary job. I suggest a union job like warehouse worker so you can get benefits.
Don’t let your pride get in the way of contracting.
If you are really down to $16, you are in a dire situation.
I don't know where your family is, but you basically need to move in with them if your legal situation allows. Having $16 while living with family is basically a non issue. They'll feed you and make you get up in the morning.
Being down to $16 on your own is life threatening.
Get back home to family of some sort.
Getting work on up work isn't as easy as it sounds IMO.
When this happened to me at 24, I got a job in car sales even though I had a mechanical engineering degree. I made $8k the first month. $12k the second. 6 months in I had a pipeline and it figured out and averaged $18k a month for a few years. It saved me.
Personally I think the advice for going independent and doing contract work is your best bet, but I think you may be out of funds and time to do that even. You either need family or friends to lend you money, or move back in with family. Moving in with a friend won't cut it, because they aren't as happy to feed you.
> My friends: well, I am usually the person that is supporting them when they are in crisis.
At $16 you can involve them.
While you are there, have some of them help professionalize resume and business writings.
While you are there, have some of them help test run and clean up contractor interviews.
With a fraud conviction, you are never again going to get hired by an American company as an employee with access to code, financial systems, or any other sensitive systems. You need to accept that and move on.
But if you really do want to stick with programming, your only career path now is as a consultant. And since no consulting company will hire you as an employee, that means you create your own consulting company or relegate yourself to Upwork for the rest of your life. And quite honestly, considering the state of your resume when you first posted, and your apparent lack of awareness of the way your behavior is perceived by others, reaching out to prospective customers directly is probably a bad idea; you'll want a partner to handle business development or stick with Upwork. (Alternatively: indie game development, where your sense of humor could be an asset; see for example Baba is You.)
Spending time rewriting your resume is just procrastinating. If you only have $16, you won't be able to afford rent this month. That's what homeless shelters or friends' couches are for. It also sounds like you qualify for Section 8, but that process takes time. Local libraries offer charging ports and internet access, and you'll probably spend a few months working from your closest library. McDonalds and the like are always hiring, crucially don't care about a computer fraud conviction for lower-level positions, will let you start immediately (or the next day), and pay more than $16/hour in California, which will be enough to get you back on your feet.
Your legal defense cost you everything, and you pled out...over a single charge related to a curl request?
> [...] I’ve always disclosed that I have baggage and can’t pass a background check. Even with this, I’ve had offers put on the table, only for them to be terminated or rescinded at some point. It's not because I'm not telling the whole truth: when people ask, I tell; if they just say "oh what'd you do" and I say "well, according to the government, this, but this is the real story" it's found to be fascinating, sad, and annoying at the same time.
I call shenanigans. Investigating candidates like you is what I do for a living. Your offer rate is impressive, and yet they are constantly being rescinded. They're clearly discovering something about you during the background check that is worse than you're letting on, a process you are overly-unnerved by despite the pettiness of the conviction. Either this crime isn't as innocuous as you claim or you have an unfavorable history that extends beyond it. We've hired convicted sex offenders who were transparent and brought less drama to the table, so one wonders why you're having so much trouble with something so petty.
You also come across as someone acting out the textbook definition of autistic, and your narrative raises every single red flag of a GoFundMe grift. I don't believe a word of your story, and caution anybody considering getting involved to perform thorough due diligence.
I'd guess you're feeling stressed, and maybe your resilience (which is good) has you leaning on your sense of humor. And that humor can get mixed with stress and defensiveness, for some odd combinations.
The resume probably isn't the place for that resilience exercise. You have experience to be proud of, so try to focus on that, and not feel insecure. (Similarly, don't have "lost" in your email address.)
Think of your resume as a place to show competence and corporate decorum. Imagine that some of the people looking at your resume are looking for red flags more than anything else. Also, imagine people who want to hire you, but it's easier and lower risk for them, if the resume that corporate looks at and files away doesn't have red flags in it.
Also: sadly, ageism is a thing. Most techbros don't want to see "20+ years" of experience. Maybe cut the "BUZZWORDS" section entirely.
I'm not an expert on this, but you might want to just start with the "EXPERIENCE" section (with your current good bulletpoints, and keywords, for each job). Then add on a section after that for any selling points that can't be put under "EXPERIENCE", such as independent projects. Name, city, and contact info at top. And delete everything else. If it fits on one page, all the better.
Maybe think of your resume as projecting the confident image you'd like to have right now, not the resilient humor that feels necessary right now.
Good luck. There's good stuff in your resume, and you can do it.
Your head in the right place. You're doing whatever you need to do to keep your head above water. It sucks right now, but regardless of how things turn out, there will come a day where the things that seem insurmountable right now will just be a fading memory. That day will come sooner than you think.
I've been terminated three times, and my job history as of ~2020 looked a lot like yours. I have more experience, and a seven-year stint at a large company, but had gone through a series of jobs where I didn't stay more than a year or so. It definitely reduces the number of responses you'll get, but it's not a disqualifier in and of itself. My approach for dealing with that was to be very up front about it, and to make it a point to be articulate what I learned from each experience.
The first time, I was working for a very small company and joined as their second engineer. The first engineer was still there, and their entire experience before starting was a boot camp in another language. They did fine work all things considered, and were very productive. He was a good fit. I, on the other hand, was at the point in my career where I was transitioning away from "implementation" and toward "architecture". I wasn't as fast as he was and was making more money. When the time came that the owner let me know he was planning to let the first guy go, I raised my hand and volunteered to leave instead. It was a better decision for the company as a whole, and I believed my relationship with the owner was such that he'd appreciate my candor and treat me well. I was correct - while I was technically "fired for cause", I volunteered to help if he ever needed it and he continued to pay me until I found another job. That only took me about a month, but it was very, very helpful. I just told the unvarnished truth about that one, but highlighted that I better understood my own strengths and weaknesses along with the importance of finding a role that fit me well.
The second time was a combination of several things: burnout, financial details of an upcoming IPO, and my own mental health concerns. I was being pulled in so many directions I was missing deadlines, but I was missing them because I was "putting out fires" that were more important to the business. I was hired just before their options pool for new hires started to run dry. They reduced the grants to new employees and were looking for people they could let go to replenish it, as they couldn't expand the pool due to an upcoming (unannounced) IPO. The pressure from them forcing me out exacerbated the anxiety I was already having, and I ended up taking my accumulated vacation time to try to get my shit together. The company suggested that I file it as FMLA leave, which I did. When I returned, they assigned me a project that would take about two weeks to do correctly, then fired me when it wasn't completed after a week. That hurt, and it took a while to recover. I couched this one as my having learned that the importance of understanding as much as possible about the context of the business as a whole, and in clearly communicating both my own time estimates and any changes to those timelines that I encountered as early as possible.
The third time... well, I'm not sure. It was a small company, and my direct manager wasn't entirely fluent in English. There were a couple of cases where I misunderstood the requirements for something even after I put them in writing and got acknowledgement from him. I was told I was "let go" and not given a reason. I contacted HR, and they responded that they weren't able to provide me with any details either. I honestly don't know if I was technically fired or not. I filed for unemployment and received it, so I can only assume that I wasn't fired "for cause", but they could have also just decided it wasn't worth fighting. For that one, I approached it as "The conditions under which I was let go are still unclear to me. I've reached out to them to try to better understand so I could learn from the experience, but they've refused to help."
Basically... you can't change your history, but you can change how you talk about it. Treating it as something bad to overcome isn't helpful. Finding the positive in it completely changes the tone of the conversation, and ultimately that's what people remember afterward. Trying to hide it or downplay it is a much bigger red flag in my mind that acknowledging it and using it to highlight your strengths.
As a newcomer you'll waste hours and maybe even money (you have to spend in-platform 'credits' to submit proposals) on proposals that won't even be read most of the time.