I was homeless for about a year and a half. The first 6 months were spent sleeping on the streets, and when possible, in a shelter - but realistically, in the area where I was, most shelters were not really a safe place to be, and the few that were filled up early. The remaining time, I crashed at a drug dealers house and helped sell in return.
I didn't have much more than the belongings that fit in a mid-sized duffle bag and for a while I mostly survived by cleaning bathrooms at coffee shops before opening hours where the employees didn't really want to do that part of their job - and in return I would get some coffee and a bite to eat. Any money I did get, I saved up.
Once I had access to the internet again, and at least a warm place to sleep at night that I considered safe, I started making contacts on IRC. Eventually I had enough money to relocate across country via Greyhound, a couch to crash on when I arrived and prospects for a new beginning. I quickly jumped from $25k to $40k to $60k etc and am currently at $160k with a whole new life and an amazing career ahead of me.
It's possible to get out of the situation if what got you there isn't addiction or mental illness - the system does little to help, and without being resourceful it's easy to get stuck in that position for a long time. But it can be done. Granted, I never had the ex-con/drug dealer status haunting me in background checks, but I have been upfront in interviews before and still got the job. Greatest accomplishment in life? Escaping homelessness.
I've spoken openly of my 30 months sleeping rough on the streets of the UK. I may have "escaped" homelessness, but the mental scars accumulated whilst on the street do still haunt me. I feel it, the sense of worthlessness, the self-doubt. There's a feeling that I shouldn't be alive let alone here in this workplace or surrounded by good people, a feeling that I don't quite belong.
One can put a roof over one's head, get a job, that leads to a career, obtain an income that is above-average... but can one truly escape something as traumatic as being homeless for any sustained period of time (covering 1 Winter at least)?
I'm less sure on that. I live in the hope that I'm wrong.
And of course, Christmas comes around and people return to family and those who don't are the waifs and strays, an annual reminder that we're not the same.
>It's possible to get out of the situation if what got you there isn't addiction or mental illness - the system does little to help, and without being resourceful it's easy to get stuck in that position for a long time. But it can be done.
Glad it worked out in the end for you!
I have a small issue though with the "it can be done" thing.
Getting to have 10 top 10 hits at the charts can be done too. The question is how easy it is, and what percentage will be able to do it.
The reason I'm saying that is that, while giving the message "it can be done" is good and can help people not give up in a similar situation, it can also give the false idea that it's a workable situation when it might not be save for very few outliers (and even for them, mostly when the right "stars" and chances are aligned, and not just due to their determination and work).
This also gives some people a chance to overlook the issue, thinking ("it can't be done, so people who don't do it are just lazy, not trying enough, thus, we don't need to help them").
For such issues who plague thousands, people who have escaped can often be the worse sources to learn about the difficulty of the situation -- because they tend to generalize their outlier experience (and sometimes minimize the chances that helped them escape), and sometimes look back at others still in the same situation as not trying enough (since that will justify their self-image as them being "more worthy/resourceful/persistent" than them).
I too have a somewhat similar, but not quite same story myself - I spent 2 years homeless, but I had a roof above my head from various friends throughout that time. I was still poor though - nothing homed that in more than being so poor that one week, I ate oatmeal almost exclusively for a week. I had sold most of my material possessions as well, excepting my clothes and desktop/laptop & monitor.
Somehow I mustered up the will to continue job searching throughout that whole time, even putting up with a really crappy situation at one point where I had to sleep in the same room as a former friend who would masturbate loudly at night, thinking I was asleep (but the noise would be what would wake me up).
Job searching alone did not prove fruitful in my case - after 2 years, I pivoted into teaching myself programming, and entered the web development profession a half year later with a modest ~$50k salary for my first job. Slightly more than 3 years later, I am now at a $160k salary with a career that shines brightly with substantial open source software work.
Fear of being caught blindsided & not prepared propels me to continue to work hard and develop my career. The last thing I want is to regress into that situation again.
Great story indeed, and really inspirational. But that just reaffirms what other commenters already pointed out: the problem is not homelessness per se, but a (unfair) criminal record that doesn't mix really well with a job in security. What I find incredible, though, it's that this record still persists after he has been cleared of the past accusations.
Even the president is in favor of punishing people who have been suspected of crimes; it seems to be a popular position that people are not really innocent until proven guilty.[1][2] I find this trend deeply troubling, but it does seem at least somewhat popular.
#2 is at least partly due to the fact the if the companies allowed him an opportunity to refute the claim, they would be incurring various legal liabilities. The rules meant to protect job candidates often result in them being passed over at the first stage where it is realized they are 'complex' cases.
In a roundabout way, this is related to the big data world we live in, even though background checks & credit checks are not new.
From the perspective on a motor insurance company, for example, they don't need to serve everyone. If they can classify the world of potential drivers as high, medium & low risk, that's enough. Whether or not an individual falls into one of these categories "incorrectly" is not important, they're average figures and as long as they are "correct" for the people who take out a policy all is well. For an individual that ends up in the "high risk" category, it's inequitable and unfair. They might share characteristics with "truly" high risk individuals but not in ways that actually affect their chances of causing on an accident they just happened to be in a statistical cluster.
The BMI is an interesting example too. Weight bands for height works fine when looking at a population. You can fall into an obese weight/height band by being heavily muscled or broad bodied. Mike Tyson at his youngest, slimmest prime would have been classed as obese and very obese later in his career. Possibly "extremely obese" between matches. This is a good example because you can easily se how BMI works well enough for evaluating insurance risk but not for being "fair" for our puny human defections of fairness.
We are moving to a world of more data and more data based decision making. Online advertising for example, has transformed a big industry to one that is mostly driven by data based decision making.
The side effects of this will be many. There are certainly efficiency gains because that statistics are predictive. Having been arrested or serving time is probably predictive of risk, even if a conviction is overturned. There are also feedback loops that we don't want, biases and "traps." A homeless person is obviously high risk in that he shares measurable characteristics with other homeless people and they (almost by definition) actualize those risks.
There are real society-affecting risks here. It could become more expensive to be poor, as credit and financial services becomes a bigger part of how we purchase things.
Not to say that the system is working correctly, but from a quick glance to the comment section of the article, I'm not really sure if either of these is the real deal breaker. If it actually is him responding in the comments, he seems incapable of writing basic sentences. He also plays the race card several times in his commentary. For someone struggling to get a job, I find it utterly mind-boggling he would attach his name to comments like:
> ,,And ME thinks ,,,That maybe YOU should THINK !!! LOLOL
> Again ,,,Your Kind ,,convict MY kind ,,,ALL the time !!!!!
> You probably have a hard time accepting anything from a Black Person
There are countless more. From my perspective, most (definitely not all) are in response to non-inflammatory commentary. If I were HR and a basic google search turned this up, I wouldn't touch him with a 10 foot pole, let alone even bother with an actual background check. I use full sentences and am reasonably respectful with my username as "lloyd-christmas". If I used my real name, I'd likely be even more PC/respectful/cautious.
For someone that has first hand experience in regards to the impact of background checks, he's sure not making it any easier on himself.
The other side of the coin is that a manager of a company that allows an ex-convict to work in sensible areas can and will be held accountable if something goes wrong.
If you were a person that has put 20+ years of hard work into your career at some company would you be willing to risk it all (and by extension the life you built for your family) to put someone who as been convicted for hacking or fraud in the past in a position where he/she could cause considerable damage?
I think this can only be solved by laws that forbid employers to use or acquire this data. In that case no one could touch you for giving someone that chance.
The question is if the outcome of such a law would be positive and where there should be exceptions to it. (for example convicted hackers being employed by banks)
> A crappy background check system that reports him as an ex-con/drug dealer when he's been exonerated
The article states:
> Three months after his conviction, though, the King County deputy whose testimony led to Simmons’ conviction, James Schrimpsher, was fired for dishonesty in a different drug case [..] Simmons insists he didn’t sell drugs and believes he was profiled [..] he served the full prison term at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, plus a year of probation when he got out.
This means it has not been exonerated. The background check superficiality is not what this case is about.
The problem in this case is a system where it's not easy for a convicted person receive a retrial unless the defendant has big money.
> That the deputy was being investigated for lying at the same time as Simmons’ trial had not been disclosed to Simmons’ attorneys.
The truth is we've gone from a system where you are innocent until guilty to guilty to proven innocent [for everything that matters]. It really is a sad transformation.
Not sure what's the problem with drug dealing? If he was selling weed, then he was in fact doing a public service against fat cats in pharma industry. Also nobody is forced to buy drugs.
This is part of the larger tech hiring culture of "it's better to miss hiring someone good than to hire someone who might be bad." The guy in the story is hit especially hard by this, but HR's paradigm of fear/incompetence/inability to manage people after they're hired is a big piece of it.
It's not ever easy for someone classified as an ex-con to get a job, but tech discriminates more than most other professions.
Well, HR / recruiters are a bit worse in most (tech?) professions; they seem really lazy when vetting people and just go for the stereotype great employee while discarding everyone else. So the only way back would be to go for a very small company in a smaller town. In the EU he would be hired for sure; I would hire him. I never cared about previous experiences/age/gender/race only about current skills and effort and we did very well by it.
This just backs up why I think Finland's recent move[1] to give every citizen a basic salary is the way forward.
You'd then give everyone that basic level of security and enable them to progress in life. Yes there are potential flaws with the Finnish scheme (some people on benefits may ultimately lose out, and millionaires getting the same amount as poor people) - but crucially it would probably stop most, if not all, of cases like this, where someone can't escape the pull of homelessness even with opportunity there.
Germany has something called "Grundsicherung", which is even below unemployment benefits, but can be gotten by anyone, even without having a place of residence. That means if your homelessness is not based on mental issues or being too proud to accept help, you have at least a possibility to get out.
Take someone who has already demonstrated the know how to make money selling illicit drugs and, as punishment, ban them from legitimate employment for life... That must be super effective! /s
Why don't wrongfully convicted people Sue for damages and use the lawsuit to get there records purged? I sure there is a reason why people don't in general I'm just not clear what exactly this reason is. Anyone in the know care to elucidate me?
Poor people have trouble paying lawyers. Involuntarily homeless people tend to have more pressing issues than starting an extended legal action. Suing the state over a matter of principal is de facto if not de jure often amounts to little more than a luxury.
Why is he failing background checks if he's never been non-wrongfully convicted? Genuinely curious to hear from anyone with experience on the employer side of this.
There are two kinds of background checks. The official kind done by a dedicated team with access and knowledge to retrieve city, state and federal data. And the HR kind, where someone without an investigative background and education spends ten minutes doing web searches and online "stalking" to see if the candidate has any untoward elements in their past.
The first kind costs hundreds dollars per candidate. The second can be done for about twenty bucks worth of time. You can guess which approach most companies use.
It's easier on most candidates, too, because a real background check requires them to fill out paperwork. An ad hoc one they may never know about...unless they fail.
Likely the department of corrections number somehow coming up so it shows that he spent time in prison. Even if it shows he was exonerated, many people will sadly lose interest right then because they get a vibe the applicant is 'in with the wrong people'. The US is terribly cruel to people that have done prison time, regardless of whether or not they were supposed to be there.
Even if you are found not guilty or not convicted of a crime, if you have been arrested or gone to court these things can show up in public records. These records could be expunged with some effort, depending on the laws in the jurisdiction. Such expungement orders should clear someone from public databases. If it hasn't been expunged though, the info will still show up.
Even if dismissed or wrongfully convicted, any mention of anything criminal would cause concern. It's that idea of "where there's smoke there's fire" type of thinking that seems to go on around this kind of stuff. When other candidates exist without the 'concerning circumstances,' why take a risk?
For better or worse, it makes sense. Seeing that someone was arrested for crack for any reason would raise suspicion. There would be little motivation to look into further details once seeing "arrested for crack" pop up in a search about a candidate.
He could try working as a freelancer, on websites like Elance/Upwork or something and make some money. Then he could use that money move out of the homeless shelter and then look for a decent job.
Now that he's in the NYT he will probably be OK. The question is what to do about other people in similar situations.
I once received an application from someone quite famous. But he was famous because of a criminal case against him which was ongoing. We let this scare us off, because as a small company we didn't want the exposure if we did hire him. I'm not sure it was a very moral decision, but does your startup have time to deal with that?
Are there charities set up that could help with something like this? I mean it would literally take less than $5k to get this guy set up. A couple suits of decent clothes, a security deposit and first months rent for an apartment, a bus ticket to wherever his job is.
That is a bargain for removing a homeless person from the system. Local governments and shelters should be jumping at the chance to do it.
One thing I'm curious about is how he actually ended up homeless. Before the conviction, it seems like he was doing very well (BMW, townhouse).
Why did he not have sufficient savings to survive after he got out of prison?
(Not trying to blame him for anything, trying to plan for my own life. I strive to maintain sufficient savings so that I would never be homeless even if I never worked again.)
Why don't they do the background check before the interviews so they don't waste eachother's time and money just to later have a background check fail. Does a background check costs more than an interview and paying for the flights?
Not a for a single candidate, if you however need to do it for all candidates before they are evaluated it will be much costlier :). Doing it after the interview for few candidates is much cheaper.
Also it may take weeks to do the full check, you will loose the candidate if you wait for so long to do the assessment .
It's a bit weird though. Why couldn't he just rent a house/borrow money to pay for a temporary residence, then pay off using his paycheck? If his case was indeed already listed as exonerated, then he should be able to at least take some loans. But indeed, whetehr he was truly guilty or not, the stigma put on people via even just one conviction is just horrible. This seems such an ancient and brutal practice in today's world.
I believe the only clear way for him is to leave the US and land some international job at some place good as Australia or Sing. Yes, the US will loose a good cyber cop. But as you can see here, this is entirely the US systematic problem. Simmons does not deserve to serve lifetime living in the US, struggling for foodstamps.
[+] [-] exhomeless|10 years ago|reply
I didn't have much more than the belongings that fit in a mid-sized duffle bag and for a while I mostly survived by cleaning bathrooms at coffee shops before opening hours where the employees didn't really want to do that part of their job - and in return I would get some coffee and a bite to eat. Any money I did get, I saved up.
Once I had access to the internet again, and at least a warm place to sleep at night that I considered safe, I started making contacts on IRC. Eventually I had enough money to relocate across country via Greyhound, a couch to crash on when I arrived and prospects for a new beginning. I quickly jumped from $25k to $40k to $60k etc and am currently at $160k with a whole new life and an amazing career ahead of me.
It's possible to get out of the situation if what got you there isn't addiction or mental illness - the system does little to help, and without being resourceful it's easy to get stuck in that position for a long time. But it can be done. Granted, I never had the ex-con/drug dealer status haunting me in background checks, but I have been upfront in interviews before and still got the job. Greatest accomplishment in life? Escaping homelessness.
[+] [-] buro9|10 years ago|reply
I've spoken openly of my 30 months sleeping rough on the streets of the UK. I may have "escaped" homelessness, but the mental scars accumulated whilst on the street do still haunt me. I feel it, the sense of worthlessness, the self-doubt. There's a feeling that I shouldn't be alive let alone here in this workplace or surrounded by good people, a feeling that I don't quite belong.
One can put a roof over one's head, get a job, that leads to a career, obtain an income that is above-average... but can one truly escape something as traumatic as being homeless for any sustained period of time (covering 1 Winter at least)?
I'm less sure on that. I live in the hope that I'm wrong.
And of course, Christmas comes around and people return to family and those who don't are the waifs and strays, an annual reminder that we're not the same.
[+] [-] coldtea|10 years ago|reply
Glad it worked out in the end for you!
I have a small issue though with the "it can be done" thing.
Getting to have 10 top 10 hits at the charts can be done too. The question is how easy it is, and what percentage will be able to do it.
The reason I'm saying that is that, while giving the message "it can be done" is good and can help people not give up in a similar situation, it can also give the false idea that it's a workable situation when it might not be save for very few outliers (and even for them, mostly when the right "stars" and chances are aligned, and not just due to their determination and work).
This also gives some people a chance to overlook the issue, thinking ("it can't be done, so people who don't do it are just lazy, not trying enough, thus, we don't need to help them").
For such issues who plague thousands, people who have escaped can often be the worse sources to learn about the difficulty of the situation -- because they tend to generalize their outlier experience (and sometimes minimize the chances that helped them escape), and sometimes look back at others still in the same situation as not trying enough (since that will justify their self-image as them being "more worthy/resourceful/persistent" than them).
[+] [-] Bahamut|10 years ago|reply
Somehow I mustered up the will to continue job searching throughout that whole time, even putting up with a really crappy situation at one point where I had to sleep in the same room as a former friend who would masturbate loudly at night, thinking I was asleep (but the noise would be what would wake me up).
Job searching alone did not prove fruitful in my case - after 2 years, I pivoted into teaching myself programming, and entered the web development profession a half year later with a modest ~$50k salary for my first job. Slightly more than 3 years later, I am now at a $160k salary with a career that shines brightly with substantial open source software work.
Fear of being caught blindsided & not prepared propels me to continue to work hard and develop my career. The last thing I want is to regress into that situation again.
[+] [-] gabalese|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RealGeek|10 years ago|reply
What job do you do now? What skills / education helped you get the job?
[+] [-] sdrothrock|10 years ago|reply
1. A crappy background check system that reports him as an ex-con/drug dealer when he's been exonerated.
2. Companies using those systems and judging him without giving him a chance to speak up.
[+] [-] nickff|10 years ago|reply
#2 is at least partly due to the fact the if the companies allowed him an opportunity to refute the claim, they would be incurring various legal liabilities. The rules meant to protect job candidates often result in them being passed over at the first stage where it is realized they are 'complex' cases.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
[+] [-] netcan|10 years ago|reply
From the perspective on a motor insurance company, for example, they don't need to serve everyone. If they can classify the world of potential drivers as high, medium & low risk, that's enough. Whether or not an individual falls into one of these categories "incorrectly" is not important, they're average figures and as long as they are "correct" for the people who take out a policy all is well. For an individual that ends up in the "high risk" category, it's inequitable and unfair. They might share characteristics with "truly" high risk individuals but not in ways that actually affect their chances of causing on an accident they just happened to be in a statistical cluster.
The BMI is an interesting example too. Weight bands for height works fine when looking at a population. You can fall into an obese weight/height band by being heavily muscled or broad bodied. Mike Tyson at his youngest, slimmest prime would have been classed as obese and very obese later in his career. Possibly "extremely obese" between matches. This is a good example because you can easily se how BMI works well enough for evaluating insurance risk but not for being "fair" for our puny human defections of fairness.
We are moving to a world of more data and more data based decision making. Online advertising for example, has transformed a big industry to one that is mostly driven by data based decision making.
The side effects of this will be many. There are certainly efficiency gains because that statistics are predictive. Having been arrested or serving time is probably predictive of risk, even if a conviction is overturned. There are also feedback loops that we don't want, biases and "traps." A homeless person is obviously high risk in that he shares measurable characteristics with other homeless people and they (almost by definition) actualize those risks.
There are real society-affecting risks here. It could become more expensive to be poor, as credit and financial services becomes a bigger part of how we purchase things.
[+] [-] lloyd-christmas|10 years ago|reply
> ,,And ME thinks ,,,That maybe YOU should THINK !!! LOLOL
> Again ,,,Your Kind ,,convict MY kind ,,,ALL the time !!!!!
> You probably have a hard time accepting anything from a Black Person
There are countless more. From my perspective, most (definitely not all) are in response to non-inflammatory commentary. If I were HR and a basic google search turned this up, I wouldn't touch him with a 10 foot pole, let alone even bother with an actual background check. I use full sentences and am reasonably respectful with my username as "lloyd-christmas". If I used my real name, I'd likely be even more PC/respectful/cautious.
For someone that has first hand experience in regards to the impact of background checks, he's sure not making it any easier on himself.
[+] [-] DominikR|10 years ago|reply
If you were a person that has put 20+ years of hard work into your career at some company would you be willing to risk it all (and by extension the life you built for your family) to put someone who as been convicted for hacking or fraud in the past in a position where he/she could cause considerable damage?
I think this can only be solved by laws that forbid employers to use or acquire this data. In that case no one could touch you for giving someone that chance.
The question is if the outcome of such a law would be positive and where there should be exceptions to it. (for example convicted hackers being employed by banks)
[+] [-] ithkuil|10 years ago|reply
The article states:
> Three months after his conviction, though, the King County deputy whose testimony led to Simmons’ conviction, James Schrimpsher, was fired for dishonesty in a different drug case [..] Simmons insists he didn’t sell drugs and believes he was profiled [..] he served the full prison term at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, plus a year of probation when he got out.
This means it has not been exonerated. The background check superficiality is not what this case is about.
The problem in this case is a system where it's not easy for a convicted person receive a retrial unless the defendant has big money.
> That the deputy was being investigated for lying at the same time as Simmons’ trial had not been disclosed to Simmons’ attorneys.
Point 2 still holds.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fweespeech|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] elcct|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dr_tldr|10 years ago|reply
It's not ever easy for someone classified as an ex-con to get a job, but tech discriminates more than most other professions.
[+] [-] tluyben2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chatwinra|10 years ago|reply
You'd then give everyone that basic level of security and enable them to progress in life. Yes there are potential flaws with the Finnish scheme (some people on benefits may ultimately lose out, and millionaires getting the same amount as poor people) - but crucially it would probably stop most, if not all, of cases like this, where someone can't escape the pull of homelessness even with opportunity there.
1 - http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/finland-plans-to-give-ev...
[+] [-] kuschku|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tuxracer|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crimsonalucard|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brudgers|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrockway|10 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit...
[+] [-] analyst74|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zodiac|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jzwinck|10 years ago|reply
The first kind costs hundreds dollars per candidate. The second can be done for about twenty bucks worth of time. You can guess which approach most companies use.
It's easier on most candidates, too, because a real background check requires them to fill out paperwork. An ad hoc one they may never know about...unless they fail.
[+] [-] hueving|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jupiter90000|10 years ago|reply
Even if dismissed or wrongfully convicted, any mention of anything criminal would cause concern. It's that idea of "where there's smoke there's fire" type of thinking that seems to go on around this kind of stuff. When other candidates exist without the 'concerning circumstances,' why take a risk?
For better or worse, it makes sense. Seeing that someone was arrested for crack for any reason would raise suspicion. There would be little motivation to look into further details once seeing "arrested for crack" pop up in a search about a candidate.
[+] [-] alakkadshaw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meesterdude|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jzwinck|10 years ago|reply
I once received an application from someone quite famous. But he was famous because of a criminal case against him which was ongoing. We let this scare us off, because as a small company we didn't want the exposure if we did hire him. I'm not sure it was a very moral decision, but does your startup have time to deal with that?
[+] [-] lisper|10 years ago|reply
http://graceofgodmovie.com/
[+] [-] imgabe|10 years ago|reply
That is a bargain for removing a homeless person from the system. Local governments and shelters should be jumping at the chance to do it.
[+] [-] jschwartzi|10 years ago|reply
If that's all he needs though, where's the Kickstarter?
[+] [-] morgante|10 years ago|reply
Why did he not have sufficient savings to survive after he got out of prison?
(Not trying to blame him for anything, trying to plan for my own life. I strive to maintain sufficient savings so that I would never be homeless even if I never worked again.)
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] d_theorist|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spyder|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manquer|10 years ago|reply
Also it may take weeks to do the full check, you will loose the candidate if you wait for so long to do the assessment .
[+] [-] jschwartzi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brotoss|10 years ago|reply
That he's getting $100k offers pending background checks and failing them?
Bad title.
[+] [-] SZJX|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkaye|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokoon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ommunist|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cshimmin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgio|10 years ago|reply