Ask HN: Career change for elderly UK ex-convict?

[throwaway301010]

I'm looking to get back into an IT career but I have lots of serious impediments. I'd like to ask HN readers for their views on my hopeless(?) situation.

Am an ex-solicitor. I got out of UK jail a couple of years ago, I did some whitecollar stuff and I have a permanently un-unspent conviction for money-laundering. I'm over 60 with law & a science degree plus several post-grad qualifications. I'm currently doing a masters in data science for interest. I used to be a programmer back in the 80s and keep up with the topic (Erlang, OCaml, F#, Python Golang etc).

I'll never pass jobs with DBS checks due to convictions. plus I guess I'll never get a job coding due to ageism (I'd wondered about COBOL but banks and government wouldn't take me), and I dont fancy doing all the BS prep needed for interviews anyway. But I like stats ML and data so I'd love to try for that. But the age and convictions are a serious problems.

I don't imagine anyone on HN has anyone with my collection of problems but does anyone have any suggestions that might help?

[bartread]

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!

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Thanks so much for that, Bart!

Never met you, but it sounds like you are a decent sort.

In some cases, being an ex-con can actually be an advantage. I know quite a few, and some of them are amazingly clever folks (some are total dumbasses, too). Seeing what Savanta does, it might be a great idea to consider a non-standard (but also highly educated, and highly experienced) content expert.

Good luck to everyone.

[setgree]

Something I just learned about age discrimination: people over 40 are a protected group in the US, but otherwise it's perfectly legal [0]:

> The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. It does not protect workers under the age of 40, although some states have laws that protect younger workers from age discrimination. It is not illegal for an employer or other covered entity to favor an older worker over a younger one, even if both workers are age 40 or older.

So in case anyone was wondering, it's perfectly kosher to say that being 60+ "may even be an advantage for many roles"

[0] https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination

[throwaway301010]

That's really awesome. So nice to see someone willing to at least give a man a shot! Will be in touch.

[wooptoo]

> As long as you're based in the UK your precise location is also unimportant

Is this a legal requirement or is it company policy?

[nefitty]

Thanks for inspiring some hope in me Bart.

I think today will be a good day.

[allenleee]

Respect. This is so awesome.

[anm89]

this really brightened my day.

hope it works out

[TamDenholm]

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.

[mpeg]

In finance/fintech and anything related, DBS checks are very common in the UK.

FWIW I've been checked by several employers throughout my career – and generally none of them warned me beforehand, I just got the letter from DBS letting me know they had

[ethbr0]

Great advice and wholly agreed that a recruiter is the way to go. I'm more familiar with the US than UK employment market, but if things work similarly, this is the obvious path.

1) Good recruiters will bypass some of the HR confusion (misunderstanding team requirements, etc)

2) You have a valuable set of skills and are looking for a specific type of job. Recruiters are better about this than blind applying

Furthermore, the "What industry?" question will be an excellent opportunity to avoid processes where your conviction is likely to impact. People have legitimate reasons for wanting to avoid heavily-regulated industries (boring, slow), so it's not an odd question.

I would say if you go through recruiters, be aware (in the US at least) there are good recruiters (who have a line on positions and work hard) and bad recruiters (who are trying to bootstrap a rep by "representing" as many people exclusively as they can). Be extremely suspicious before signing any exclusivity contracts with one.

[Nextgrid]

To be fair, a lot of contracts have a clause to confirm that you don't have any unspent convictions. Granted, you can lie and indeed it probably will never be discovered but that's fraud.

[123pie123]

good answer, I would say that ageism is definately reducing in the UK

one extra tip would to try and get some experience that you can put on your CV. eg do some opensource programming - looks good

[robocat]

OP will have solicitor on their CV followed by a period of unemployment. Also if their name is Googled, it seems likely their conviction or disbarment would show up.

I would expect that they need to be honest about the conviction when asked. There are a lot of ways to present that as a positive. For example, saying that they will be very committed to a position because it is so difficult to get a job.

[_joel]

I've been working in the UK for just as long, if not longer, I've gone through multiple DBS checks.

[cloogshicer]

Great answer, can only confirm this, even for employment, not only contracting. Go for it!

[sztanko]

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.

[MrDunham]

this is a fantastic answer for several reasons and I’m commenting because an upvote alone just doesn’t do it justice.

> I also believe your conviction could be turned into your strong asset - you already have a unique and genuine story to tell

I so love this. It reminds me of Frank Abagnale, Jr., whose story is told in “Catch me if you can“. He went from convicted felon to savior of the banking industry and implemented a ton of solutions to the very things he exploited.

> you could get a speaker slot any any AML|Legal + tech related conference.

this is also a wonderful suggestion that could help you rapidly reframe your story.

> I also believe going informal networking is more efficient then going through the formal recruitment process

Can confirm this is crucial. I am the son of an executive recruiter who placed a ton of CFOs into midsize startups back in the dot-com days. When Mom was teaching me how to land jobs she suggested only using job boards and the like to get a feel for who is hiring and then networking in.

Would be even more important with special circumstances like yours. People hire people, not resumes for the most part.

I also know at least one company who specifically hires only ex-cons (in construction so this isn’t directly relevant to you) to help them get on their feet and keep them from repeat offending out of desperation.

----- The rest of this post is wonderful too but I don’t have much more to add to it.

The nice thing about jobhunting is you only need one person to say yes.

Reframing your problem into an asset and thinking about how you could uniquely help the industry could set you apart in a positive way.

[throwaway301010]

Great suggestions & solid advice. Informal networking may work well if intergated with a speaker slots (I'm a decent public speaker) but I'll need to devise a strategy.

[nicoburns]

> 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.

[shubb]

My experience of UK government and government contractor jobs is that they follow a recruitment standard where they are much more likely to check convictions. Many need some low level security clearance too which would be a problem.

On the other hand for more generic startup jobs in the UK, you might not even be asked about criminal history except "so what is this period on your CV", and they are much less likely to care as long as you tell a good story about why it won't happen again.

I'd lean towards smaller companies as far from government and finance as possible...

[mkdirp]

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

> I wouldn't assume that.

I can't add a lot to this discussion, but my colleague, who is in his 50s, got hired around the same time as me here in the UK.

[numerik_meister]

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.

[throwaway301010]

Unis are more open to inclusive hiring from what I hear so that may be worth exploring, but they also have safeguarding issues as they have young people there - though as a money launderer not a kiddy-fiddler I'm not sure how worried they be, unless they'd worry about moral corruption!

[milliams]

We post these kinds of jobs on the Society of Research Software Engineering website at https://society-rse.org/careers/vacancies/

I can't speak for how any of their HR departments would treat your case though.

[buro9]

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".

[dmw_ng]

> 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.

What is this based on? I've had 2 checks in 19 years of working privately, including contracting for 15 of those, many of which were outside the UK. Nobody in the chain, not HR, hiring managers or recruiters are incentivized to examine a candidate deeply once they've been accepted for a role, and for contracting HR rarely even enters the picture.

In both cases where a check was carried out, it was for a company I could not recommend working for regardless of income. One of these resulted in the only time I have needed a solicitor to ensure timely payments. From this angle failing DBS sounds like it might be a blessing in disguise for OP

[tomjohnneill]

It's very likely organisations in the charity sector will need to run DBS checks, even just for looking at back-end systems/data.

[jjgreen]

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).

[EveYoung]

I fully agree, I don't think many London companies can afford to reject good candidates only because of age. Recently, I had the exact opposite experience, where an older candidate turned down an offer because they didn't want to report to a significantly younger manager.

[arethuza]

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?

[throwaway301010]

Good list! Thanks. I'll run through those. As you say, some big names.

[ellen364]

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.

[dorkwood]

Are gaps really that much of an issue? What about freelancers, for example? Are they filtered out?

[hunglee2]

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

[connordoner]

I absolutely second this! Timpsons are a brilliant employer.

[AlexMuir]

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 - [email protected]

[blunte]

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).

[sol_invictus]

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.

[Nextgrid]

In my experience most contracts require you to confirm that the director and/or representative doesn't have any unspent convictions. It's of course up to him whether he wants to lie and deal with potential consequences. In practice there are very little checks though.

[s_dev]

Many convicted white collar criminals are barred from being a director of any company. Using a company for money laundering would be a good basic example.

[tpoacher]

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.

[rsyring]

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.

[captaincaveman]

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.

[gnu8]

> willingness to grind through problems is also probably lower

Maybe I misunderstand what you’re saying here but I don’t think this is fair. An older worker should know to put the problem down at 5 PM and walk away from it, but that doesn’t mean they’re unwilling to work on a problem they haven’t solved before.

At least, I hope some day when I’m an elderly ex convict that I will still be able and willing to solve new problems.

[rossdavidh]

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.

[akamaka]

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.

[_wldu]

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.

[christophilus]

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.