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!

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.

> 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

As a side note, I saw someone recently post about coming out of prison from a 7 year stint, and seemed to have been a programmer in the 90s. Looked like he managed to get some work too!

my partnership was founded with a average age of over 50 years old and I was the statistical outlier child. I am rebuilding in the memory of my dearly departed friends colleagues mentors and guides for my adult life essentially. I began in business a genuine child talented no doubt narrowly but due to a fluke meeting and the intensity of the first 90s recession, entered the commercial with 200 plus years of multinational boardroom experience to babysit me writing code and pontifi..taking out of my rear. nearly 30 years later the heavens threaten to rain down opportunity for the apprehension of which I am breaking down my conceptions of being burned out and the false notion that chronic health issues mean that I am over, and I am thoroughly embarrassed now by the legalese hauteur of my original comment which nevertheless is reproduced in my profile verbatim unedited for your derision at my pretentiousness. Please forgive me for being extremely nervous about the kind of statement I have made regarding your question, which is positive, at least, for its sins. Surprisingly to me, I didn't consciously parse the information you provided about your relative age. I can only think that is because I really don't think that age is any disadvantage, absolutely the opposite. I have to face the facts and also confess that the possibility that I am younger than you positively improved my intuitive outlook regarding this situation entirely and immediately. If you think you could work with people who treat revelations such as the one just related, as being crucial business concerns for discussion and discovery of the effects, if any, on the clarity and impartiality of our work, as well as being natively discontented older Brits, ceteris paribus always of course, this might be very interesting for us both to pursue. Please note my carefully worded caveats in my comment text, however. For whatever your future will be, I wish you all the very best of fortunes. don't let the Alan Bstards grind you down.

edit : the word, "derision", improving "contempt"

Is this a legal requirement or is it company policy?

I think today will be a good day.

hope it works out

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.

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

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.

As a contractor in the UK, I've had to deal with them many times. The recruiting industry here has a reputation for cut throat, scumbag practices. Lying about open job applications, cold calling to fish for info on your current role, ghosting you after you make an application with them, chronic time wasting/giving false hope. These are some of what you can expect. There are, of course, good recruiters - more 'human' ones. They're rare, but you'll know when you've got one. I have some saved in my phone.

If you are firm with them you can avoid them wasting your time. But to rely on them is a mistake.

Good luck OP. Also +1 for contracting in private sector because the B2B nature of it avoids checks.

Edit: seems like other people have had contracts with clauses around prev convictions, so maybe ask for a blank contract ahead of time.

> The Supplier warrants:

> that the Consultant has no criminal convictions which would reasonably affect the Company's and/or the Client's decision to allow the Consultant access to the Location(s), the Client's Systems or to provide the Services;

Depends on locale. In the UK (IANAL) it wouldn't be _fraud_, but would be grounds to terminating the contract. But not criminal.

Employer could potentially sue for damages, but there must be some damages for that.

After Brexit he'd need a work permit for that, and I assume convictions are a factor with those.

And that may not be fraud of you have a lawyer analyse it.

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

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.

That link also mentions the requirements around an ex-offender policy that the company needs to have. I'd request that if I was declined, to ensure the employer is actually following a process. If not, there could be some room for negotiation.

Smaller organizations that are not in regulated industries will be better bets for the original poster. Finance, pharma, healthcare, education etc. are all regulated industries and will have to maintain some level of compliance. How well they do it will vary, but if you aren't flagged initially, you may well be flagged later on. This happens all the time. Small FinTech specialises in trying to skirt the boundary of compliance at times, so you may find that some are laxer than others.

A sweet spot might be software efforts supporting manufacturing or marketing. There are a lot of agencies that build smaller software for large organisations that don't do these in-depth checks and are often building/demoing in their own environment before handing everything over to the company or providing the hosting so that a department can run shadow IT.

- 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 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.

Possibly not the best comparison; from past discussions here on HN (and wikipedia), I gather that Abagnale was an exaggerator and may have fabricated much of his myth.

That said, I think grandparent comment is right - you have some very unique experience that would be of specific value to somebody. The trick is figuring out who that somebody is and then pitching your experience as an asset, not a liability. It may be very niche and it may require relocating, but it's going to be more fun than trying to hide a big secret.

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.

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...

> 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.

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

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".

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

On the strictest interpretation it isn't everyone and only applies to a few roles.

However just like other compliance it tends to be applied by financial firms in a risk-averse maximal approach rather than a minimal approach. So it's not uncommon for background checks to be applied to all staff at a company or who provide services to such a company.

I don't agree with such maximal interpretation of the compliance rules, but this is how it happens and having that conversation with HR during interviewing is just going to get you excluded.

The original poster likely wants to avoid US travel too... given that it will require a visa due to moral torpitude.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/turpitu...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_turpitude

Turpitude: very immoral behaviour; from Latin turpitūdō (ugliness). Not a word I was familiar with - adding this comment for others.

That they do not consistently enforce at time of entry is luck on your part in that entry instance, but either way they now have the ability to freely deny entry forever due to you not following their rules.

Sucks to be you now, the US system does not believe in rehabilitation and if you've been arrested you need a visa. You are not entitled to use the visa waiver program that exists between the UK and US and allows visa-less movement with only an ESTA.

If you want to visit the US in the future, or your career requires such visits... I suggest applying for a B1/B2 visa, if they think you're no risk they may even grant you a multi-year multi-visit one. If they think you're too risky they'll only grant a single timed visit visa, or you'll be fully declined.

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?

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.

Speaking as someone who alternated between freelancing and full time employment, no.

Simply include the period as another job. You can list the position as 'Freelance Web Developer' or whatever is appropriate, or even 'Sole Proprietor, CompanyName' if you actually used a DBA. Then, as per usual, list notable highlights of problems solved for customers, tech used, responsibilities & regular duties.

It may even be useful to list some accomplishments AS an independent business person (marketing campaigns run to acquire customers, customer growth or churn, NPS, niches identified, MVPs built, subcontractors managed, etc.), for the period, depending on the nature of the position you're applying for.

Lots of companies are pleased to get applicants that have a bigger picture of making a business work, and you might appreciate being able to identify (and eliminate from consideration) the other companies that are just looking for cogs to slot into their machine.

On the CVs that I’ve seen, freelancers looking for a full-time job tend to put freelancing as a single entry with an overall start and end date.

> Are gaps really that much of an issue?

I don’t remember seeing a CV gap cause big problems for a candidate. But I have seen interview panels ask about the gaps. If a CV is a document designed to show a candidate in a good light, it can be interesting to know what they chose to leave out.

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

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

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).

Easy to say, hard to do. I liked this idea:

"""

One approach I recommend for uncovering desires involves taking the time to listen to the most deeply fulfilling experiences of your colleagues’ (or partners’, or friends’, or classmates’) lives, and sharing your own with them. The more we understand one another’s stories of meaningful achievement, the more effectively we understand how to work with each other: what moves and motivates others, what gives them satisfaction in their work. It seems simple, but nobody does it. Ask yourself: How many people do you work with who could name even one of your most meaningful achievements and explain why it was so meaningful to you?

A motivational drive is a specific and enduring behavioral energy that has oriented you throughout your life to achieve a distinct pattern of results. You may be fundamentally motivated, for instance, to bring control, to evoke recognition, or to overcome obstacles. Because most of us have never thought seriously about the nature of our motivation, we lack the language to be able to describe our core motivational drives with much precision. This exercise gives us that ability. Core motivational drives are enduring, irresistible, and insatiable. They are probably explanatory of much of your behavior since the time you were a child. Think of them as your motivational energy—the reason you consistently gravitate toward certain types of projects (team versus individual, goal-oriented versus ideation) and activities (sports, arts, theater, forms of fitness) and not others. There are patterns in your motivation. If you can put your finger on what specifically they are, then you will have taken a major step toward understanding your thick desires.

The best way to uncover the patterns is by sharing stories. Stories about times in your life when you took an action that ended up being deeply fulfilling. Today it’s one of the first questions that I ask in any job interview because it helps cut through the thin stuff and goes straight to the essence of the person. “Tell me about a time in your life when you did something well and it brought you a sense of fulfillment,” I ask. I have seen this simple question transform interactions between individuals and entire communities. When stories are shared between two people who know how to listen well, the experience transports both the storyteller and the listener to a time when desire led to extraordinarily fulfillment. That’s why sharing those stories is a joyful experience. A Fulfillment Story, as I call it, has three essential elements:

1 It’s an action. You took some concrete action and you were the main protagonist, as opposed to passively taking in an experience. As life-changing as a Springsteen concert at the Stone Pony might have been for you, it’s not a Fulfillment Story. It might be for Bruce, but not for you. Dedicating yourself to learning everything about an artist and their work, on the other hand, could be.

2 You believe you did well. You did it with excellence, you did it well—by your own estimation, and nobody else’s. You are looking for an achievement that matters to you. If you grilled what you think is a perfect rib-eye steak the other night, then you did something well and achieved something. Don’t worry about how big or small the achievement might seem to anyone else.

3 It brought you a sense of fulfillment. Your action brought you a deep sense of fulfillment, maybe even joy. Not the fleeting, temporary kind, like an endorphin rush. Fulfillment: you woke up the next morning and felt a sense of satisfaction about it. You still do. Just thinking about it brings some of it back.

Such moments of profound meaning and satisfaction matter. They reveal something critical about who you are.

Knowing something about the interior life of a person is necessary to understand why they do what they do and what it means to them. Fulfillment Stories get at the heart of action by looking at it from the inside out. Fulfillment Stories ask, “But why did that action mean so much to you?” The question and answer kick off a positive mimetic cycle. You tell one of your Fulfillment Stories. I listen with empathy to what you are telling me and reflect back to you what I heard and saw and felt in your story. Then you do the same for me. Empathy imitates empathy, heart speaks to heart. Every time I told a Fulfillment Story, another rose to the surface. As I dove deeper into my past, I uncovered stories I hadn’t thought about in a long time. Not only that—I hadn’t even recognized them as stories of fulfilling action at the time.

Most people are rarely, if ever, asked to tell the stories of their deeply fulfilling achievements.

"""

Excerpt from the book Wanting by Luke Burgis. I bought it because the book’s topic was “Human desire is mimetic – we imitate what other people want”, which is a very powerful idea.

Unfortunately I felt the book was trashy American self help author ego stroking, but the section above stood out to me.

I've gone through a few of those where the client supplied the contract and only two out of maybe a dozen had any caluse related to convictions (from a quick search of them).

One was a clause about people working on the project being:

> fit and proper persons for the tasks assigned to them, and in particular have no unspent criminal convictions for any offence involving dishonesty or computer crime

Another had a clause about terminating the contract early if the contractor is:

> being convicted of any criminal offence other than a minor driving offence under the Road Traffic Acts

None of the others I looked at had anything else like that. I don't think any convictions would be a major barrier for OP if they are working with typical private sector companies. As other have said, it's likely any public sector work or specific industires such as education, defenece, or finance might have more checks in place.

This kind of thinking is what got him in to this position in first place. There's a reason convicted money launderers shouldn't be allowed to run companies.

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.

Working chance, and The Skill Mill

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.

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.

Also as a junior engineer, its not that the problem your trying to crack is likely to be some business problem, most likely some stupid bug in your code.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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!

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).

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.

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

A bigger issue may be things that require credit checks, like business loans, bank accounts, insurance, etc.

Some good advice here: https://unlock.org.uk/advice/things-think-becoming-self-empl...

If you’re setting yourself up in a consultancy, you don’t usually need start up capital and hence no loans required.

Bank accounts and insurance are a requirement however!

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.

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!!

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.

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

Lying in the application process would do little to alleviate that worry. Sure the, employer would have to find out first. But is it really the first thing an ex-convict looking for a job should do?

Well the first part of your post describes why that might be necessary (i.e. you imply you would be unlikely to hire an ex-convict because they might do 'stupid shit', while OP is trying to find a job to get his feet back on the ground).

Nobody wants to lie, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to sort your life out.

It's maybe sort of a fundamental attitude, either you are honest or not.

Also this "I had no other choice" rationale also seems like a risk factor for slipping into crime again.

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.

The vast, vast majority of incarcerated people need basic skills training to even be able to look for a job. Functional illiteracy is high, most have at best a grade-school level of reading/writing and math skills. There are many reasons why folks end up in jail, typically for each person a multitude of things went sideways early in life. One of the most common of these is a completely derailed education. It's never too late of course, and most people getting out of jail are still in their 20's and 30's.

They're hungry for legit work, so yeah, there's enormous untapped potential. The organizations working in this space get government and private funding but are always on the verge of vaporizing. They are, AFAIK, non-profits with very strong social-work, basic-education, traditional vo-tech focus (because that's what their clients need most).

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Just my 2 pennies.

Best of luck.

The most hassle has been taxes and HMRC.

Contact info in my profile if you fancy chatting more.

What he does describe sounds like he does indeed want to work, and I hope he finds an employer, somewhere.

It is also not a sounding board for sociopaths presenting themselves as victims of ageism.

>>>I'll never pass jobs with DBS checks due to convictions. plus I guess I'll never get a job coding due to ageism

That is the comment that sounds unjustifiably mean and negative. I'm surprised you are doubling down on it.