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Ask HN: I shut down my company, now I need a job

79 points by RBBronson123 ↗ HN
Two weeks ago, I announced (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31598978) that I was shutting down my companies, 70 Million Jobs and Commissary Club (companies that helped the formerly incarcerated get on with their lives). The overwhelming volume of support I received just through Bookface and Hacker News stunned me; my heart overflowed with pride and gratitude.

Now I am facing another challenge: I need a job. I’ve spoken with many recruiters and HR professionals, along with people who are interested in either acquiring my company(s), funding them or just want to make themselves available for a chat. I’ve received offers for leadership positions at nonprofits, but I haven’t yet discovered the right fit. Maybe I love the startup life too much. Maybe my criminal record hurts my chances. (Maybe!?!) Maybe my age is a deterrent.

Before I accept a position that doesn’t thrill me, I thought I’d get the word out to the YC community. Perhaps your company has—or has been considering—beginning a foundation or some other mission-based, social impact endeavor. Perhaps you need to hire lots of folks for your work force and want to seriously access the largely ignored 70 million Americans with records. I can help.

What else am I very good at? Business development, sales training and management.

Please note: I’m not very technical.

If you’ve got ideas, I’d love to hear them. Thanks for your time and consideration.

64 comments

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hunglee2
hey man, saddened to hear the news about 70 Million Jobs, such a worthwhile project that deserved to succeed.
0xferruccio
Wishing you the best! Our company is not a good fit unfortunately, but I’m sure you’ll find something great on here!
mettamage
70 million!? Isn't that like 20% of the whole population? 20% of the whole US population has a criminal record?! I might be out of line here, and I'm sorry if I am, but it almost sounds like the US wants to treat its own citizen as a criminal.
Clubber
Last I checked, the US has the most people incarcerated in the entire world, both by per capita and total incarcerated population. The land of the free...

Yup, still accurate:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarcera...

RBBronson123
While the US has approximately 5% of the world's population, it has more than 25% of the incarcerated population.
missedthecue
Lots of places around the world under-incarcerate their criminals, sadly. India has 70 rapes per day, and a conviction rate of just 30%. Sub-Saharan Africa is even worse.
sph
Is that an attempt to justify the mind boggling incarceration rate in the US?
missedthecue
hmm not really. It's more pointing out a good reason for the global disparity. It's a simple statistical thought process... another example is that the US is also heavily overrepresented in the number of LGBT people, because many other countries, particularly high-population countries repress that.

If you don't compare all-else being equal, you're going to have other factors playing into the resulting figure.

Clubber
Just to how much the US is incarcerating, the difference between India's incarcerated the US incarcerated is 1,590,200. Assuming 70 rapes per day with 70% (49 per day) not convicted, it would take 32,453 days (approx 88 years) at 100% conviction rate to match the US's current incarceration rate.
missedthecue
Of course, rapes aren't the only crime that goes unpunished in certain parts of the world. Half of my family is from the African country of Liberia. Google tells me their incarceration rate is 1/10th of the US.

I don't know what to tell you if you think the crime rate there is 1/10 of the US.

Clubber
>I don't know what to tell you if you think the crime rate there is 1/10 of the US.

From what I understand it's not so much the amount of crime, but the duration of the punishment that causes the US problem.

Most justice-involved people in the U.S. are not accused of serious crimes; more often, they are charged with misdemeanors or non-criminal violations. Yet even low-level offenses, like technical violations of probation and parole, can lead to incarceration and other serious consequences.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html

jen20
I would be truly amazed if there weren't 70 rapes per day in some individual states, let alone the US at large. I'd also be surprised if there were only 70 per day in India. Where did you find this number?
qorrect
For-profit prisons.
ntoskrnl
War on drugs.
krapp
All of the above plus systemic racism and a cultural aversion to non-punitive solutions to issues like drug abuse and mental illness.
nceqs3
For-profit prisons are a tiny minority of prisons in the US.
qorrect
8% of prisoners in for profit prisons ? 5.6 million people, that's not tiny.
RBBronson123
No ~8% of those incarcerated are in private prisons
RBBronson123
You're right. About 10%. They are a relatively small player.
RBBronson123
70 million represents 1/3 of all adults in the US. And yes, they all have records.
pc86
To be fair, I have a record and I've never been convicted of any crime. Any police interaction beyond a speeding ticket, whether or not it involves charges, and whether or not you're convicted, will result in an official police record of the interaction (or the charges, if applicable).

I was charged with a lot of counts of some nasty-sounding (non-violent, non-sexual, non-financial) stuff that was dropped almost immediately after I retained an attorney because it was completely bogus. I still have to explain it probably 25% of the time I have an employment background check done.

cldellow
Canada also has a high number of people with criminal records -- about 10%.

This number was shocking to me. I only looked it up last year when one of our politicians made a bunch of noise about criminals getting vaccinated before citizens.

The UK number is ~16%.

I think the bottom line is there are lots of folks with criminal records, it's not just the US.

nos4A2
This seems to be the number of Americans with a criminal record and not a criminal conviction (someone who was found to be innocent would also be included in this number). I can't seem to find the number of Americans with a conviction though.
spoonjim
You can get a misdemeanor for a lot of things. Public urination, drunk and disorderly conduct, soliciting a prostitute, etc.
Kranar
Sure it's technically true but an unpaid parking ticket counts as a criminal record. At any rate, of the 70 million people with a "criminal record", only 16 million have been to prison. That's still a high figure but it's not the insane "1 in 5 Americans are criminals!"
RBBronson123
No, Kranar-the 70 million does not include unpaid parking tickets, unless it escalates to a criminal case (which rarely happens). The explosion in these numbers occurred during our war on drugs in the 80's and 90's, along with "three strikes" laws.

The 70 million number relates to the number of people who have, in their record, an event(s) that might stand in their way from a variety of opportunities, so they are, by definition, serious events.

Kranar
Failure to pay a parking ticket by the due date or failure to appear in court to contest a traffic ticket can result in a bench warrant for your arrest which results in a criminal record. Also, in many jurisdictions if you do not appear for a petty misdemeanor traffic ticket, you can be found guilty for failure to appear which also results in a criminal record.

No you will not go to prison over it but if you are subsequently pulled over, you can be arrested for your unpaid traffic ticket and held in jail until a court has a hearing on your case (and it goes without saying this will result in a criminal record).

vidanay
Are you arguing with the guy whose literal business it was to know the facts of these situations?
aristofun
Why can’t one argue with anyone? Just saying.
Kranar
I don't look at people's usernames when replying. Everything I stated can be verified:

https://www.findlaw.com/traffic/traffic-tickets/arrest-warra...

I never disputed or argued anything about whether having a criminal record impedes ones ability to get a job. I replied to someone who was shocked that 70 million Americans have a criminal record and want to point out that it does not mean that 70 million Americans are criminals, or have been convicted of a crime. The vast majority of those records are strictly for arrests, most of which did not result in a conviction and could be the result of something as benign as having an unpaid parking ticket, which is a verifiable fact.

OP's reply is that parking tickets rarely result in arrest warrants or jail time. I could not find data for the U.S. as a whole, but at least in Texas over 1 million arrest warrants were issued in 2018 alone just over unpaid traffic tickets to the point that the legislature had to step in to request judges stop putting people in jail over it:

https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2019/04/texas-aske...

You can find similar articles about other states (this seems to be a mostly state by state).

For further information about how the 70 million people have criminal records gives a misleading impression, there's the following Politifact article as well:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/aug/18/andrew-cuo...

soco
Still, one American out of three has been once arrested??? From my entire circle I only know of one person which almost got arrested, but true I'm not in the USA...
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
giaour
I don't think the linked Politifact article supports your point:

> The FBI considers anyone who has been arrested on a felony charge to have a criminal record, even if the arrest did not lead to a conviction. The FBI only counts those with a misdemeanor if a state agency asks the bureau to keep it on file.

> So by the FBI’s standard, 73.5 million people in the United States had a criminal record as of June 30[, 2017].

The arrest warrants you mention from Texas would only count if failure to pay a parking ticket is a felony in TX

Kranar
Then you fail to understand what is a fairly basic point, which is that most people misinterpret the meaning of a criminal record and think that 70 million people in the U.S. were at some point criminals, when in fact a criminal record can be issued simply for an arrest (even if you turn out to be innocent), as well as benign matters such as an unpaid parking ticket.

The FBI might not keep track of unpaid parking tickets in Texas as part of their own criminal record database, but Texas does keep unpaid parking tickets on record for their own criminal background check:

https://texas.staterecords.org/criminal.php

As that site points out, any arrest or warrant for arrest even for a misdemeanor will be recorded in a criminal background check.

Different government agencies have different standards for what goes into a criminal record so that there is no such thing as one single unambiguous definition for what a criminal record is. Consequently most people, including hiring managers, or people on Hacker News shocked that 70 million people have such a record, may misinterpret what a criminal record means, what the implications of one are and how serious having one is.

There is no harm in pointing out to people that a criminal record, in and of itself, does not mean that someone is guilty of a criminal offense or even that they're guilty of something serious. It could be something benign like an unpaid parking ticket or someone was arrested who turned out to be entirely innocent.

giaour
The 70 million number (the one you were specifically nitpicking) comes from the FBI database, not from a union of state level databases. So that's 70 million people who have been convicted of or arrested on a felony charge, or had a state explicitly ask the FBI to retain a record of their misdemeanor arrest, per your source.

OP was clear in this thread that "criminal record" wasn't synonymous with "has been to prison." This point was also explained to me explicitly during all the pre-employment background checks I have had.

giaour
Having (or having had) an outstanding bench warrant for your arrest sounds like the kind of thing that could really mess up your employment prospects, though!

I'm really not sure what you're trying to dispute. It seems like you and OP agree that there are many ways that someone can get themselves a criminal record and that a record shouldn't be a lifelong burden that prevents you from getting a decent job.

Kranar
My original post was not in response to OP but to someone who is shocked that 70 million people have a criminal record, because most people when asked assume that a criminal record means some kind of conviction, it does not.

It was OP who decided to dispute me and argue that unpaid parking tickets are unlikely to result in an arrest or a criminal matter. I replied pointing out with sources that his claim is wrong. A surprising number of people are in jail over unpaid parking tickets and in Texas in one year alone over 1 million unpaid tickets became a criminal matter resulting in jail time.

I agree that OP seems to argue against this is bizzare since even a record for unpaid traffic offenses can needlessly disqualify someone from a job, but I am not OP and all I really care to do is point out the facts.

pcthrowaway
If 16 million have been to prison, this probably doesn't count people who have been to jail but not prison, or who have been given probation and/or community service as their sentence, which I suspect is probably where 70 million comes from.

Prison is for sentences of longer than 1 year in the U.S. but I'd reckon any sentence affects your job prospects negatively.

rpmisms
I wish I were able to help, I'm just not well-connected. Thank you for the work you've done, such a massive help to society.
staticautomatic
Have you considered an HR role with a company that has a huge hiring pipeline? UPS, FedEx, and Accenture come to mind (I’m reluctant to recommend Walmart and Amazon, but you get the idea).
RBBronson123
Yes, I worked with those companies' departments every day. As a rule, they won't hire a convicted felon (which I am) for a significant role.
onphonenow
Good luck!

A quick question - I worked briefly for a group doing job-re-entry work for folks with records etc. Such critical work, some very positive stories.

However, on the admin side, a fair number of scams and accusations. Curious how your work addresses this (for what it is worth this was in CA) or you'd suggest folks approach this.

Workers comp:

We had to make sure to not let folks into building for final paychecks (if they were a no show quit or had other issues) because there were repeated workers comp claims from the 3 minutes it took folks to get their last check. Bumped knee on desk, trip and falls and more. Workers comp overall was tough. Out of work injuries etc etc getting reported as on-job injuries, and there was an industry that seemed to serve these claims so they went on forever. Our x-mod was horrible.

Age / race / etc discrimination claims. Just basics like showing up to a job, on time. If you can't do that it's not (necessarily) a discrimination issue always.

Unpaid time claims - often for very small amounts. This was fully digital clock in / out system with careful timesheet rounding settings where CA has some rules (ie, OK to round to nearest minute in a fair way and not always pay to the second).

Stolen checks, reports of stolen paychecks. We couldn't investigate all, but some seemed pretty thin based on cancelled check images. Some were probably very real.

Admin issues we were OK with but worth thinking about.

-> Relatively high number of child support orders. The calculations can get complex in CA with multiple orders. -> Lots of ed debt collection orders, there must be some industry that get's people into debt here or a way to use ed debt to fund living expenses? I didn't investigate but caught my eye. -> Some bad dysfunction at state agencies dealing with folks (so folks not paying attention can easily double pay).

This wasn't NOT the rule by any means, but out of 100 folks, 10 maybe still "hustling". If you are not setup / used to this it's a bit of a shock. We had to do everything from signing to pickup a paycheck to many other controls (full positive pay on all accounts used to write checks to staff etc). Also went to a full contest mode basically, where every bogus claim was fully contested - including the unpaid 15 minute claims. That's a loser economically (ie, the cost of just paying the 15 minutes is nothing compared to cost to fight with no recovery of costs to fight). But it ended up being critical to slow the pace of claims to make sure there weren't "automatic" rewards for things.

At the end I found it incredibly rewarding and the good far outweighed the bad. Folks need a path back into the working world. But I'd have loved it even more if there were some things to do to weed out the 10% or so still hustling.

RBBronson123
Your experience notwithstanding, the data tell a very different story: in fact, those with records almost never get into trouble on the job. How do I know this? 1. There exists a federal bonding program that indemnifies companies that hire convicted felons when they're released. Over the course of more than 3 decades, fewer than 2 cases are filed annually. 2. SHRM (the Society for Human Resource Management, of which I am the Fair Chance Hiring Partner) conducts an annual survey with the Koch Foundation. Year after year they report that ~80% of all hiring managers believe the quality of hiring when hiring someone with a record is "as good as if not better" than hiring someone with no record. And, their retention is better. In HR, that's considered a homerun.

All mythology and ancient racism aside, businesses have come to realize more and more that hiring folks with records is not only the right thing to do, but it's very good business. QED

onphonenow
I find this almost impossible to believe. I know and org where someone did not check records, ended up hiring a sex offender. Of all the people THIS person DID do something wrong. They had tons of employees. They got screwed for not actively discriminating against folks with a record. Will the federal govt bond program you mention pay the multi-million dollar settlement they had to pay out. I doubt it. Livescan checks are absolutely required here in CA, and if you hire someone who has disqualifying events it's a major deal. I haven't looked into recidivism data, but got to believe there is some data to support these types of policies.
[dead] throwaway954
hrgiger
Maybe you are having hard day or bad experience in similar situation, still you might consider taking a break and re-read your comment and see if you would like to hear similar criticism for yourself.
peter_l_downs
The ad hominem in this post is uncalled for and unnecessary. There are lots of reasons that a job offer might not be a good fit, and there is absolutely no obligation to accept the first offer that someone makes you. Trying to find a good role and asking HN for advice / leads is not something to be ashamed of.

Best of luck to OP, I can't help at the moment but I am sure you will find something you are excited about.

RBBronson123
Thanks, Peter. That was an odd response from that guy.
RBBronson123
With all due respect I disgust you? I've devoted my life to helping others, saved thousands of lives, repaired families and communities, won numerous awards, went through Y Combinator, raised millions of VC dollars, partnered with 300 community organizations and the cities of SF, LA and NY, was named one of the most influential people in DE&I, and made very little money for it. I'm 68 years old, and probably have one more big thing that lies ahead for me, so I want to make sure it's optimally impactful. I disgust you? lol. You made my day.
[dead] throwaway954
pcthrowaway
Your post and tone shock me. OP is being completely reasonable to look for a job that's a good fit. If your rant is really about you being upset that a service you like is shutting down, why are you making it about something else?
yding
Good luck! Shutting down a startup, especially one that you're passionate about, is never easy. Hope you take the time for yourself to mentally/emotionally recharge.
BenoitEssiambre
I fully respect if you don't want to share but is there a reason you are not taking the funding? The employment market is supposed to become very different soon because of central bank inflation fighting. Your business might become more relevant again?
RBBronson123
I am, in fact, considering doing it again, but differently/better. However, as you may know, this path is arduous, and after launching 4 major startups, my bones grow weary.
codegeek
What kind of roles are you looking for specifically ? It may help if you list things down a bit more in detail than generic Business Development/Sales Training and Management. For example:

- Do you want to work only for startups ? Do they have to be startup or can they be small business (non VC funded but growing organically).

- Do you only want to work for "social impact endeavors" ?

"but I haven’t yet discovered the right fit"

What is a right fit for you ? Can you be more specific ?

RBBronson123
A startup would be great, or one a bit more mature (b/c round) Doesn't have to be a start-up, but I'd much prefer a company that has a strong social mission. Right fit can mean a lot, I recognize, but it includes the nature of my role (I've run large companies), how well-funded, connection w/current leadership, etc. I only mentioned fit to explain that while I have several offers, the right one has yet to emerge. Thanks for asking.