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Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

I could venture a guess, and its probably why i'll never go from my current job as a diesel mechanic to junior python programmer no matter how badly i want to:

criminal record.

in the US you can discriminate against employees who have any sort of criminal record. I've served jailtime for possession of cannabis, so that automatically rules me out for a lot of white-collar jobs. Black people tend to get the brunt of policing, and hold disproportionately high rates of misdemeanor and felony charges and longer sentences. I got 3 years for my conviction, but i know a black machinist who served 8 and a parole for an almost identical charge.

We call them "correctional facilities" but continue to discriminate in housing and employment for anyone who's been 'corrected' in one...sort of a standing biblical retribution.

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I have never once checked a reference or performed a background check on any candidate for our now 20 person company. There are a ton of companies like mine. My guess is more than less but that’s just a hunch.

Diesel mechanic isn’t a bad career (my dad is an elevator mechanic and I still sometimes think I should have just done that), grass is always greener etc

Not discounting you experience, as I've known people who have been absolutely condemned by their record, but I also don't think you should give up just yet.

I've heard of a lot of guys with much bigger drug charges breaking into the field. I was reading a thread a few weeks ago, where one person basically said as long as it isn't something like a serious financial crime or computer crime they'd be willing to hire someone.

> for possession of cannabis... I got 3 years

Sorry if I ask, but how much? Three years seems an awful lot of time.

Second, for how long can companies access this kind of record? Isn't it unacceptable to discriminate candidates based on something that has nothing to do with the qualification for a job?

sorry to say, but this kind of question gets asked constantly in every part of my life. Suddenly the interviewer is now your personal arbiter. You're living your sentencing all over again as someone youve never met is now deciding if you get to keep your apartment, buy a car, or get a job. It makes you feel intensely vulnerable and uncomfortable. Its one of the reasons I just dont look for anything anymore.

You shouldn't be sorry. I thought it was a pretty rude question myself. Curiosity shouldn't be an excuse for being a jackhole.

Not that I want to discuss about manners but, after someone told you, unrequested, some very personal stuff, I don't find it impolite to ask some further detail- although I accept it if he doesn't want to answer.

The question in itself wasn't out of idle curiosity but because the sentencing seems disproportionate. I wanted to double check this before launching in a tirade against the US justice :)

Fair enough. Asking personal questions out of idle curiosity is something I tend to be sensitive to, so I apologize if I seemed overly harsh.

> how long can companies access this kind of record?

Until you get your record expunged, assuming you can (some states, e.g. Washington, make that impossible). It's not like a credit report there's no 7 year filter on what shows up in a background check.

> Isn't it unacceptable to discriminate candidates based on something that has nothing to do with the qualification for a job?

Unacceptable, or illegal? It's [mostly] only illegal to discriminate against a protected class, everything else is fair game. Whether it is acceptable is an opinion.

So your premise is all Black people have criminal records and that is why they aren't in STEM?

in many states, a felony conviction will disqualify you from education grants.

that same felony will also basically permaban you from any educational loans, or most other loans fwiw. Check cashing is now your friend.

Also not all black people, but the fact that black people make up 14% of america but 40% of the prison population is not helping the prospects for a more diverse STEM.

No, but there are plenty of statistics showing that every step of the criminal justice system is biased against minorities from stop and frisk , to traffic stops, to tickets vs warnings, to the “War on Drugs”.

The article doesn't say that all black people aren't in STEM. So your statement is completely wrong. Additionally drug bans are often completely arbitrary and therefore they can carefully chosen to impact certain races more than others. Cigarettes are equally popular among all ethnics but something like cannabis might be especially popular in black communities. So cannabis gets banned but cigarettes can stay. The public doesn't care because they think junkies are bad people and should go to jail even if going to jail doesn't actually result in decreased drug usage.

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