Yet another Hacker News

Show HN: I told people I'm a convicted felon after 20 years of hiding it

51 points buf 5 hours ago 26 comments

Hi there.

I was engineer number 3 at Eventbrite and founding engineer at Reforge. I've created a dozen or so startups myself and have worked in many others, like Instacart. All this time, no one knew that I was a convicted felon.

It wasn't exactly a topic that came up, but it was certainly something that I never brought up. When you're a convicted felon, people look at you as if you are tainted.

I was unable to rent apartments in San Francisco. I was unable to get a job directly after being released from prison. It's funny because when you owe the state $17,000 in restitution and you can't get a job, people become extremely desperate. And that desperation can easily put you right back into prison.

So I went from homeless person at age 19 to 7-figures about 10 years later. I retired at age 38.

What I'm doing now is writing an autobiography. The main theme of it is hope.

And I want to make sure that people know about it. They don't necessarily have to be interested in it, but if people know about what it's like sleeping in a car believing that one day you will travel the world and then actually doing it, then I think I've accomplished my task in writing this book.

If you're interested, please let me know.

danso 1 hour ago | parent

I read the first chapter of your autobiography, looking forward to reading the rest. For the current audience reading this, do you mind spoiling/summarizing how you got into software engineering? Had you dabbled in it before your conviction, and did you study it while serving your prison sentence?

megraf 1 hour ago | parent

What did you do?

pavel_lishin 1 hour ago | parent

https://buford.bg/books/buford-versus-oklahoma-1

Doesn't go into the why, however. Presumably future chapters will.

rectang 43 minutes ago | parent

I've read it and besides the "why", I'm also wondering about the long-term impact on the person who was hit (Buford's father).

pavel_lishin 30 minutes ago | parent

I guess this means chapter one's a good hook.

literallyroy 25 minutes ago | parent

Unfortunately there is no chapter 2 for me to pay for…

larrymcp 26 minutes ago | parent

I believe I've located a news article which gives a brief description of the altercation, at https://archive.is/utJqE

It says that his mother told police that "her son hit her husband after the couple confronted him about being involved in a robbery. She told police her son had property in his room that they believed may have come from the robbery."

cat-whisperer 1 hour ago | parent

your website uses the exact tech as the openAI website that they had for Astra. Interesting

aaron_m04 16 minutes ago | parent

I don't know anything about this Astra thing but his site looks very AI-generated!

cat-whisperer 12 minutes ago | parent

https://openai.com/index/gpt-6-astra/

serf 1 hour ago | parent

the fact that you're quick to tell me you're a pardoned felon but not why gives me a creepy feeling, and I say that with a lot of felon friends and family..

probably not the detail to omit to try to hook a readership..

technical aside : on low bandwidth connections your site acts really inconsistent and weird; it appears to be downloading those on-hover sound files.

selectodude 4 minutes ago | parent

https://sos.ok.gov/documents/Pardons/204490.pdf

That’s his pardon. That’s about all we got though, the record was expunged.

wmchen 1 hour ago | parent

Thank you for sharing this. I would be excited to read your autobiography.

I find stories like yours inspiring, and reassuring in a way. I'm increasingly worried about this trend toward being tough on crime in response to growing public disorder, increasing maximum sentences, and generally taking a no-holds-barred approach because good society has been wronged.

I've been a victim myself, from petty theft to assault when I intervened to stop a hate crime, by people out on bail with long court records. After being assaulted I really did start to question my beliefs on this. But I still very much genuinely believe that people can change and should be given a second chance, even though some won't take it seriously, and for others it might take a very long time.

I've met quite a few people with criminal records, or records as youth offenders, who genuinely did become better people over time. A former classmate of mine used to deal cocaine and is now a personal trainer with a wonderful personality and sense of morality. Another used to be a lookout for a stash house and has similarly moved on from that life.

I guess that's what I find so reassuring about stories like yours. I've seen people change and move on from what was probably the worst chapter of their lives, and become people I'm genuinely glad to know. I worry that in our societal desire to be tougher on crime, we're becoming less willing to give people that chance. And I think stories like yours are a good reminder of why we shouldn't lose sight of it.

juujian 50 minutes ago | parent

People can change when you have a justice system that is aimed at reforming offenders rather than simply locking them away or punishing them. America's justice system is the opposite of that, socializing even petty criminals that incidentally land in the system into doing more crime. That's why America has so many more people locked up compared to other countries, which is significantly more expensive in the long run, too...

pavel_lishin 1 hour ago | parent

Minor feedback: please don't have your site make noises. It's distracting.

readthenotes1 56 minutes ago | parent

Tldr:

Hit his dad on the head with a metal baseball bat with other family members around.

JuniperMesos 27 minutes ago | parent

This could be a crazy violent act that deserves making someone a felon, it could be an act of self defense that was unfairly prosecuted, or it could be something in between.

keel-control 21 minutes ago | parent

ASPD perhaps which would also explain his fast life type strategies of high risk high reward low impulse control decisions. Which in this case led to success.

Reminds of the veritassium video where it said being persistent is more valuable than being consistent in the sense that you only need to win the lottery once to be rich forever. Whereas you can consistently work a job for an indefinite quantity of time and never be rich.

soperj 17 minutes ago | parent

most people who win the lottery aren't rich forever.

mmmlinux 8 minutes ago | parent

Well it happened when they accused him of being part of a robbery that took place. So, kind of looks like it might be the first one.

louwrentius 37 minutes ago | parent

Telling people that you are a convicted fellon without disclosing what you did is a red flag to me.

Especially if its for the purpose to drum up interest for your autobiography.

Muromec 35 minutes ago | parent

>What I'm doing now is writing an autobiography. The main theme of it is hope.

Hope to work hard and win the lottery ticket when the game is stacked against you? What hope?

I'm happy for your personally, but it doesn't sound like a message of hope.

ChrisMarshallNY 9 minutes ago | parent

Thanks for sharing this!

I tend to hang with a number of folks with similar stories (I've been a Recovering drug addict for 46 years, and only mention it now, occasionally, because I'm not looking for a job -it's usually not relevant to HN discussions).

blobbers 5 minutes ago | parent

And definitely seem to give off 'smug' vibes about his life afterwards. I'm all for people paying their debt but I didn't get the main theme of hope.

I got a feeling of lack of remorse and someone sort of sociopathically showing off.