A good felon buddy of mine has been out now for 4 years. He slowly built a car repair business, with steady clientele, and got his life back on track – including reasonable sobriety and a steady relationship. He and his girl would cruise around often, enjoying their newfound happiness.
Last week he totaled his Harley and his body (destroyed bike, multiple broken bones). Total reset. He now gets PTSD whenever a Harley revvs by passing... cannot work.
Thank you for sharing your story! I wish you continued success and I also hope that one day someone will share with you about how YOUR story helped them do something similar, just like the article did for you.
I love such stories. Right now, a lot of folks I know are struggling to find jobs, so I read the part about how he got a job the first day he was out of jail with some astonishment and nostalgia for the simpler days, when showing interest was often enough to land the job! Now, hoop number 1, the AI resume filter, is a strange obstacle that one has to jump through first.
Thank you for sharing. Stories like yours remind us that there is good in the world, and even if it isn’t everywhere, it is still worth cultivating.
I’m a software engineer née scientist, but my spouse is a therapist who specializes in addiction. They (and I!) cherish stories like yours because we had seen up-close the struggle that so many people face.
Reading this makes me convinced Singapore's approach to death penalty for drug trafficking is what needs to be adopted globally. There's zero mention or regret of the victims you've destroyed through your peddling of death and destruction.
You lived to tell the tale but I don't share other HN'ers celebratory attitude. You put yourself back on the right path so I will commend you but your actions from the past should be judged objectively for what would've escalated into major destruction and ruin of lives. You would've been executed for what you've done in parts of the world and it wouldn't have been enough for the collective damage to society.
Shout to the author. I don't think I've met you, but I'm proud of you. What you've done is not easy. Neither is talking about it.
I've not had nearly the adversity of the author, but I do know a little bit about what it's like to have an alternative background that makes companies not want to take a chance on you. It motivates you to take advantage of the chances you're given. The first time someone gave me a job, I felt so utterly grateful that I worked twice as hard as most and complained half as much. You could cynically call that exploitation, but I didn't see it that way.
When I came into a position to make my own hiring calls, I tried paying that forward, and I got some great employees from it. Arguably a couple duds as well, but I never regretting giving the chance.
Shout out to Hasura as well, btw. I've encountered their leadership team a couple times and everything about them has screamed integrity. It did not surprise me in the slightest that they are part of this story.
I'll be honest, a lot of it was my wife. And also hitting my lowest bottom after becoming homeless and penniless.
So a combination of looking at what I had done to myself + everyone around me and going "what the fuck." and my ever-vigilant wife who knew I had the capacity and desire to get better.
For me it really took literally losing everything.
I feel happiness reading stories like this. You proved to the world that you can become something great even when all the cards are stacked against you. I often feel despair when I think about where our society is heading, but there will always be people like you who are there to push back against all the wrongs in the world and make the best out of it.
I'm glad! It sounds really corny, but someone once told me "The only thing you can choose in life is your attitude."
Sometimes it felt like I'd never get a break, things wouldn't get better. But I tried to tell myself "Every occurrence in life is a numbers game. Against tiny odds, eventually enough attempts statistically OUGHT to pay off."
And the alternative is bleak, sort of sulking in this pit of despair without hope for tomorrow.
"AI Use Disclaimer: claude code was used to generate the OpenGraph SVG image.
No part of the prose was machine-generated. You will not find machine-written prose on this blog. I consider it deeply disrespectful."
I really like this disclaimer, by disclaiming that a single small thing was done with AI, you make very credible and notable that you did not use LLMs for the important parts.
That’s cool. Unfortunately, today, sobriety doesn’t guarantee that AI companies won’t kill off what’s left of your career (which somewhat weakens the incentives to do so). But congrats!
Have an upvote. Sobriety is an expectation. I will say though that people I’ve known who went through the journey are some of the smarter people I’ve met. Not all of them, but the whole numbing yourself because your brain can’t quite understand all the thoughts it has, that’s a real thing. Probably sounds insane, but it’s real.
> sobriety doesn’t guarantee that AI companies won’t kill off what’s left of your career
You're being downvoted, but I'd be lying if I said I don't see that as a distinct (and logical) possibility.
The ironic thing is, I work for one of those "AI Companies" ;^)
Claude Code and Codex have done most of my work for the last year, and with the pace of AI improvement, I'm not sure that you'd need (or even want) me in the mix.
From a business perspective, it makes a lot of financial sense, too.
I'm sure it's a limited amount of time before I'm dead weight, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, and I'll figure something out if/when it happens =)
My lived experience doesn’t care what the downvotes say (many here are privileged, after all), and it is only a matter of time imo unless something is done about the industry to change course.
I see karma as form of a currency to afford getting downvoted. I actually don't mind the downvotes especially when it's followed by a comment on why. Helps me see parts I've missed.
I wouldn't internalize that idea too much. In a lot of countries traffic fines are a fixed amount, so some people feel like they don't have to respect traffic rules since they can afford to just pay the fine.
It's one way to process the negative feeling of being fined. But it doesn't really make the roads safer.
Good on him and shout out for Hasura as well, probably the most pleasant dev experience I had in past 10 years. It was so good, the startup I was at dropped it because CTO got scared that there was no work for the backend devs, ha.
A good felon buddy of mine has been out now for 4 years. He slowly built a car repair business, with steady clientele, and got his life back on track – including reasonable sobriety and a steady relationship. He and his girl would cruise around often, enjoying their newfound happiness.
Last week he totaled his Harley and his body (destroyed bike, multiple broken bones). Total reset. He now gets PTSD whenever a Harley revvs by passing... cannot work.
Please don't get a motorcycle.
Also, Preston Thorpe (who Gavin mentions as inspiration) has an interesting story as well: https://pthorpe92.dev/intro/my-story/
https://unlockedlabs.org/
<3
I’m a software engineer née scientist, but my spouse is a therapist who specializes in addiction. They (and I!) cherish stories like yours because we had seen up-close the struggle that so many people face.
You lived to tell the tale but I don't share other HN'ers celebratory attitude. You put yourself back on the right path so I will commend you but your actions from the past should be judged objectively for what would've escalated into major destruction and ruin of lives. You would've been executed for what you've done in parts of the world and it wouldn't have been enough for the collective damage to society.
Can relate. Been 45 years, for me. Got my act together at 18, but before that...
I've not had nearly the adversity of the author, but I do know a little bit about what it's like to have an alternative background that makes companies not want to take a chance on you. It motivates you to take advantage of the chances you're given. The first time someone gave me a job, I felt so utterly grateful that I worked twice as hard as most and complained half as much. You could cynically call that exploitation, but I didn't see it that way.
When I came into a position to make my own hiring calls, I tried paying that forward, and I got some great employees from it. Arguably a couple duds as well, but I never regretting giving the chance.
Shout out to Hasura as well, btw. I've encountered their leadership team a couple times and everything about them has screamed integrity. It did not surprise me in the slightest that they are part of this story.
So a combination of looking at what I had done to myself + everyone around me and going "what the fuck." and my ever-vigilant wife who knew I had the capacity and desire to get better.
For me it really took literally losing everything.
Sometimes it felt like I'd never get a break, things wouldn't get better. But I tried to tell myself "Every occurrence in life is a numbers game. Against tiny odds, eventually enough attempts statistically OUGHT to pay off."
And the alternative is bleak, sort of sulking in this pit of despair without hope for tomorrow.
No part of the prose was machine-generated. You will not find machine-written prose on this blog. I consider it deeply disrespectful."
I really like this disclaimer, by disclaiming that a single small thing was done with AI, you make very credible and notable that you did not use LLMs for the important parts.
The ironic thing is, I work for one of those "AI Companies" ;^)
Claude Code and Codex have done most of my work for the last year, and with the pace of AI improvement, I'm not sure that you'd need (or even want) me in the mix.
From a business perspective, it makes a lot of financial sense, too.
I'm sure it's a limited amount of time before I'm dead weight, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, and I'll figure something out if/when it happens =)
It's one way to process the negative feeling of being fined. But it doesn't really make the roads safer.