I get where he's coming from, and I don't dispute his thesis. The system does suck. That said, as an employer a lot of this rubs me the wrong way.<p>First of all, his chosen specialty is fraud prevention and security, which is one of very few areas where a background check is particularly relevant.<p>Secondly, formal education delivers (and demonstrates) more than just academic concepts; when he drops out of a great school and suggests that he's "a terrible fit for the current education system", I worry he's a terrible fit for us. Similarly, when he describes himself as an "MBA-type", he's missing the point of the very practical, and largely vocational, components of a solid MBA program.<p>Finally, when a self-professed "hustler who happens to code at a fairly competent level" without any professional training or history as a dedicated software developer asserts that he's "reverse engineered multiple billion-dollar companies tech stacks", I lose faith that he realizes how much he has to learn. Software development is hard, and expertise in massive tech stacks takes decades of focus to achieve.<p>To OP, as one person with a shitty history to another: stop comparing yourself with your peers of origin (felons), and start competing in the bigger pool. It isn't enough to be "better than your average felon", you need to be <i>demonstrably</i> better than the average Stanford-educated, classically pedigreed, natively networked elite. <i>It isn't fair</i>, but so long as high stakes job markets/investments are plagued by an under-investment in evaluation, reliance on pattern recognition and a strong bias towards false negatives, this isn't going to change.<p>So get it off your chest and make the best of the life you've got. You still have more privilege than most.<p>Note: This doesn't absolve US companies of their superficial biases and incredibly biased false meritocracy. That needs to change if the country wants to reach its full potential.