From: cdale@silly.techmonkeys.net
Date: Fri May 12 2000 - 19:45:11 PDT
Here's a question for ya:
How many companies do background checks on their programmers, etc? In
other words, if a developer has a criminal record which lists crimes
committed against the community (theft, vandalism, murder, fraud, etc), do
the companies who are desperate for programmers even care? I saw a thing
on CNBC about techs working from prison, recently, and I think it's a
fucking great idea, but what if they decide they are going to write
something in that might be malicious, such as credit card number theft?
This shouldn't be -too- big a problem in the open software world, as there
are always people grepping, reading, and modifying code, but what about
proprietary binaries? Or any binaries, for that matter (which does indeed
affect the OS community, as there are so many folks making rpms, debs,
etc).
On the other hand, someone told me that the application for Sun reads:
"Have you ever been convicted of any crime other than traffic or marijuana
misdemeanors?"
rather than the standard:
"Have you ever been convicted of any crime other than traffic violations?"
It came from a good source, but I don't trust anyone at this point in my
life, and have no personal experience with the application, but I think
that's a grand question to ask, as marijuana usage is very high among
geeks, and crimes dealing with marijuana are not crimes against the
community -- they are just crimes that are crimes because of the "moral
majority's' ignorance about the drug (not to mention the dupont stuff).
But back to the main point. Breaking and entering. Would I wanna hire
someone who's been convicted of that, say 5-6 times? I dunno. Fraud?
And yes, okay, they've done their time and paid their dues, but are they
trustworthy? Maybe an interview and a decision made on sheer intuition?
Do people change and grow? I have, but haven't seen it happen often.
What do you think?
Cindy
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