How does the compensation work? The US prison system has a bit of a nasty reputation when it comes to exploiting prison labor, so I hope those practices aren’t carrying over into these more forward-looking types of initiative… but at the same time, surely Turso isn’t paying full SWE salary?
Even if you just paid him the state minimum wage, it would stop him from having a giant employment gap.
The next step would be background check reform. A DUI record isn't relevant to anything not involving driving.
Excluding a very small handful of SVU level crimes everything should be wiped clean after 5 years or so.
I had an experience with a co worker who would brag about robbing people, selling substances and when he got caught his family money made it go away. He's a CTO at a mid sized tech company now. Had he been poor he'd have a record and be lucky to work as a Walgreens clerk.
Was the biggest "tough on crime" person I've ever met. I think people with means don't understand if you don't have money you can't afford bail.
Can't afford bail you'll just be indefinitely detained without trial for months if not years.
Everything about the criminal justice system is about exploitation. Get house arrest, that's a daily monitoring fee. States like Florida are forcing released inmates to repay the state for the cost of incarceration.
It's past fixing tbh, I'm personally hopping to immigrate to a functional country soon.
>Excluding a very small handful of SVU level crimes everything should be wiped clean after 5 years or so.
It's nice to think that people should be able to fully pay back their debt to society but (a) criminal court proceedings need to be public in a free society and if they are public, people should be able to record and distribute the results as private citizens if we believe in upholding the principle of freedom of speech.
Even if it were possible to prevent this, (b) this does a small but not entirely negligible harm to people that never committed a crime by casting some doubt upon them. This is most apparent for minority groups that are associated with criminality; they experience worse employment prospects when the state makes criminal records unavailable.
Criminal records should be available, but in a controlled way.
Where I live (Poland), only the person itself can request their criminal record from the state. This is a routine procedure required by some employers, you can even do it online these days.
Most if not all criminal offenses "expire" after some years, how long depends on the offense. If there's something you've been charged with but not convicted of, it doesn't appear on the record.
This is easier to implement for us because there are limitations on how media can report on criminals (no last names for example). Even in the US, I think that system could be workable. Instead of attacking distributions of "unedited" criminal records, you'd have to target employers and require them to only acquire the state-approved versions.
I don't read this as he thinks all Atheists are militant, but that his own behaviour was obnoxious? If so, many of us have met those.
It's nice to hear about someone who can change their mind so completely; the trick is not to swing to the other end of the spectrum, trading one absolute for another.
Militant atheists tend to embody anti-theism. It typically manifests as active desire to dissuade anybody from holding religious beliefs or performing religious practices.
Any clergy, whether faithful or secular, has the capacity to act in a militant fashion.
> The next step would be background check reform. A DUI record isn't relevant to anything not involving driving.
This is already the case in some countries, including The Netherlands. A background check is done for a specific "profile", and convictions which aren't relevant for your job-to-be don't show up. Someone with a DUI can't become a taxi driver, but they should have no trouble getting a job as a lawyer. Got convicted of running a crypto pump&dump? Probably can't get a job as a banker, but highschool teacher or taxi driver is totally fine.
A surprising number of US states also drop crimes from your background checks or legally forbid them from being used against you after so many years, 5-10 on average, as long as they aren't directly related to the job.
Excellent marketing. They get a remote worker who is (in HN headhunter speak) a great and passionate talent. Of course they have no risks on their side. And they get praised for it on the very grassroots YC Combinator forum.
> Excluding a very small handful of SVU level crimes everything should be wiped clean after 5 years or so.
My understanding, is that's what the UK does, with an exemption for certain jobs, like teachers and creche hosts. In the US, I think some states have the ability to expunge convictions. Not sure about federal crimes, though.
The "scarlet letter" of a past conviction is a very real issue, and keeps some folks down. People can get past it, though. I know folks that served time for murder, that have very good careers, and people that have misdemeanor records, that have always struggled.
Different states have rules about expungement, as far as what happens automatically, what can be done if an offender convinces a judge, and how much it all costs.
Federal crimes (and I don't think that applies in this person's case since they're in a Maine DOC prison, although drug crimes of this kind easily could be charged by the feds) aren't usually expunged. Even if you receive a pardon, the original crime (and a note of the pardon) will exist on the record.
It's a really strange system. You're meant to lie and say "no" during interviews after your conviction is expunged if you are asked "have you ever been convicted of a crime," although I believe in many states it's now illegal to ask such a question.
My state will automatically expunge non violent misdemeanors after 2010, so if it happened before you have to jump through hoops.
I know people who dropped out of college because they had a very small drug charge, no use in finishing if you will have a scarlet letter over your head forever.
That's really unfortunate. I work with people who were formally justice-involved every day and their educations have been an aid to them personally and professionally. A felony or a "bad" misdemeanor (e.g. domestic violence) isn't the end of the world, even in the modern US. People can and do overcome the consequences of their mistakes and thrive.
Just curious, why would you expect him to be paid less? I know historically pay is bad for prisoners, but if he's working the same hours and is just as productive as any other employee, shouldn't he be paid the same? I could potentially see paying someone less if they were coming in with much less experience than what's usually hired for in the role, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
The 13th amendment specifically allows slavery of prisoners.
Edit: I don’t mean to imply the author isn’t paid fairly by Turso. A few posts down, the CEO of Turso asserts that they do pay fairly. The OP in this thread might reasonably wonder about this because several states do in fact use prisoners as unpaid slave labor.
If we pay people 40 cents an hour just to say they aren't slaves, they they are slaves for all intents and purposes. They are put in poor working conditions working for for-profit companies, making much less than minimum wage. How is it legal for the State to not provide sunscreen or shade for inmates doing outdoor manual labor?
I don't disagree that 40 cents an hour is ludicrous and is only one notch above slavery, but I do think it worth pointing out that the work for 40 cents per hour is voluntary (i.e. they can quit or choose not to accept the work), whereas "slavery" is very much not.
In many cases the work is not really voluntary, there are sanctions for not taking it. Prisoners in some states are regularly put into solitary confinement for not "volunteering" to work these jobs (a punishment that some areas deem torture). With that amount of coercion I can't see them as voluntary, and so the slavery label is awfully close to the mark.
In those situations, I would agree that is pretty damn close to the slavery mark.
I've worked with a lot of prison facilities though in many states across the US and a few international, and have never seen that. That's not to say it doesn't happen of course, but out of curiosity do you (or anyone else) know of any facilities/jurisdictions that do that?
That cost should be taken by our government and the tax payer, as a disincentive to locking people up.
If you can lock someone up and get close to free labor for it, then we're going to start locking a lot of people up. I mean, it's free labor. Which is why we used to give people 20 years for possession of marijuana. What, you think it's just a coincidence we were throwing primarily black Americans away in prison for ludicrous amounts of time where they'll spend their days picking cotton?
That's what happens when imprisoning people is cheap.
If a prisoner costs $50k a year, and "if" he would work a job where he would make $50k a year and if he didn't receive a dime from it, does it look to you like a free labor? He merely makes up for what he costs the system, not taking into consideration the likely damage that he has done that made him end up in prison in the first place. And I don't expect prisoners to have anywhere close to $50k salary jobs.
The problem here is you’re really asking for abuse with this mentality.
Prisoners should cost money, lots and lots of money. Otherwise we might just decide to imprison you and extract your labor. And that is exactly why we used to see 20 years for possession.
What, did you think we were just burning money for kicks?
That's what I tried to refute in my previous comment. So in case I miss something, explain to me how is it economical for someone to enslave you, if it costs him $50k/year and he will almost certainly extract less value from your work (from data i found $20-$25k/year jobs are common for prisoners). That's the exact opposite of free labor. It is very expensive labor. I would agree if the cost was like $10k and you would extract considerably more from the job done. But it is not the case. Maybe in countries where they don't spend much on prisons what you say works. I don't think it does in US or in any other developed country
Government is not a business, nor is it 0-sum. Well-functioning societies with low rates of recidivism invest much more in their prisoners. We should be investing money into prisoners, so that they can re-integrate into society and become successful tax-paying citizens, just like the premise of the blog post we are commenting on. As the co-founder said, the Department of Corrections in Maine takes a cut of the inmate's salary.
Cheap labor is still valuable, I don't know what to tell you. 20k salary net is very cheap. I don't know why you think it's expensive, because it's not. What you're maybe missing is the job needs to be done regardless - it's not like if we stop using prisoners for labor that need for labor just - poof - disappears.
Do you mean that the benefit of cheap labor goes to private companies, but the cost stays with the taxpayers? If so, I see the logic. If we are talking about imprisoning someone, because we get cheaper labor for example inside the prison, than that doesn't make sense. Of course I count that the job needs to be done.
You can make the exact same argument about employers paying different rates depending on the country the employee is based in, and for all the same reasons.
Is there a good reason why a developer in Thailand or India should be paid less than their colleague who works on the same team, but is based in the US? Many companies believe so - there's a significant difference in the cost of living between those two employees, and employers believe it is fair to adjust the salary to provide a similar quality of life to both.
Equally, a person incarcerated in New York City doesn't have the same living costs as a person who has to live in New York City, so you could reasonably argue that any "Cost of living premium" that a company offers to NYC based employees doesn't need to apply to a person who doesn't experience those higher costs.
> Is there a good reason why a developer in Thailand or India should be paid less than their colleague who works on the same team, but is based in the US?
Yes, and that reason is that people in most of the developed world are free to say yes or no to job offers based on their individual preferences. And, it just so happens, in Thailand and India there are many people who will happily say yes to offers that people in the US would say no to. The cost of living explanation that companies give is illusory; the reality is that they have to pay enough to get people to say yes.
Now, you might ask why people in different countries say yes to offers at different compensation levels. But I think the answer is self evident: people will say yes to offers when they believe that there are lots of other people who will say yes to it. Under those circumstances, saying no won't earn a higher offer but cause the company to give the job to someone else.
Ultimately, then, regional prices are set by what the locals are generally willing to say yes to.
Except prison has some very key differences from living freely in another state or country. You cannot leave and so don't have a choice about where you work. Even if cost of living is low in prison, you often still have to pay for being there and wages are far less than the cost. A prisoner will be released one day and their cost of living will skyrocket overnight. Do we want motivated hard working people leaving prison with nothing so they end up back in the same environment that got them there in the first place?
>Many companies believe so - there's a significant difference in the cost of living between those two employees, and employers believe it is fair to adjust the salary to provide a similar quality of life to both.
What a complete bs. If anything, in India it costs MORE to achieve a similar standard of living than in the USA. In India you can spend 3 times what a US worker gets paid - and you'll barely have enough money to get the same level of security that that worker gets.
Companies don't care, they pay the minimum amount that they think will interest the worker for long-term employment. And since in India or Thailand the workers don't have such a wide choice in work - they will be paid less, just enough to get them. And they pay the Americans just enough to get them, it is just happening that for Americans this amount are several times bigger. That's all here is.
Is that true still? I don't go searching prices in foreign markets, but something like the RPi being a UK piece of kit seems like it would now be more expensive in the US compared to UK simply based on recent tariffs being applied.
Sure, but how much of your wage do you spend buying electronics? The vast majority of my salary goes to fixed expenses like housing, food, healthcare, energy, and transport. Those are all highly location-dependent.
In location A you might spend 80% of your salary on fixed expenses, whereas in location B you only need to spend 20% of that same salary to pay for those expenses - leaving you with far more money for discretionary spending.
For sure, but that doesn't justify doing that per country. If you live in SF you could be spending 80% on fixed expenses, but I'm sure that in the US there are places where you could be spending 20%. This applies to other countries as well.
Most companies doing cost-of-living adjustment do it on a finer scale than just country. Someone in SF will indeed be paid more than someone in Dustbowl, USA.
>but if he's working the same hours and is just as productive as any other employee, shouldn't he be paid the same?
Why would the salaries all bump up to big American city salaries instead of resting somewhere in the lowest range worldwide? If we purely judge work completed.
If you're a remote worker your competition is the world not people in the major city the company is based in.
Well that’s basically what I’m wondering. Is this a normal employment arrangement - subject to same state payroll tax, labor laws, employee rights, etc - with the additional detail that he resides in prison? Or does the employer need to go through some gateway enforced by the prison with maximum compensation or other restrictions?
But otherwise, in terms of why he’d default to being paid less… yes, what the other commenter said: supply and demand, aka leverage. Turso could choose to be a good citizen and pay him the same as any other employee, but that’s subject to all the questions I posed above, regarding the structural requirements placed on them as the employer.
I am the CEO of Turso.
We are free to negotiate any salary we want with him, the prison system doesn't put any caps, up or down. We are paying him well, and certainly not trying to enslave him or anything. There are some restrictions on how the payments are made but not the amount.
We also don't pay him healthcare, because he wouldn't be able to use it.
I assume he doesn't have to pay rent while in prison and gets free meals, so unless they take some of his income, he might actually be doing pretty good.
I guess if you look at pay as solely a result of 'work done' you'd come to this conclusion, and it should work this way, but really its got more to do with the relationship between employer and employee. A person in prison has a very different legal status than someone who doesnt and they do tend to get paid less.
Because the level of payment almost always depends on the level of competition for a particular person's work. When you're in prison, there's practically no competition for your work. So it's expected that he'll be paid much less.
> but if he's working the same hours and is just as productive as any other employee, shouldn't he be paid the same?
He should, but the median salary of engineers in Taiwan is like, 40,000 USD, vs SF which is 160,000 USD. Or London, if one wants to argue something about English language ability or whatever, is 80,000 USD. Literally half that of SF.
Salaries aren't determined by labor value, they're determined by how well employers can collude in a region to get the lowest possible rate while still being able to hire people. Thus they somewhat tend to correlate with cost of living, but not really, e.g. see London vs SF vs NYC. All correlations are used as excuses, when the core, real, reason always comes down to, employers will pay as little as they can get away with.
This annoyed me enough that I started a co-op about it, and we're doing pretty well. I'm still annoyed though. Apparently glommer, the CEO, pays him "full salary" (market rate?), which makes them a good person, but a bad capitalist. They could easily pay basically a slave wage and leverage this dude's ingrained passion for programming to get huge output for almost nothing - that's what the rest of the industry merrily does.
In a free market, very little is determined by its "value". Clean drinking water costs pennies, but its value is far higher. People in developing countries routinely spend hours a day getting clean water, which works out to a price far higher than even bottled water from for-profit companies.
>they're determined by how well employers can collude in a region to get the lowest possible rate while still being able to hire people. Thus they somewhat tend to correlate with cost of living, but not really, e.g. see London vs SF vs NYC.
Is there any evidence there's more collusion happening in London?
>employers will pay as little as they can get away with.
You're making it sound like this is some sort of profound insight, or that companies are being extra dishonorable by doing this, but literally everyone in an economy is trying to pay "pay as little as they can get away with". When was the last time you tipped a gas station?
> they're determined by how well employers can collude in a region to get the lowest possible rate
Colluding is only one of the factors that influencing the demand for labor. Moreover, in most regions it is a rather insignificant factor. Typically, this is the degree of economic freedom, protection of investments and capitals, the level of regulation and the tax burden in the region, not the degree of colluding.
> good person, but a bad capitalist.
Capitalism is not about evaluative characteristics, but about descriptive ones. It is not "bad capitalists pay a lot, good ones pay the minimum", but about "people tend to pay minimum, so to pay the minimum is expected behavior of capitalists"
> The US prison system has a bit of a nasty reputation when it comes to exploiting prison labor
Do you mean for private interest? If so, I would agree that prison labor should only be used for public benefit. And this labor should be part of the sentence.
No, it's related. In programming, the only employment options are working for a government, for some corporation, or trying to sell directly to individuals?
Somebody who had worked for a recognizable tech company is far more hireable than somebody who is Self Employed or who has worked for the government.
But that's not prison labor. Prison labor specifically refers to penal labor. You receive no pay, because the labor is part of the punishment for the crime. It is the prisoner who is paying off his debt. In those cases, I don't think it is moral for private companies to make use of that labor for private gain. Penal labor should only be used for public benefit.
Here, we're talking about preparing someone for the job market when they leave. Hence, these are two separate concerns. You cannot substitute the former with the latter.
What is your ethical concern in this particular case. The remote work privileges seem to be setting him up for success after he leaves. The company he's working for doesn't seem to be unfairly exploiting his labor. This seems like a great success story for the Maine department of corrections. Who is being harmed here?
To me, it looks like a net benefit for the public, the department of corrections, and the inmate.
If you are worried about the inmate being allowed to build up savings that they can use when they are released, then that's on the judge. If the inmate has met their restitution obligations, then I don't have a problem with them being allowed to leave prison with savings that will enable them to get back on their feet again.
Someone can both work towards rehabilitation and pay their 'debt to society'. If they earn over what it costs to house them in a Maine prison then, by all means, let them keep the excess earnings. If they earn $100k/year and the state pays them $1.35/hr then there are deeper institutional issues around prison labor exploitation which should be addressed.
I used to have an uncle who was constantly in and out of prison over drug-related issues and he would do all sorts of work programs just to break up the monotony. Ironically, none of these rehabilitation efforts did any good and what finally 'set him straight' was the Three Strikes Law.
Because that's what a social community would do. But where you probably are, such an approach is falsely labeled as “communism” by MAGA anti-social assholes.
