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. First of a

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. 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. 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. 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. 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 demonstrably better than the average Stanford-educated, classically pedigreed, natively networked elite. It isn't fair, 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. So get it off your chest and make the best of the life you've got. You still have more privilege than most. 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.