zlacker

>>public+(OP)
Nov’22 is very recent, and won’t be your experience forever. It’s been a little over 20 years for me. Now, I get background checked every year. It doesn’t show.

Initially I worked in food service and on phpfreelancer. I spun that into consistent consulting work until a client offered a full time position (less than 15 people, no background checks).

As the years rolled by, I kept moving around. Eventually I tried at a large company(around 8 years ago) and nothing showed on the background check.

I do NOT recommend being upfront, unless there are no formal procedures in place and being honest actually helps. We are talking about your ability to feed and shelter yourself, so give up on the “honesty” thing. I have -never- been able to provide for myself after having been “honest”. [edit: after reading felonintexas let me update this. If someone point blank asks, tell them. Don’t volunteer this information. There is nothing to be gained]

Also, you are now an edge case. That means most advice doesn’t apply. This is both exciting and horribly anxiety driving at the same time. You will have to become comfortable blazing your own path and doing things others say is not possible.

Seriously, good luck. It is possible. It is amazing what you can do that everyone else thinks can’t be done.

>>nope00+9f
> I do NOT recommend being upfront, unless there are no formal procedures in place and being honest actually helps. We are talking about your ability to feed and shelter yourself, so give up on the “honesty” thing. I have -never- been able to provide for myself after having been “honest”. [edit: after reading felonintexas let me update this. If someone point blank asks, tell them. Don’t volunteer this information. There is nothing to be gained]

No better advice has ever been given on HN, from minor things to major stuff. Never volunteer any information about yourself to anyone in the office beyond what is required to complete your job. Never say too much about previous roles and keep it very general.

>>Simon_+4C1
I'm generally someone who sees honesty as a virtue and have always been fairly open, at work and in my private life. I'm curious if you can expand on this a bit - i.e., why is it a disadvantage and what sort of pitfalls can it lead to? I've been in analytics for a few years now, and it seems like it has mostly been an advantage for me, but it's certainly possible I just don't know what I don't know.

>>tommyc+Ce2
Example - about 2005 I was a junior dev thinking I was about to make the cut to senior within the year, in a medium sized IT company. Let it slip accidentally to my boss that I used to install servers in racks in a previous role. Ended up being shoved into a "lateral move" into the systems engineering team because they couldn't hire quickly enough. Fast forward another six months and I get laid off after a migration to the cloud makes my team redundant. Expensive lesson, but lesson learned.

>>Simon_+Ug2
Okay, this is a useful example as it's salient for me. Especially as a relatively recent pivoter into tech, I've been willing to jump on whatever is needed and generally am able to figure things out and make it work. In my current position, at a small SaaS with layoffs and churn, this has led to me basically owning 3-4 roles' worth of tasks. Mostly completely unrelated to one another and very stressful due to the constant context switching. I appreciate your perspective here, this is something concrete I can work on.