CoRecursive: Coding Stories - Story: From Prison To Programming

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

 I believe that getting underrepresented groups into software development is a good thing. This is not a controversial opinion until you start talking about felons.    Today's guest is Rick Wolter. He's an iOS developer who served 18 years in prison for second degree murder.  Rick killed somebody and for some that's all they need to know about Rick. But today's episode is about Rick's path to redemption him, teaching himself to code in prison, smuggling in a Python interpreter, and then getting out and trying to get a job as a dev when you're a felon. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter UnderDog Devs

Hi, this is Co-Recursive and I'm Adam Gordon-Bell. Each episode is the story of a piece of software being built. I believe that getting underrepresented groups into software development is a good thing. This is not a controversial opinion. Lots of people feel this way. Unless you're talking about certain groups like felons. Like you can legally discriminate against a felon legally. You can say, I'm not going to give you a job because of who you are. And so this is a different group and it's not

the most popular, right? Like I'm not saying I deserve your compassion. I'm asking for it, right? Like I'm asking for you to give me the chance, but I'm not saying I deserve your compassion. I'm asking for it. I'm asking for you to give me the chance, but I'm not saying I deserve it. That is Rick Walter, and he's an iOS developer, and he gets why people might not want to give him a job. But is it fair to judge somebody just by the worst thing they've done? You can't overlook when the worst thing is actually the worst thing, right? And I have the worst thing you could do, right? It's not like you killed somebody, right? People literally say that and refer to what I did.

They refer to the worst thing. So yeah, Rick killed somebody. And for some people, that's it. That's all they need to know about Rick. But today's episode is about Rick's path to redemption. Him teaching himself to code in prison, smuggling in a Python interpreter and free code camp lessons, and then getting out and trying to get a job as a dev when you're a felon.

And then finally, trying to help marginalized folks learn development. It's a wild story. And it starts when Rick was a teenager and his dad got a house. Up until then, we had stayed in little trailers. At one point, it was like a really busted trailer that didn't have rooms. It was just beds on each end. We were able to get a house and that was like, you couldn't tell us anything. I thought I was like, I thought I was rich. I thought we were,

that we were living, living the life. That house was just a happening place. It was like, there's always extra people there. We were always either doing some drugs or like alcohol. It was just very, very dysfunctional. I was into selling drugs. I was into like whatever. I just, you know, made the worst choices you could ever imagine in life up until that point, in and out of county jails and juvie and all the things. I had gotten into a lot of altercations and I seemed to, they always ended in fights and violent incidents. I didn't think I was a bad guy, right? Like I was clearly, I wasn't making great decisions, but I wasn't the aggressor usually. So it made it, I usually felt like it was justified or, you know, you just rationalize your behavior. And when you're that young, you know, you don't, you don't know any better. And

again, this isn't minimizing it, but like I was raised, like you don't walk away. If someone says something, you know, you'd never let somebody like punk you. It was just one of those things like it's embedded in you at a young age. It's really hard to break. One night, everything changed. At this particular time, me and a friend were at a party and a big fight broke out and my friend started getting jumped. It was some older men from our area. We were teenagers. He was 17 and I stabbed one of the guys. It was just a horrible decision.

I was an idiot, you know, like just a really dumb kid. Guy I stabbed was 28. So Rick fled the scene of the fight before the cops could arrive. Someone called me. He was a friend of mine and he was crying because he had, the cops had picked him up and he was like i could tell he was kind of like crying i'm like what what's wrong with you he's like dude you got to get out of there he's like that dude died last night the cops told me they'd give you self-defense

if i told him so basically he was telling me he told but he also was trying to give me a heads up to get give me a chance to get out of there i probably need to look at like statute of limitations before i start talking too much so yeah I took off and headed some people's houses and some friends' houses. Hiding is probably not the responsible thing to do, but it hadn't really sunk into Rick the gravity of the situation. Although he did know he needed to talk to his dad.

And so I called him and I'm like, hey, dad, you probably need to come over. He said, I'm getting calls that cops just raided our house. What's going on? Blah, blah, blah. And so I call him and he comes over to the house. And I'm like, man, you need to sit down on the, he sits down on his bed. And, you know, I mentioned my dad who is very loving, very dysfunctional in his own right.

Like, I mean, he's got stories that like, dude, you wouldn't believe him, right? If I told you. Like it's stuff you see out of a movie, right? Like stuff that happened, you know, years told you like it's stuff you see out of a movie right like stuff that happened you know years ago like just to give you an idea like he named me after his best friend who their whole group you know one died in cop shootout one you know shoot out with cops the other ot'd and the other i mean like yeah the guy has like a his life is like a movie it's pretty wild so he's a real big dude too. He's like 6'5", 260 at the time.

And I remember standing there and I just, I was like, dad, and I had been in a lot of incidents, right? And he'd been like in his dysfunctional way to pride in it sometimes. Oh yeah. You know, my boy stands up for people or my boy, you know, like, you know, Rick got a fight and won, right? So he did this very toxic, like, you know, my boy a fight and won, right? Like, so he, this very toxic, like, you know, my boy can fight type of thing.

Like, so he, there were many times where we discussed that stuff and he's not like a normal parent, right? Like he would laugh and hear about these tales. And so this is one where it was like, it was just sad. Like, I was like, man, I said, I stabbed somebody last night. And he's like, oh no. He said, how is he? And I'm like, well, that's why I'm trying to tell you that. I'm like, man, I said, I stabbed somebody last night. And he's like, oh, no. He said, how is he?

And I'm like, well, that's why I'm trying to tell you that. I'm like, the guy died. And he just broke down in tears. And he sat down on the bed. And he just dropped his head. It just was bawling. This is a really big dude, right? Like wild, everywhere he goes, that's a big party type of guy.

To see him just break down like that. It was super sad. Do you think your dad was crying because he knew you were going to go away? Yeah. Oh, he knew I didn't fully know, but he knew like you could tell, like he knew like,

oh yeah, you fucked up this time. Right? Like you really messed up this time. Like we lived a life that was pretty wild and at some point it does catch up. And I think like at that point it caught up with it because after that it was like, it was especially for him, it was like downhill, you know, fell back into addiction a little bit later and lost a lot of stuff.

So Rick turned himself in. He was charged with second-degree murder. He took a plea bargain for 21 years, and he would end up serving almost 18 years in You get up there, you feel like you're in Alabama. It's wild. It's so different from where I'm from. And no offense to anybody from the country, but I'm just saying, you got these like what I – the stereotype of like, you know, spit and tobacco. Come here, boy. Get your ass over here, boy. You know, like literally on horses with shotguns at the time. It was wild. Really?

Yeah. At the time, they had this thing. It was like literal chain gang. It was something out of like a freaking movie from the 50s or something. It was just wild. Right? Your life could suck in there depending on the job you get. And you might get like, one of my first jobs, it was a cabbage field, I think. You're just out there freaking picking cabbage and like doing farm shit. And that was horrible in the Florida sun all day. Man, it sucked. Yeah, it was terrible.

It just makes your time way worse, way worse. Prisons can vary a lot, but in Florida, they mainly have a dorm system. Prisoners sleep in a large dorm room and there's no air conditioning, so it's pretty humid most of the time. The first big challenge Rick had in prison was finding a way out of cabbage duty. Can you imagine 18 years of picking cabbage? I can't put that on my resume, right? Rick applied for other jobs. I usually tried to get in jobs or just have extra free time so that I could read. I was always either running like the education department or like a houseman job, which is just cleaning the dorm after everybody leaves.

Once he got off the chain gang, Rick did just fine in prison. And he's an outgoing person, so he actually had lots of people who'd come and visit him. You can only have so many people on your visitors list though. So I put my buddy Jared on this other dude's list, Dan, and we get up to visitation, all of us together. And somehow we say Dan's name. We call him Dan the freezer man. Eventually my friend Jared's like, we went to get a drink. He's like, Rick, come here. And so we're getting drinks. And he's like, why do y'all call him Dan the freezer man? And so I tell him, I'm like, he buried somebody in a freezer. And he's like, bro, what the fuck? He said, man, take me off dude's list. He's like, put me on your list.

Don't ever put me on somebody's list like that ever again. And I'm like, ah, maybe I should have told you. He's like, yeah, you should have fucking told me. It's weird though. Like, I think it ties into your story too. Like when you think of somebody with like some label, this is what they did. It's different than knowing the person.

It becomes a thing they did, but like there's other things in there too. Yes. Yes. You separate it. I think you start viewing them as a human that have flaws. At some point, it's almost like it's an afterthought. Like you don't even think about it. So Rick is going to get interested in software development while in prison. And he's even going to get a Python interpreter smuggled in so he can learn Python. But before we get into that, I'm just kind of curious about what doing 18 years in prison feels like. Like what do people get wrong about prison life? What do they get wrong about prison? I don't think that it's as hard as people think it is. If you've ever been to like rougher poor neighborhoods it's

kind of like that it's basically the same thing it's no different except you can't get away you know you're trapped and i think that you like maybe wouldn't suspect how much fun you can have like you you end up with friends and you have birthdays in there and you're like you know you do have some fun when you say it it's like yeah of course you'd have some fun. When you say it, it's like, yeah, of course you'd have some friends and you guys would hang out and there'd be fun. But that's not what makes it into the TV shows. It's not the fascinating part to people. Like if you went in, you'd be fine.

Just stay on your bunk and read or whatever. If someone is like outgoing as I am, can be all right, I think most people can be. Nice. There's a big lesson. Prison, not so bad. It's bad in the ways you don't suspect. That's the problem.

You see life going by and you can't do anything. You can't act on it. You know, there's lots of going on, whether it be you want to do something. I got into boxing when I was in there and it didn't matter. I couldn't like, you know, I can't go pro. Yeah. You know, you're stuck in there.

You could study, you know, whatever you want in there all day long, do whatever you want. And you still, at the end of the day, you're just going to land your bunk and you're not going to be able to do anything with it. And so that is like maddening in its own ways. 18 years in prison can give you a lot of free time. And for Rick, a lot of that time was spent reading. You don't have responsibilities, really. You're going to be in this dorm maybe because it's raining and it's just, you're going to read. I was super lucky. My brother, dude's a fucking genius, honestly. And he's constantly sending me something that's just interesting stuff, intellectually interesting type books. And he's actually a professor now

at Auburn University. And so he would always look out for me and make sure I had stuff to read. And it could be anything. I went through phases, phases of reading the classics, right? Then you go through phases of stuff about thinking, like How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg or Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I read all his stuff. But you have time so you can read even weightier stuff. And it's fun. As Rick got closer to the end of his sentence, he started thinking about what he would do once he got out.

What can I do that can actually give me a decent life, where I don't have to grind? And growing up, I did a lot of physical labor with my dad. He did seawalls. And that stuff is brutal. These were rock seawalls. Rocks would get dumped in with front end loaders, but also needed to be rolled into place. Rick's dad was always looking for more help.

We might have a bunch of people stay at the house. And the next day he'd be like, come on, y'all get up. And I'll, you know, I'll give y'all a little something. So he's like, he makes us all go to work with him. But regardless, like it was very impressionable on me that I don't want to fucking do that the rest of my life. Like it was really, it was really hard. And so I'm looking at skills and I don't know how to do anything. I'm not mechanical. I'm like, man, this is, you know,

this is going to be rough. So I think I was reading it in the economist, the demand for software engineers. And as you, you know, this was like 2015, 14. And after I read it, I felt like everything I picked up had something about that. So before I ever started coding, I was having stuff sent in about coding. So I would read all about it. I'd have books like, I think it's called More Awesome Than Money. It was a Facebook alternative startup thing. I saw the social network, the movie. I don't know, something about it was fascinating. And of course, it was more like the idea of it rather than the actual thing.

Because getting the hardcore skills is a lot different than just fantasizing about making a ton of money as a coder. The social network, they're coding and doing shots and then cannonballing into a pool, if I recall. Right. It was my language. It was speaking my language at the time. I was like, oh, look at this. This is how everybody lives. It's like the life of a king.

So now Rick just has to learn how to code. Learning to code is actually hard, but it does seem like a great thing to teach prisoners in prison, like if they're interested. But there's a problem. You know, this ain't California. This is Florida. They want you in the cabbage fields. There is, however, a computer lab in one of the dorms. They weren't ancient, but they were, you know, like old Dell towers that you would see in like a classroom in like 98 maybe. Or 96 or something. You know, just older types of things.

I mean, like, you could probably just look up any room with computers from the nineties and it's probably what it looked like. These computers were part of a drug treatment program. So my friend Muhammad ran the storm and brought this to him. I said, Hey, I've read about this stuff over here in this article and blah, blah, blah. And I've had blogs sent in. I'm like, I want to put Python on the computers in there. And so he's like, all right, you know, he's down for it. So we had Python stuck in on a thumb drive, and we put them on the computers. But how do you sneak it in? Well, with this one in particular, like, there's lots of ways.

I mean, guards bring stuff in if you're cool with them. You know, you can do lots of different things. But this way in particular, we just knew somebody that worked there who wasn't a guard, but he did work in a different area. He's passed now. He's actually doesn't work there. He's, he passed away a little while ago. Awesome man though.

Really awesome guy. Like he's the type that like, he just wanted to support people doing good things. And he didn't care. Like if it was breaking a rule and he knew us, right? Like we had at this particular camp, I had spent almost a decade there. So these people like watch me grow up there. Yeah. Like, so you got Python started up and then you type one plus one or I don't know

what, what happens? What, what were you doing? Well, I got some books. It was like a set and my brother got it to me and I just went through that book and like, it was mostly foundational type stuff you know this is what a string is this is what this is what a data structure is and yeah i was like stepping through it and then i tried like different courses we got access to um mit open courseware and i was watching i think his name's john gutag if i recall this a little

while ago i think he's the professor of the MIT courseware for Python, which was a computer science, like an introductory type of computer science class. I would follow that. I didn't really understand a ton of it at the time. I'm not going to lie. Like I'd listen and half the shit dude said I was clueless about it, but I was trying to follow it, right?

I mean, like this is like, you got to think about it. I was like a caveman at this point, right? Like I'm like a caveman and I'm like trying to make sense of what these like wizards are talking about. And then there were some that like with the Bucky tutorials and this guy has got like very down to earth, just almost silly tutorials. But I liked them.

They were like, if you got 10 tunas inside this array, then you eat one tuna. You know, like some real goofy stuff. But it was like, I you got 10 tunas inside this array, then you eat one tuna, you know, like some real goofy stuff. But it was like, I don't know, it spoke to me, you know, maybe it was because it was layman's terms. And so I was like, I get it. Okay. I fucking get it. You don't got no tuna left. I get it. Yeah. A Python. I don't know. That seems like kind of perfect, right? Like, it seems like that's, that's exactly what i would maybe choose for you like if i got to pick you know looking back i think you're right i stumbled onto it but i think

you're right it's a perfect building block like just starting with something easy with minimal syntax and you just learn at least for the basics of like learn what data structures are and learn like control flow that kind of stuff and then you can you know move on and it was a lot of fun and i used to lose myself in those python problems and those youtube videos that we had on the thumb drives yeah it was a whole lot of fun and it was like an escape you know we had like a little bit of music on those computers and so like you'd sit down and i would just zone out and just code for a little while. Still didn't really know what I was doing. I didn't find out till later that I was like, wow, I didn't know a damn thing. In my mind, I was like a software engineer. It sparked that interest.

So you might notice from what you've heard from Rick already, he isn't really a keep it to himself type of person. He starts talking about computer programming. He starts teaching his friend Ryan about computers. And then eventually they start teaching a class. So Ryan starts helping me. I'm sure he would love to be here to say this. He'd be like, you didn't fucking do anything. It's not that I didn't do anything. It's that he taught better, I felt.

So when I got him teaching, I just quit. And so I didn't quit. I just started doing my own thing. So he would teach the classes and I would code Python over on the side. Once I got him teaching, in his perspective, I duped him. I lured him into teaching and doing all the work, but it was fun. We both had a blast. But this whole thing was still a rogue class. These computers were supposed to be for some drug treatment program, not for programming Python. That was the problem was that when we started teaching the class, it was too noticeable.

And that's kind of what brought the downfall. Like if I just sat in the corner and done my thing, I probably wouldn't have even been found out. And then coding books started coming in and like they would approve some, they were very arbitrary depending on who's working the mail room. Someone get turned in to like security, like, Hey, what's going on here? They just didn't know what we were doing. They didn't understand it. It's not, it's not a high trust environment. Definitely not. We don't even have metal forks and spoons, right? You know, they think of movies, they picture us hacking everything and stealing, you know, money out their wallet. We weren't even connected to the internet or anything. You know, I don't, I

understand why they wouldn't trust us. And it's, right? You don't have those kinds of programs. This looks like a group of hackers, basically. Literally, we're just trying to get skills for when we got out to be contributing members of society, right? Just normal people. Yeah. But when the word got to the warden and to some of the higher ups, and so they came down on us and well, not on Ryan, on me, because word got back that I was like the ringleader of this thing. And they transferred me, but I got a taste. That's all I needed was that taste. I mean, I'm an easily excitable guy. So like, it's not hard to make me think like, oh, this is the best idea ever.

And I was dead set. I was locked in. I like, oh, this is the best idea ever. And I was dead set. I was locked in. I said, man, this is it. And I had a totally inaccurate idea of how long it was going to take me. I thought I was going to get out and write some Python code and get hired. And like, you know, three months out by my mama house and it didn't work like that. So Rick got out and he found a place to live. So I ended up with a place, almost incidentally, for one of my friends who had been writing and visiting. Her and I got really close

and eventually became like a romantic couple. While Rick was in prison, Rick's dad had fallen on some hard times. He had like lost everything, was real bad, addicted to opiates and was staying at this dude's house who was like a known addict, known crack addict. With the help of my brother, we got him help

and got him out of there. He's doing fine now, thank God. Yeah, it was bad. Like when I get him out, he starts working, trying to get jobs here and there. He's kind of like, doesn't have a business anymore, but people knew him from the back in the days. And so he would get jobs here and there. And when he would, he'd call me. And so I'd go with him. There I am back to doing seawalls. The same thing I didn't want to do. My spare time, I was doing like a, just a two-year degree

from programming at the local college. You don't learn a lot there. Let me rephrase that. You do, but it's a slow track, right? Like there's so many classes that were just bullshit. Now I look back, I'm like, God, I couldn't condense that class to something way better. And then after that, I enrolled in a CS program, transferred from there to Florida International University, which is like a state uni here. This is where things can fall apart. It's one thing to imagine being a developer when reading some exciting book

about the creation of Facebook. It's another to be out of prison, be doing manual labor during the day and then trying to build up a skillset at night. I had panic attacks out here. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I was driving and I felt cold, like super cold and like dread. And I've never felt this way.

It was so weird. I turned the radio off, like tried to like limit stimulation. I almost had to pull over. Like, what the fuck's going on? Is this like a heart attack? I'm like, I'm too young for a heart attack. What is this? Later, after talking with people, they're like, no, dude, I think that you had a panic attack. So, oh, okay. Interesting. This is like

something I wouldn't expect, especially because like I'm very carefree. Very rarely do you find me stressed. Rick's plan could have fallen apart at this stage, but he started finding ways to hang out with software developers. I just would go to these meetups and all over Orlando, wherever there was programmers, I would show up and listen and didn't know what was going on really. But I was trying to make it happen. And it took a long time because I didn't know anyone. You know, I didn't know a single person, didn't know any programmers, eventually built some friends and relationships. You know, I'm asking developers like for time and like advice and and there are so many that were cool about that and would yeah what do you need what type of help and like it's just

the awesome industry full of amazing people and so i would like ask hey you want to grab lunch sometime you know like let's grab lunch that way i can just like basically ask them a thousand questions that's all it was and i would would sometimes admit, you know, joke, like I'll trade you prison stories. Like I got a gazillion prison stories. I'll give you a prison story if you'll give me information on how to become a programmer.

One person who agrees to go to lunch with Rick and is still his friend today is named Ben. So I'm like super broke. And I got this truck that's like so busted like it look like the truck you see you're like damn you know it doesn't look like it even runs look like a bent up ass red it's red too like red coke can on wheels and so i i go i meet him for lunch and we come out and ben's you know he's been a programmer for a long time so he's doing well and i insist on paying his his lunch i insist on paying his his lunch i insist on

paying because i feel like this guy's taking the time to like guide me and give me insight and help me out so i feel like i should at least i could do was pay his pay his lunch and so we're gonna leave i had parked down i guess near where he was parked and i didn't realize it so we leave you know same time and he starts walking this fucking guy starts walking to like the nicest tesla out there like this badass tesla next to him is my beaten ass coke can right like part right next to him and i'm slow walking just so he don't see me getting this truck here i am paying this dude's paying this dude's meal and then and he did try to tell me no he's like no don't worry about it but i insisted so stuff like that you know trying to get people to go to lunch or hang out or just talk to people and get as much information as i can about the industry and about how to make it

what did you think of smartphones when you first saw one it was amazing in fact i remember thinking like this is incredible how much you can do from a phone and from a laptop. When I got arrested, I had a pager. And so I just remember being so empowered, like, damn, I can get my life on track, like from this room, like whatever room I'm in, as long as I have access to the internet. And it was, it was really cool. So Rick has a lot of tech to catch up on. Think of everything that's changed since 1998. But he was obsessed. A friend of mine got me this really old Linux computer, and I didn't know how to use it. It was an Ubuntu. And he let me borrow it for

a while, like a little old laptop. And I just, I would fall asleep till like three, four in the morning. I remember being so excited. I would stay up like super late. And whether it was on a laptop or the phone, it was just like two, three in the morning because it was just, I could fucking look up whatever I want. I can learn whatever I want. It was like a drug to me. It was pretty badass. One thing Rick was looking up was how to fund his education. And he found out about Pell Grants, which is a federal student loan program. It actually allowed me, it gave me enough with loans to not have to work a ton.

So it actually allowed me to code on the side without working a whole lot. Because they had the Pell Grant, there was different loans and grants. But I had to go to class, I had to go to school to get it. Well, the classes were really easy. So, you know, it's community college. So it's like, it's, it's not super hard. So I would like knock the classes out real quick and then just do other stuff like coding or whatever. And I kind of used it to give myself time to code and to like, to learn what I was learning and, and damn if I didn't need it. Cause like, man, I'm telling you, I didn't, I didn't know what an email was. I didn't know. I mean,

I didn't know anything. I was a kid when I went in, like, it was a lot of work. Maybe I'm not a fast learner. I don't know. But like, it took a long time. And again, though, like, you know, it's like a caveman, right? Like I literally was like fucking figuring out what fire was and beating on this laptop till it made code. After enough lunches and meetups around Orlando, Rick did end up cracking the code on how to learn the skill, how to become a software developer. I would look for ways that first off, that anything that will give you time, even if it's a job that's maybe just a crap job, but you'll have a lot of free time. Something that will allow you to study.

Time is everything. You need some hours in the day, especially if you're going to catch up and try to actually be competitive. If you want to interview at top-tier places, you're going to have a lot of ground to make up because you're competing with Stanford grads, right? You're competing with University of Washington grads. So you're going to need a lot of time and you're going to need a lot of ground to make up because you're competing with Stanford grads, right? You're competing with University of Washington grads. So you're going to need a lot of time and you're going to need a lot of commitment. If you wanted to follow in Rick's footsteps and become a top tier developer, here's how you'd do it. If I was starting over now from a disadvantaged background, if you can't do kind of like the community college route, like I was mentioning, like I went to Eastern Florida State College and it allowed me time.

And I know it's not popular to talk about grinding, right? Like the overwork culture is not popular. I get that. This is a different space. You want this shit, you got to grind. You're going to have to do it on the weekends. You're going to have to like lock in. I'm sure someone's going to be like, oh, no, you don't.

I don't have to. Don't put that pressure on them. That's fine. But like, to me, when you come from a background, especially if you're a felon, but even if you're not a felon, you don't have a college that's going to give you any kind of signal, right? I mean, everyone talks about the college debt, but your local community college isn't that expensive. And then that way, maybe you could just cut your work down to 10, 20 hours and then spend

the rest of time coding. Once you found the time, you know, the time for coding, you need a learning strategy. You focus on fundamentals first, data structures, control flow, that kind of thing. And stick to that for like a short period of time, maybe like a month, month and a half. Just do that, like basic stuff. It's not popular. People want to see things on their screen, right? They want to say they built a thing, but you've got to get those fundamentals first. Once you have those, and there's so many free options, Coursera, FreeCodeCamp.

And then once you get some fundamentals, then you can decide on the platform. For Rick, smartphones were such an amazing discovery when he came out that he chose to focus on iOS. And once you pick your platform, just focus and stick to it. You know, if you're building Ruby on Rails, do that shit every day, but make sure you're building it. You know, hands on the keyboard, watch a tutorial, then do the tutorial again, but change some things. Then try to recreate what you built in the tutorial, not looking, that kind of thing. Because that's the main thing, is getting your skills up. So while you're doing all this, grinding out tutorials, you're not done. Rick says there's still another important part. You also got to know somebody. You also have to

talk to somebody. You have to know somebody. And so the way you do that is just find a way to be around developers, whether it's meetups or online organizations, get involved and even donate maybe an hour or two. If you can, you gotta, you gotta focus and build your relationships with intention. Like hang out, talk, be a part, just really just be, I don't care. We'll go back to the cabbage field. I don't care if they're picking cabbage, right? Go out in that cabbage field, pick cabbage with them and hang out like just be around developers because those those are the people that usually will help you get offer opportunities and you'll know when they're going to be hiring sometimes before the job you know ever even hits the the job board oh that's a great great summary people can climb from various

socioeconomic backgrounds up but it's like a harrowing undertaking. It is. It definitely is. And I know, I understand why people push back on the, don't be hard on yourself, you know, all the pressure, don't like take a day off. It's okay. And I get that. Like I get that. But when you're coming from way behind everyone else in this rat race, you got a lot of catching up to do. I try to speak without bullshitting about what it takes because it does take a grind. And I know every bootcamp out there, every coach and every like content creator wants to create this narrative,

you know, three months in a JavaScript framework and you're getting paid. And that's just not how it is for most of us. Most of us are going to grind. Most of us are going to like, it's going to take a hardcore commitment, a lot of investment. You're not going to see a return on it for a little while. So that takes willpower. And maybe I'm just speaking for people I know, you know, maybe it's a small circle, but I

can tell you from my own experiences, it takes a lot out of you. It takes a lot of grind and a lot of commitment. Part of that grind, once you have some skills, is just grinding through some job interviews. You're probably not going to get the first job you apply for. So in the first couple of years, Rick got a couple interviews under his belt. I bombed the interviews because I didn't know what I thought I knew. I didn't know shit. And I thought I knew something and I found out I didn't know what I thought I knew. I didn't know shit. And I thought I knew something. And I was, I've found out. I didn't know anything. Did terrible.

And some of the, in a couple of interviews I got, well, I mean, one, I didn't do terrible, but I think also at the time I was nervous. And so I didn't,

there was a couple of questions that were asked that I knew later on, looking back, I'm like, Oh, I knew what that was. And I just, I didn't for some reason, I think I was just nervous.

So Rick is working his own three-stage plan. You know, find the time, get the skills, get the network. When it came to networking, it turned out that one of Rick's friends from before he was in prison was a super helpful connection. You know, he was like one of my homeboys that like, you know, if he had problems, he would call her or whatever, that kind of thing. So that actually played in my favor. His friend's wife was a.NET developer.

He told her that, like, no, he really was always sticking up for somebody. And so coming from him, I don't know, you know, maybe it made an impression on her. And so then we hung out a bunch and she was like, yeah, I want to try to help you. And so she explained to the hiring manager. on her and so then we hung out a bunch and she was like yeah i want to try to help you and so she explained to the hiring manager and of course he's asked asked like what happened and i just told him you know like i made some horrible choices and i can't undo those right like um i can't change it but i can tell you i'm not the same person and you know if you give me a chance i'll show you and did you ever think about like just lying or covering it up or just, I don't know.

I would just try to not have it come up. That'd be my strategy. Like I hear you and I just, I'm very transparent, right? Like it's a huge part of my life. It's such a large part that it's going to come up, right? At the time, it was half my life. Yeah. From the time, you half my life from the time, you know, and all my life as an adult. So it's bound to come up at some point. And I feel like I want to get ahead of it. If someone's going to find out, I want me to tell them I would rather

be the one to tell them. And like, if you're going to refer me, Adam, I wouldn't want later on the hiring manager to come back and be like, damn, Adam, you could have told me, like, you know, this guy went to prison. Like, I like people knowing they can trust me. And so there is that, like, you know, if you're going to refer me, I'm going to make sure you know I come with some baggage and this is that baggage. So the hiring manager wants to hire him, but after hearing about his past, he decides he should check with the whole team. So he asked everyone in the office because it was in person. You know, he decides he should check with the whole team. So he asked everyone in the office because it was in person. You know, he had to talk to them to make sure they were all cool with it. There's not many groups of people you're going to find where everybody's okay with someone

coming on premises that's killed someone. And everybody was. They're like, yeah, it's fine. And here I am out here with normal people who somehow find it in them to be like that open-minded and understanding and empathetic, I guess. Been pretty badass when I've met people like that. So it took almost three years, two years and eight months, but now Rick is a professional developer. He's being paid to write code. The next step, of course, is to get on social media. I tweeted that I had, you know, got a job as a software engineer, mentioned like my background, and I had a ton of people reach out. And a lot of people started asking me like, hey, I have a felony or I did time or whatever, you know, would you help me?

So I got a small group together, got them all in like a text group. And so we'd text and we like all of us would chat on just this little text group. So Rick names this group underdog devs. And along with his new dev job, he becomes a leader and a coach for this group. He's this model that other people can aspire to. I feel vindicated on having been so open so early, even with like my, my, my Twitter or like whatever I do, because it's like a lot of people have told me, man, it helped. That fucking helped me a lot. Seeing you be so transparent, seeing you win.

And I know that wasn't purposeful. I'm going to be honest. Like I didn't do that intentionally. I'm going to help everyone else feel brave, right? Like I wasn't trying to make anybody feel brave, but it did that. Well, Rick's inspiring people and helping them via text and building up this mentoring process. His friend, Ryan, his co-teacher from prison, the prison Python class, gets out of prison.

And he did the same thing I did. Because, you know, he's like listening. I'm giving him my advice on what I think we should be doing. So he joins the community college and Eastern Florida State College, gets the same degree I did, and he's doing good. He's got a lot of grit. He just doesn't interview well. He does. He's terrible at interviews. Dude's super smart, super smart, but you wouldn't know it in the interview. He just doesn't interview well. And his whole background is all construction, right? At first he was, you know, he was doing like a lot of power lifting. He was doing a lot of other stuff. And we had like that come to Jesus, as they say, talk like where you're just like real with each other. And I was like, dude, you got to fucking

give some of this shit up. It's not going to work, man. You're going to squander. You're not going to get hired. You got to get your skills better than what people suspect because we don't have strong signals. We're not sending strong signals, right? Like I don't have a Stanford degree. We have felonies. Your skills got to compensate for that. And so you got to give shit up and you got to lock in. So Ryan gave up on powerlifting and he committed to grinding out his programming skills. And by this time, underdog devs had become something bigger. It had moved to Slack. it had suggested classes, and it had a collection of mentors from the industry. Mentors are part of Rick's original formula of time plus skills plus network. You need to hang out with developers to

become a developer and your mentors are sort of there to help that process happen. So we got him in underdog devs, he was grinding, and eventually he showed commitment and we got him in Project Underdog. Project Underdog is a special program in Underdog Devs where you get some financial assistance. We'll get to that shortly. So we found out he got hired. And I'm not gonna lie, I teared up a little bit.

And, but I'm listening to him. He called me, we put him on speaker round. I'm like, so what's up? He just starts grunting on the phone. He's like, dude, they gave me an offer. And I was, dude, I was laughing so hard. I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? I'm like, is that a grunt?

Are you grunting at me, dude? And he's like grunting on the other side of the phone. It was funny. But that's the type of shit. That's why you do it. You know, like that's why to me, underdog devs like flourishes without a dime going into operating costs.

Cause moments like that. I think grunting is like the power lifting cry. That's it. I didn't think about that, but you're right. That's how you should communicate. That is like power lifting language, I think. I don't know. I don't power lift, but like, yeah, it sounds like it's true.

So underdog devs grows larger. They get some help from Udacity on course credits. They become a registered nonprofit. Rick gets advice from Big Nerd Ranch. Jessica McKellar, whose company was sold to Dropbox, joins and starts helping out. And meanwhile, people from Rick's childhood, they start noticing how successful he's become. Everyone I was close with growing up, like my circle, clearly I've made a lot of other friends since then.

And like my, you know, my, my friend groups are varied now, but the group I grew up around, they're all doing construction stuff. So yeah, there's quite a few that were like, what the fuck? Like they watch me go away. Some of them came and visited and then they watched me come back and now i'm like in an industry that they don't even you know i've never been a been around and i'm like i try to tell y'all like hey let me help you out but that's in fact that's how kind of how underdog dev started was people reaching out like hey how'd you do that right like how did you do

that how did you go from prison to programming as a profession? And me saying, I can try to help you if you want, you know. So the scope of Underdog Devs expanded. It went from helping felons to helping all kinds of people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Like Juan, a construction worker who's in the program right now and trying to become a professional software developer. And Rick is always looking for more mentors. Okay, so if you want to help out, we got a couple ways. The most general mentorship is one hour bi-weekly.

And this is more like general. It's up to you. It's your agenda. You guide them. And we would love help with that. You're helping people that are like really good people. Like they're good people that made poor choices and they've been trying to get their life on track and they just don't have the network, you know, because they're from different

environments. And then we have Project Underdog, which is kind of special, which Jessica McKellar helped start. And Project Underdog is where we take people like Juan, who like I seen him, he's got grit. He's smart. His circumstances just don't allow, right? Like he's got to work construction all day.

He's got to help his family. And he's probably, and you know, the statistics like kind of like lay this out for us in our country. When you're born into lower socioeconomic background, when you're born into those spaces, you're going to probably die in those spaces. It's hard to break out. Well, coding levels the blame. It allows for like, you know, if you've got the spaces, you're going to probably die in those spaces. It's hard to break out. Well, coding levels the blame. It allows for like, you know, if you've got the skill, you can do it.

But you also have to have the time. So, you know, with Project Underdog, they get the time. Because we find the people who are grinding without it. Like he would come home from construction at work and code and jump on meetings. And so we select those that have the highest, like shown a lot of grit and consistency and jump on meetings and so we select those that have the highest like shown a lot of grit and consistency and bring them in and for that we need mentors who are like really skilled for that and every mentee gets five mentors and so monday to friday they pair program with a different mentor each day from this problem set that jessica's built it's not necessarily

leak code-ish like we're not asking them to worry about time and space complexity, but we are asking them to solve problems and to pair program and guide the mentee. So for that, that's an hour a week. It's like the heartbeat of underdog devs. And you see stories that will bring you to tears. If you've got any emotion at all, it's the most amazing stories you've ever seen. I mean, there's a reason that we've been doing this. You know, we're going on three years now. There's a reason we do this and I don't get a dollar from it. Every bit we have, all our, all our stuff goes to the stipends because I feel like that's how we can expand access.

And it's rewarding itself. It's rewarding in itself. I don't need a dollar. Jessica's rich. She don't fucking need no money. And so you'll see once you get involved and you do it and you see people's life change, I've heard it over and over and over. I can't express this enough. People telling me, whoa, this has been life changing. This is pretty badass. This is just saying how meaningful it is to them. That's awesome.

You mentioned it there. I was just thinking about it. Like, do you, do you think we live in a fair world? Do you think that people from these lower income areas have a same crack at things that everybody else does? No way. No way. I mean, you can't. You can't. I'm not saying that everything's completely unfair. We have a lot of opportunity in the United States. Clearly, right? I've done all right.

And I had a lot of odds against me. But if 95% of the people born into lower socioeconomic standing die in that same space, and you don't rise above it there's something there like it's not you can't tell me that's random right like there's things and whether it's the whether you know you could blame culture you could blame system you could blame there's lots of there's lots of elements i'm not gonna you know i'm not a trained sociologist so i'm not gonna say that i know for But I am going to say it's clear that there's a disadvantage to being born into certain spaces. My own journey gives hints at that. In fact, talking to my daughter, she's into coding.

She's making all A's, discussing Deep Work, the book, with her. The contrast in how I was raised, that by itself, right? Like that by itself just sits with me. Like, fuck, we're discussing the value of concentration and Cal Newport's work on the study of concentration and focus. And on the other hand, when I was her age, I was probably like, you know, trying to talk my dad into letting us put a keg. So I'm not saying that's, and it's just an example. age, I was probably like, you know, trying to talk my dad into letting us put a keg. So I'm not saying that's, and it's just an example. Like there's lots of other stuff, just environments that are toxic. You don't, you know, one parent's discussing college opportunities. The other parent is screaming that they're going to blow their head off and leave

because something happened. Right. I mean, just, you know, it's different environments. Definitely, definitely not fair. Like you automatically just assume there's a ton of economic mobility but there's not it's not it's not what you think there's not a level playing field completely there are opportunities though and i know that like that's the main thing our group does is try to make sure that people have opportunities if they do have grit and they have tenacity we want to be there so that they're not just washed out because of the circumstances, right? And I'm not saying that I'm systemically held back.

There are people that are systemically held back. I don't think I'm one of them. But I am where class is concerned. There's a lot there that affects people that you don't look at. There's a lot of things holding people back from certain spaces and certain backgrounds that aren't necessarily noticeable from the outside. That was the show. A big thank you to Rick for sharing his story. Go to underdogdevs.org to check out the program.

Find him on Twitter and also in the show notes. And if you like the show, you know, share it with somebody so they can learn about it as well. Or just like spam it in the Off Topic channel at your work or in some Discord server. I don't know. And if you're a super fan, support me on Patreon to get access to more episodes and, you know, just encourage me to

keep making them. And until next time, thank you so much for listening. Thank you.