A graduate of Slack's Next Chapter initiative, which helps former prison inmates land tech jobs, recounts how he managed to land a full-time job at the company
Jesse Aguirre's workday at Slack starts with a standard engineering meeting—programmers call them “standups”—where he and his co-workers plan the day's agenda. Tweets: @csinschools , @andrewnebus , @sameerpatel , @ckinstitute , @gregghoush , @tlm , @simonestolzoff , and @theatlantic . Thanks: @simonestolzoff Tweets: @csinschools : Three prisoners end up with jobs at Slack after learning how to code in prison https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Andrew Nebus / @andrewnebus : 🤯 They learn to code without access to computers. “They relied on books and pens to scribble out code on scratch paper... Aguirre handwrote code to re-create the In-N-Out Burger website using only a printed-out copy of the chain's homepage as reference.” https://twitter.com/... Sameer Patel / @sameerpatel : Huge props to @stewart and @slackHQ. This is a refreshing example of silicon valley quietly *doing* good vs tweeting outrage. > From Prison to Silicon Valley - The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Charles Koch Inst / @ckinstitute : Slack's Next Chapter initiative, in partnership with the Last Mile, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Free America, helps formerly incarcerated individuals find long-term employment in tech. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Gregg Housh / @gregghoush : “Full-time employment is one of the most effective levers to reduce recidivism, but it isn't easy to find work when you have spent much of your adult life behind bars,” @SimoneStolzoff reports. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... @tlm : “When I got my job offer, I felt like a guy from college getting drafted to the NBA,” ~ Jesse Aguirre - From prison to software engineer @SlackHQ #PavingTheRoad https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Simone Stolzoff / @simonestolzoff : This is my favorite story I've written all year; it's also the most important. Tl;dr Hiring managers have the most power to reduce wealth inequality in this country. They just need to give folks with nontraditional backgrounds a chance. Here's why 👇. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... @theatlantic : Jesse Aguirre, who is 26, did not finish high school and has so far spent most of his adulthood in prison; Slack is his first full-time employer. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... Thanks: @simonestolzoff
Context & Ripple Effects
Jesse Aguirre's path into a full-time Slack role runs through a pipeline assembled piece by piece over the past year: he learned to code inside prison through The Last Mile, which teaches programming at 15 facilities in five states, then graduated from Slack's Next Chapter initiative, which pairs formerly incarcerated graduates with long-term tech employers alongside partners like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Free America.
The hire lands at a company that has already staked out an unusual position on workforce composition — Slack built a more diverse US workforce than most Silicon Valley peers by skipping a diversity chief and embedding hiring efforts from the start, per its 2018 profile. A former inmate writing code in standups is that philosophy extended to its logical edge case.
First-order effects
- Slack converts a Next Chapter graduation into permanent headcount: Aguirre joins as a full-time engineer, and per the related coverage he is one of three former prisoners who ended up with jobs at the company after learning to code behind bars.
Second-order effects
- The Last Mile's model now has a proof point at a marquee employer, giving other tech companies a template — partner with a prison-coding program, fund a bridge initiative, and hire from it — rather than treating incarceration history as a permanent bar to employment.
Third-order effects
- If more employers follow Slack's route, second-chance pipelines become a recognized talent channel in tech, loosening the degree-and-background-check gatekeeping that has defined Silicon Valley hiring — though scaling beyond a handful of flagship hires depends on whether mid-size companies replicate what only well-resourced firms have attempted so far.
The trend: Tech hiring is slowly building credential-free talent pipelines — prison coding programs feeding straight into engineering roles — that treat demonstrated skill rather than resume history as the entry requirement.