https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6750805
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6245316
This is all the data I've got on the state of industry; genuinely interested to hear tidbits from anybody that things aren't this ugly nowadays.
I'm not in the demographic of people dealing with problematic pasts (and very thankfully so; I don't envy those who are, at all) but I think that reasonable analysis of situations like what is described in those links is not at all too much to ask (?!), and I wouldn't want to touch an employer who deals with such situations in the way that is described in those links.
(Also, if you go through the user profiles of the usernames who wrote those two comments - based on the fact that the first comment links to the second I presume they're the same person - I must note that I observe a general pattern of cynicism which I think has an obvious cause and is sad because of its trivial avoidability.)
But the world is still running because of millions of not-so-big companies. They have IT needs too.
Actually the majority of IT jobs are NOT at IT companies, but in regular companies that need IT like anybody.
I've been working in porn during my first 5 years and nobody cared. Actually most companies didn't even checked.
People in computing don't care that much about your background if you are skilled. You can even work remotely for/from companies in another country.
And the good news is, good devs are rare, but the demand for them keep increasing. So if you become productive and reliable with a pinch of people skills, you are pretty much guarantied to have a job in the next 20 years. And probably a good one.