If you omit some key details, all Preston Thorpe has to do to become a senior software engineer at a promising tech company is walk through the door.
For about six months, Thorpe was a prolific volunteer contributor to an open-source project led by database company Turso. His work was impressive enough that Turso’s CEO, Glauber Costa, quickly offered him a job. That was also when Costa realized that Thorpe is anything but an ordinary programmer.
“I checked his GitHub profile, and he mentions the fact that he is incarcerated,” Costa told TechCrunch. “It’s a story I’ve never seen before.”It’s true: Thorpe is serving his 11th year in prison for drug-related crimes. Still, he has worked full-time from his cell at a venture-funded, San Fransisco-based startup since May.
“I reached out to him in January, just to understand and get to know him,” Costa said. “Since then, I’ve had deep conversations with him about his change of heart that led him to be in the position where he is today […] Knowing his story increased our respect for him personally.”
Thorpe is part of an experimental program in the Maine state prison system that allows incarcerated people to work remote jobs from custody. Though unconventional, these opportunities have proven immensely rehabilitative.
Kicked out of his home as a teenager, Thorpe resorted to selling drugs that he bought from the dark web, and ended up in prison by the time he was 20. He got out a few years later, but with no money to his name and nowhere safe to live, he was arrested again 14 months later.
“I was a complete idiot,” Thorpe told TechCrunch over a video call from prison. “I had given up on my life, completely written it off, and just accepted that this was my life and just had no hope.”
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