Big Tech’s Newest Experiment in Criminal-Justice Reform
“Next Chapter will train and place three ‘returning citizens’ inside Slack as quality-engineering apprentices—and build a process to help them acculturate to one of the most successful start-ups of the past decade, with help from a small support team led by a formerly incarcerated man named Kenyatta Leal. The apprenticeship is split into three parts over a year: Roughly four months at the start-up bootcamp Hack Reactor, four months of training, and then four months on the job, after which Slack may hire an apprentice, or help them get a job at another tech company. Everyone involved with the program seems to believe that if they can make the proof of concept work at Slack, other companies in technology and far beyond might also begin to hire more men and women who’ve paid their debts to society.”