Not that I am against giving people a second chance (and hey, abused youth and all), but to explain it by saying we are all criminals anyway so it is no biggie doesn't really raise my level of trust.
Every year, more than 130,000 people are convicted on felony charges for basic drug possession, a crime that hurts nobody and which is by a commanding majority of surveyed public opinion regarded as a crime that should not actually be a crime. All of these people are going to fail the criminal background checks applied across a good swath of the Fortune 500.
I think Google is in the fortune 500. Anyway they seem to go out of their way to not treat basic drug possession as a black mark. I interviewed there, and on the application form they had a question like "Have you ever been convicted of a crime (do not include basic drug possession)?"
It's good to know Google is reasonable about this, but you should consider that the overwhelming majority of possession arrests/convictions are misdemeanors. But the ONDCP had a breakdown (from several years ago) of felony convictions for possession; over 130,000. Companies are probably less tolerant of felonies.
Everybody has to decide for themselves where they draw the line (and I would feel better about crimes that don't really hurt anybody). Personally I felt it was inappropriate to lump all those crimes together. And actually, maybe I went to the wrong university, but I don't witness people hacking into other people's accounts on a regular basis. The question is, when do you know that you can trust somebody, and they have really changed their ways?
