Prisons are pitched to us as places of rehabilitation - somewhere to pay penance and right wrongs before returning to the community, better for having served the time

In America? many states don't even pretend with that pitch. They want to be "hard on crime" and "give justice to victims". And voters vote for that.

in rough order of important:

• experience
• personal projects or project you contribute to (e.g. a decent sized code base in Github). if you're early on, this can be school projects.
• ability to answer programming concepts in an interview settings
• school/grade prestige.

I have no idea what I would say in an interview.

if you have no previous job, then yea. It's rough. The first job is always rough, and even in software that's no exception. You will want to talk about decisions and features you worked on in personal projects for that stuff. And of course, really nail down your fundamentals; they really drill you with those interview questions as a junior.

If you have a job, then talk about that. Maybe there's some NDA, but you can talk about some problem in general terms and what you needed to do to solve it. You're not expected to do anything crazy as a junior, so your answer relies more on you knowing how to work in a team than novel architectual decisions.

Personal example: my first job was at a small game studio and my non-BS answer would be that I simply did bug fixes for a game. Nothing fancy, probably something an intern can do.

But interview spin: doing those bug fixes

• helped me learn about Unity's UI system, I can talk about specific details if the interviewer cares (and don't feel too bad if they don't. Even a super experienced engineer won't be able to talk about every sub-topic of an industry)
• I talk about where I encountered decisions and when I talked to my lead about what to do. e.g. One bug ended up coming from code that another studio owned. While it was a one line fix, I reported it to a lead who would then create an issue to pass on to that studio. Frustrating, but it shows you understand the business politics of the job, something school can't teach.
• I never did it at that first job, but there were moments where deadlines get moved forward, and you think of a compromise for a feature due to the lack of time . That shows your ability to identify the Minimum Viable Product and to understand the problem, both the bad and good ways to solve something (sadly. in games you may have to hack solutions quite often)

Best of luck

Community and support are things some people REALLY need, especially veterans and disabled people. Would you say the same if the Mods of r/blind capitulated as well

Probably. I've been told for years to touch grass anytime I talk about issues important to me. But there are no local communities for my issues compared to veterans and the disabled. Maybe they should use that time to make actual connections.

you're just being a cynical ass because you want to feel superior for having left the website when I reality you're just another person with another opinion. Nothing special

People can do what they want. I was the same way in 2015. I just hope they open their eyes one day and realize that it's best to let go when you're disrespected for years on end. You have more power than these corporations want you to think.

Well that's the sad reality. I don't think most people want to move. They are hoping reddit fixes itself or at least compromises on their plans. I was in that same boat myself during the first blackout way back in 2015.

Ofc, I saw over 8 years how they proceeded to do almost none of their promises, implement actual user centric features when the loudest subs literally broke reddit, and threw in a bunch of stuff no one asked for: crappy video player, hiding QoL behind a paywall, polls that barely work on old reddit, adding NFTs over a year after the internet went to war with the concept?

Yeah, I'm a very patient man, but around 2019 I realized not much was going to change. And the coup dtat is that the communities themsselves have gotten more and more polarized over time. I remember a time where I could at least lightly touch into some political issues as long as I stick to smaller subs. During my last days (around the time blocks updated to be much worse) I was being blocked for correcting grammatical errors. Not minor stuff, stuff that would fundamentally change the meaning of their sentence.

So yea, I've given up. But it took me years after my "breaking point" and I'm sure for others they will be in the same boat