Tech CEO Stunned to Learn 'Impressive' Software Engineer Is Working Remotely — From Prison

For 33-year-old Preston Thorpe, becoming a senior software engineer at a promising tech company seemed as simple as stepping through the door—if you overlooked a few key details.

For around six months, Thorpe had been a prolific volunteer, contributing to an open-source project spearheaded by database company Turso.

Thorpe's work was impressive enough for Glauber Costa, Turso's CEO, to offer him a position promptly. That's also when the top executive made the startling discovery: Thorpe wasn't just any programmer. 'I checked his GitHub profile, and he mentions the fact that he is incarcerated. It's a story I've never seen before,' Costa told TechCrunch.

The truth is, Thorpe is serving his eleventh year in prison for drug-related crimes. Nevertheless, since May, he has worked full-time from his prison cell for a San Francisco startup backed by venture capital.

'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.'

'I'm very excited to announce that I have recently joined Turso as a software engineer,' Thorpe declared in a blog post on 16 June.

Thorpe participates in an innovative program in Maine's state prison system, allowing those incarcerated to work remote jobs from their cells. While certainly unconventional, these opportunities have shown immense rehabilitative power.

From Despair to Determination

After being forced from his home as a teenager, Thorpe started selling drugs acquired from the dark web, resulting in his imprisonment by age 20. He was released a few years later, but with no money and nowhere secure to live, he found himself arrested again just 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.'

A New Chapter

Thorpe had lost all hope, but fate intervened with different plans. Just before the pandemic hit, he was transferred from a prison in New Hampshire to the Mountain View Correctional Facility in Maine, a move that allowed him to rekindle hope once more.

'When I came to Maine, it was completely different,' he recalled. 'COVID happened right after I came up here, and it just gave me a chance — there was no one around that I felt like I had to act or prove myself to. It was just me. I felt like maybe it's not over; maybe I could end up having a normal life. I had this kind of epiphany: "I'm going to make something of myself."'

Education Behind Bars

At the Mountain View prison, Thorpe began studying remotely at the University of Maine at Augusta. Around this time, Colby College sought to hire one of its graduate students, who was also incarcerated, as an adjunct professor. It was an unusual idea, yet Randall Liberty, the Commissioner of the Maine Department of Corrections, was prepared to take a chance.

'After consideration, I allowed that to happen, and over time, it's been very successful,' Commissioner Liberty told TechCrunch. His students can visit him at the prison, and he can tour them around. It fosters a diverse range of opinions, thoughts, and backgrounds. It makes for a rich environment to learn.'

Paving the Way for Remote Work in Prisons

Notably, Thorpe is among the thirty inmates who hold jobs while residing in the Earned Living Unit. This less restrictive prison facility is for those who've shown a consistent record of good behaviour. All inmates with remote jobs are required to pay 10% of their earnings to the state, in addition to any other necessary payments for restitution, legal fees, or child support.

'Maine has been a real groundbreaker in this area,' Haley Shoaf, co-executive director of Unlocked Labs, told TechCrunch. Unlocked Labs, where Thorpe worked before joining Turso, employs engineers who are currently or formerly incarcerated to develop educational software for use in prisons.

'[Maine] put all this infrastructure in place during COVID to allow for remote education, and then once that infrastructure was in place, all of a sudden, it expanded the amount of opportunities people could take advantage of,' Shoaf said.

A Better Path to Rehabilitation

Despite working in law enforcement for 43 years, Commissioner Liberty's approach to rehabilitation only began to change after he served in Iraq. 'When I came back, it gave me a heightened sense of understanding post-traumatic stress and trauma, and all of that plays into corrections,' he told TechCrunch. 'I began to see the detrimental effects of just the trauma of incarceration, of segregation.'