The algorithms test or whiteboards I struggle as well. Math is not my strong suit either.

I have never been on that side of the fence where I have been incarcerated or put on an offender list. This could happen to anyone, you could just be taking a piss in the woods after a long night of drinking and be placed on that list. You could just be working out in an open gym park, have your fly down, forget it was there and cause public indecency to minors. Everyone will just assume the same - that you are a pedophile regardless if it was true, or even intentional, or just a one off mistake

I can't relate to your bank account issues personally, I have been lucky in that I have not had to worry about finances in the negative. Dealing with paycheck by paycheck is very draining mentally, I do nonprofit work with people who are disadvantaged, low income, or are homeless. I imagine you don't have a lot of free time in your day either.

Portfolio is actually fine for what it is, I might have overexaggerated about fixes that needed to be made.

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I really think the "lie" part is a little opinionated though. I do not think there is such a thing as ethical marketing at all. I don't draw the lines between black and white either, its just a gray zone for me. I lived a lot of my life telling lies not because I wanted to, because I didn't have a choice in the matter. I still try to do good and live by a set of rules though, but I realize things don't work out that way. Sometimes life just sucks and you are just unlucky and were in the wrong place and wrong time.

You have all the skills a potential employer wants. My friend told me this same advice to me as well - You are limiting yourself. You are holding yourself back. I have had similar yet different problems, I am socially shy on social media, but I only recently started blogging and rebranding myself under one social media name (vincentntang). I have had a very complicated past, I have never been understood most of my life, I do see where you are coming from to some extent. I dumped it here if you are curious http://vincentmtang.com/2018/08/13/story-of-my-life/.

Throwing all your eggs in one basket, one client, is just a disaster waiting to happen, especially with your financial situation. He might be a good person at heart or just taking an economic advantage over your situation. You said it yourself, because I get the job done fast and well and for cheap.

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Changing your name and using social media branding is unethical, but I would argue what HR is doing to potential employees is even more unethical. I think its not fair either for someone to assume who you are based on one past incident either. I got sick of dealing with people assuming things about me so that's why I mostly blog, its to tell the stories from my perspective. I don't talk about webtechnologies half the time, many times its just snippets of stories from my life. Debatedly I want to start doing things on youtube again as well, so I can share more tidbits of things that interest me

Most of your articles are opinion pieces, but where are all the adventures and stories of how you learned XYZ or struggled with dealing with incarceration? People would love to hear your stories, and your struggles, it makes you more relateable. I wouldn't use HN as a means to this end though, I mostly use HN to hash out potential stories I want to write about.

You aren't the only person with incarceration problems though. There's a whole network of developers who have been incarcerated, here on this job search tool. https://www.70millionjobs.com/