tter california. this week, a new law changes how you ask job applicants about their criminal background. plus, too many cooks. the oversaturated meal kit business. and good news, history majors. tech companies want you. our reporters hanna kutra from the "financial times" and reuters' joe mann. this week on "press: here." good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. i have been to prison twice. fortunately just for the afternoon. both times to san quentin, where

i joined some of the men there as they learned to code through an innovative program called the last mile. the last mile has helped ex-cons get good jobs after they're released. we've even had one of the earliest graduates on this show. not very many companies want to hire people who have been convicted of a crime, but starting in january they may have less of a choice. a new california law nicknamed ban the box goes into effect. the box is the box on an employment application that asks whether you have a prior arrest or have been convicted of a crime. california law will ban that box january 1st. now, when we have legal questions we turn to the smartest lawyer we know, charl carrie moore, u.s. naval academy and berkeley law. joined by hanna kuchler. "financial times" and joe mann of reuters. all right. so not anyone can get any job anywhere. surely, a bank robber won't be able to get a job at a bank, right? >> no. scott, what the law is intended to do is really address this

situation where there are literally tens of millions of america who've been convicted of a crime and if we believe in rehabilitation then as governor brown said when he signed ab-10 20i7b8 l ab-1008 into law we believe in second chances. the law is intended to give employers some rules of the road. if they have more than five employees rkz, for most industries, public jobs, not all, so not the bank robber situation, where they will not ask about prior criminal history up front in the application process. so what we're really talking about is not whether you can ask about someone's criminal history, but when. >> so michelle alexander wrote this fantastic book called "the new jim crow," which was all about how the felony system, marking people as a felon, was in effect the same as the old jim crow laws. do you think this could be transformative for racial diversity in companies?

>> well, potentially. i mean, we have to remember, people of every ethnic group have been convicted of crimes. in fact, the majority of people who've been convicted of crimes are not a member of a minority group. but having said that, minorities are disproportionately represented for a variety of reasons in our criminal justice system. i don't think we have time to go into all of those right now. so i wouldn't necessarily cast it in racial terms but rather cast it in terms of simply equality. i think there are two laws that actually are going to go into effect january 1, both of which have to do with the quality. there's ab-168 which is about gender equality and wage equality. i think taken together they do essentially the same thing. they say look, the past is the past. we're not going to ask you in the application process about your prior pay history for good reason, nor about your prior criminal history. i would like to say, though,

those questions can come up later -- >> yeah, walk me through that. so i've got two candidates, let's say, and they look quite equal. i haven't asked them if they've been convicted of a crime because that's now going to be illegal. i'm right so far? >> you can't ask them at the very beginning. >> i've got two applicants. i may not ask them if they're married. i may not ask them if they intend to have children. i may not ask them if they've been convicted of a crime yet. >> right. and what's interesting is some places have been doing that for smoo-some time. 20% of the country. san francisco, l.a., but almost 20% of the country people live in a place where that question can't be asked. >> it's after i say i think this person over here is going to be my candidate, i'm going to tentatively offer them a job, and then i get to ask. >> that's right. >> or i get to look. >> that's right. >> and then if i find out they're a bank robber, i mean, let's use something non-violent and we'll keep it simple. relatively non-violent. let's say they robbed a bank.

what are my options? >> right. so at that point if you're going to deny them a job based on that conviction, based on their criminal history, then you should notify them in writing of that. by law you have to then give them five days to appeal your decision. ben, with you. so you give them five days to do that, and then your decision can stand. after that the employee or the prospective employee, the job applicant still has recourse to the fair employment and housing department in california. so employers really do need to take this seriously. >> it has to be justified. >> that's right. >> and it has to be connected to their function. for example, if it's a very minor crime, the reporter has to be prepared to make the case that your being a parking statistic scofflaw is going to impact your role as a teacher or whatever. it's got to have some sort of relevance. they have to be able to explain why that conviction would fit and you have to be able to on

the applicant's side you would argue that various mitigation things, length of time,ing rehabilitation, whatever. there's more of an exchange of ideas. >> you got it. it's a three-part test. the employers should understand, the hr folks should understand this. it's basically what's the nature of the crime, what's the nature of the job that they're applying for, and how much time has passed between the crime. and remember, at its sort of highest level, we're supposed to be rehabilitating folks and then reintroducing them in as productive members of society. >> so you talked about how this is already in place in san francisco and l.a. is there anything we can learn from how it's played out there? >> well, it doesn't seem to have ruined those places. our company is based in san francisco. so we've of course complied with those rules and grown quite a lot in the time that the law has been in place in san francisco. so if you ask me, i'd say that this is something that is doable, it serves a noble public purpose, and certainly employers

can make it work in my opinion. >> i want to ask about the other law you mentioned, you that can't ask about past salary history. that's really interesting. i think a lot of people are used to having to admit what they were earning at a previous job. but it's interesting in silicon valley in particular, i think, not only for gender equality reasons but because major silicon valley companies, some of them have a history of not rating each other, which is the subject of some pretty serious federal law enforcement. so will this have -- what sort of effect will this have on the power dynamic between employers and employees in silicon valley, do you think? >> right. great question. i've been in silicon valley for 20 years. it's a commonplace question to ask when you're about to negotiate that salary, what did you make at your last place of business. that's going to have a profound impact just in the process. the process is going to be quite different. and also let's face it, silicon valley has a pretty woeful track

record in terms of all sorts of gender, race, even geography. and so silicon valley i think is certainly going to benefit from rules like this. >> charley, you're my lawyer because i pay you $35 a month through rocket lawyer. that makes you my lawyer. can i lie about -- >> it makes you my boss. >> can i lie if somebody said up until the point of january 1st where they're not allowed to ask, and they say how much did you make at your old job, can you just tell them, well, i make x when i don't really make x just to up their offer? >> you shouldn't. i mean -- >> i know you shouldn't. >> i'm sure that people do. >> legally, could i? >> legally, i suppose you could. i can't give you chapter and verse of a law right now. although actually i probably can. i mean, that's fraud. and so you never want to lie about anything. >> see, you're my lawyer. you're a good lawyer.

>> then there's the interesting thing about my good friends at equifax offer this service where they are alarmingly accurate at predicting -- saying what you earned at your last job. can employers still go check with a service like equifax and find out what you made? >> they can. again, it's in terms of timing and sequence. the best advice i think is number one, consult with a real labor law lawyer, not just one who plays one on tv. and number two, it's sequencing. so wait until you're ready to make the offer and then do the background check for the investigation and then disclose to the employee if you're not hiring them why you're not in writing, give them a chance to respond to that. i think that's probably going to be your best bet. >> i've got to go to commercial. charley moore is with rocket lawyer. thank you ever so much for explaining ab-168 and 1008. they take effect january 1st. charley, thanks for being with us. well, up next, too many cooks in the kitchen may spoil the profits.

and lyft. the new effort to improve transit in the city. and of course - we )ll be following any breaking developments across the bay area overnight. join us monday on )today in the welcome back to "press: here." one of the ways you can tell an industry is hot is to count all the investment bankers lurking about. take meal kit companies. those are companies that put together a box full of food that you put together at home. sort of paint by numbers for home chefs. they're very popular, and they've attracted a lot of wall

street money. the biggest and best known is blue apron, which is run by a former investment banker. hello fresh is run by a former investment banker. plate it is run by a former u.s. infantry officer. but before ha he was an investment banker. you get the idea. the irony is for all the money and goldman sachs alumni some companies are still struggling. blue apron turned out to be one of the worst investments of the year. bloomberg calls it the bust of the decade. the company recently laid off 6% of the workforce. well, meet michael joseph, who is not an investment banker. he's a baker. he actually knows about food, and he's the ceo of green chef, a food delivery company, himself. although i was looking at your linkedin and i think you worked at an investment bank, did you not? >> i had a three-month internship at a leveraged buyout firm when i went to business school. it is true. >> okay. i don't think we'll count that one. fair enough. >> they did not offer me a job. >> so you are really, when you look at the top four or five, you are the only ceo of a food

kits delivery company who actually has a background in food. >> it is kind of bizarre, don't you think? >> absolutely. >> this is my third actually organically focused food delivery company. and you were just saying it. you said everything that i say to the investment community, which is super fascinating, in that i'm competing with both investment bankers and tech entrepreneurs. and you know, if you go into one of their factories you might not see what you want to see in a food factory. >> probably not. now, blue apron, good lord. they're the best known, and they're just having the worst time. what does that do for your business? >> matt saltsberg's a nice guy. he founded and runs the company. >> he's an investment banker, by the way. >> i've met him and spent some time with him and he's learned a lot about running a food business while doing this fast-running food business. but frankly, they lost sight of what their customers actually want and looked at it as a very traditional venture capital business where it was a winner

take all market that's very normal out here in the valley, to approach certain models like that. but food isn't that way. it's about meeting different preferences for your customers. >> some people will look at your business and say, well, if blue apron can do well, then the whole sector is a flash in the pan. do you agree? >> i would never take such a shortcut on logic, frankly. but i have to deal with it all the time. that's an uphill battle. admittedly. that we have to face. and then once we bring folks closer to our business they start seeing just how different it is. >> so there are some common logistical challenges. one company to the other. one of them as scott was mentioning before, you don't know how many orders you're going to get on a given day so, how much food do you stock up on, how much do you have to get rid of at the end of the day. how do you get rid of that challenge? >> i had to do this before. my prior two companies dealt in fresh organic produce which changed seasonally every single week. and so the way we've handled

this at green chef, though, is really advanced business intelligence team which is part of our headquarters here in silicon valley. so that we're very predictive about how much waste we're going to have and frankly, and i'll say it here on television, we're at 2% food waste for a very fast-growing company. >> how much do you think your competitors run? >> you know, i don't really know. >> more? i mean, there have been reports of significant -- >> i mean, i hate to say this, but i'm going to. i've received paid-for boxes from some competitors which i would consider food waste. opening the box. but i think that the problems would be larger. that i think that a number of our competitors would have more cash burn around that food waste problem because it's not just myself. i have a number of co-founders and early operators in the company who all came from food backgrounds and we've known each other a long time and we came to innovate in the area of food and

we feel this background is really necessary. >> another logistical challenge is actually getting all the food to someone's house. recently amazon launched amazon key, which is a way of getting into your house. does that make you nervous as a company? does that make you think amazon is going to hold the keys to the doors of our house and therefore anything that goes in and out you will have to go through? >> especially since they now own whole foods. so they could actually deliver decent food into your house. >> i can promise you my wife is not allowing any random delivery person into our house. we know our customers pretty well. frankly at my last company we offered a service like this in the resort areas of colorado but we had a very high level of clientele. high income level. they would want this, just some of them. but it was quite rare. i think it will work for certain people but i'm not afraid of that, actually. in any stretch. >> you were talking about business intelligence and predictive. what have you noticed? people order things with mushrooms on tuesdays and nobody wants to cook on wednesdays. and thursdays that's all about

tomatoes. i mean, what is it? >> yeah. i learned these patterns from my past three businesses because they're all in fresh food and we watch different foods. as new year's approaches we'll see people start investing in health and wellness and wanting to adopt a more healthy diet. the day of the week stuff you pointed out grocery planning in the u.s. by and large happens on the weekends. we have a lot of shopper activity happening on the weekends. on a monday i big group of our customers integrate it into daily life. it's an easy solution to a healthy delicious meal. the middle of the week it doesn't fulfill that same need. we still have people that have different use cases for the product. the patterns are very similar to the older patterns of grocery shopping and planning around that. >> i'm curious about the different things you offer. you've got the pailio thing and you've got a vegetarian thing and gluten-free thing. i'm curious, you know, what sort of faddish trends those things follow and what has to be a

breakout category, like how many requests do you have to get for, you know, a kosher vegetarian gluten-free thing before you actually start offering it? >> well, that specific plan may not be coming till like 2020, 2021. we're getting ultra niche there. and that will depend on how much automation we invest in. but it's been very fascinating since we have also been the leader it wasn't just in organic food delivered to you through a meal kit platform, as the first organic company doing that, we're also the first to do that in a diet-specialized sense. two months after launching we got into the gluten-free trend. you were naming others like vegetarian. we have vegan. our most recent is the ketogenic meal trend. first to market. you're like what is that? >> you've got about 30 seconds to explain it. >> i've got 30 seconds to explain it. it's an ultra low carb diet with a bunch of rules that green chef plans for you and what we found is we have a lot of personal trend spotting that happens with teammates on our team who understand the marketplace. we back it up with data. keto, for example, it's speeking

up like crazy whereas paleo, it's interesting, it's flat, anyone can go to google trends and see it yet it's an amazing business for us because those customers weren't being served by anyone else in the market. >> michael joseph is the ceo of green chef. thank you for being here. >> thank you. well, good news for history majors. your high-tech company wants your graduate. when "press: here" continues.

welcome back to "press: here." one of silicon valley's top venture capitalists, marc andreessen, once said english majors would end up working in shoe stores. and they may very well. i sold socks at penny's for a long time. but more and more english majors are working at high-tech companies. three years' worth of data on linkedin k378d by my colleague hannah kuchler found the growth of liberal art majors entering the tech industry outpaced that of computer science and engineering majors by 10%. an engineer and ceo of high-tech company stream sense but he has a not so secret affinity for those of us in the arts. take a look. ♪ born to be wild ♪ born to be wild

>> no, no. the youtube one is quite good, and actually you've got a whole list of hits you that do very well. what's the name of the band? >> the band's called the breakers. >> the breakers. why is it called the breakers? >> because the breakers crush classic rock. >> and is everyone in the band from the company? >> no. actually, one of them is. keyboard player is. and she's one that actually got me into the band. but what i like about the band is the other three guys are regular joes. you know, they're in construction and retail, et cetera. so we have a good kind of mix and blend of tech and non-tech people in the band. >> so you have this affinity for humanity. you saw what hanna was talking about as well. it's been engineers and engineers and engineers mathematicians et cetera. we're seeing this growth of facebook, for instance, all of a sudden needs people who understand where information came from, what it means in the human mind, et cetera.

i'm encouraged by that. >> i think we're getting kind of up the chain, so to speak, if you compare it to 30 years ago. maybe the analogy would be if you're trying to build a house in the 1900s and you need electricity. you had to get behind the walls to figure everything out. now you don't have to worry that much about how the power gets delivered. you worry about how cool the light fixtures need to be, et cetera. i think it's the same thing that's happening in the software industry, where the building blocks are much kind of higher order now that we can actually bring real value to the rest of the world. >> so now when you get a resume from an engineer, do you want to see something else on, it not just engineering all the way? >> well, you know, i think from a resume perspective people have kind of wisened up to that i would say. we definitely do ask questions. we ask questions around what do you do, what are your hobbies, kind of get them to walk us through, you know, just their educational history, et cetera.

and then if we don't hear much we select like the candidates, one of the things my co-founders started doing is forcing people to pick up hobbies. and you know, people do get confused. that's going to take away from getting the job done. but here we found one of our employees has picked up bird watching. he's now figured out something like 30 -- he can kind of identify 30 to 40 different birds. >> is he required to give an update rorkts monthly? >> no later than friday. periodic checks to make sure they're not dropping the hobby. but i personally don't want to know anything about the birds. >> you said it was a colleague. so this is not at your company. >> no, no. this is my co-founder, a person that works for me. he's one of our engineering leaders. and we kind of forced him -- we had to kind of ask these questions a few times before people kind of figured out, okay, you're serious.

okay, let me go do that. another one of our sales engineers just now is an expert gardener. again, maybe not so humanities-oriented -- >> but it brings something -- >> i'd say there's three pieces to the puzzle i think about. one is what's good for the soul. to me rock in this case. but to me music is good for my soul. that's what i like to focus on. but we do like to figure out something along those lines. i think it reduces stress levels, makes you happy coming in to work, et cetera. then there are the other elements, just dealing with people and ultimately i'd say learning. being a good learner. i think it requires you to have kind of a non-technical education. in some form. even if you didn't get a degree. the courses i took at college that were non-technical, the ones that are still relevant. all the stuff that i did that was engineering-oriented is obsolete already. i don't want to give my -- >> aside from the fantastic

musical performances and the addition to our collective ornithology understanding at our companies, where does the garden variety english majors, french majors, where do they fit in in the tech companies in the valley? >> i mean, historically -- and i'm slightly different from the facebooks and the googles. >> sure. your hardcore. >> i'm hardcore. we call it enterprise software. most people kind of turn their head away when i say enterprise software. but our he goal is to really bring to the incumbents, the global 2,000 companies, et cetera, the level of sophistication that the facebooks and googles have when it comes to dealing with data. that's what we're trying to do. so the no-brainer areas which historically we used to focus on were things like documentation. you know how to write and we'll put you there. but more and more i'd say things like any customer-facing role like customer support, there's a new -- there's a new job

description emerging called customer success, actively engaging with customers. this is happening because businesses have become kind of a recurring revenue business. so it's no longer sell and run. you've got to stay with them and make sure. >> i've got to wrap it up because i'm hitting a hard block and a commercial. let me ask a final musical question. that is what's your favorite song to play? >> well, the one that came up as usually the best starting song, "born to be wild." my daughter knows all my tracks, and she's got like a spotify play list and she likes to listen to it. "should i stay or should i go" by the clash. >> what a transition. we've got to go. we've got to go to commercial. we'll be back in a minute.

that's our show for this week. my thanks to my guests. earlier we were talking about a program at san quentin that

teaches prisoners to code, and i mentioned we had one of those graduates on the show. it's a fascinating interview. we did it a couple years back. but we put it on the front page of the website. pressheretv.com. it's worth watching. and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. damian trujillo: hello, and welcome to

"comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo, and today, we have the work2future program here. also, latina authors lending their work to the community on your "comunidad del valle." male announcer: nbc bay area presents "comunidad del valle" with damian trujillo. damian: we begin with the nbc bay area holiday food drive, the annual food drive. with me here is vicky avila medrano with the second harvest food bank here to fill us in. welcome to the show. vicky avila medrano: thank you so much, damian. damian: before we get into the need, the local need, you just got back from the fire zone in napa and sonoma counties. and i'm sure the need there is especially great. talk about what you saw there. vicky: i came back yesterday, exactly, and i was there for one week. it was an energetic situation because it's true,