I think the "normal person of 20 years ago" opinion on this is that he was rightfully acquitted, but it's weird for him to be getting hired by Andreesen Horowitz.
Half of the people I know in finance don't actually have finance degrees. Hell, half the people I know in tech don't have computer science / engineering / software engineering degrees.
It makes total sense why he was hired. He's clearly not afraid to make a hard choice and he's more than willing to live with the potential consequences. This indicates an appetite for risk that most people are simply unwilling to tolerate.
Penny's goal wasn't to kill Neely, it was to subdue him, but like most people who aren't used to being made to obey law and order, he fought and ended up killing himself because of it.
Yeah, the boy has a tragic story. No doubt about that. But like a lot of homeless mentally ill people, the help is there if you want it. And that's the problem. Before Republicans gutted mental health funding in this country, you were getting help whether you wanted it or not. Now you can "choose" to be a drag on society - with few consequences. We need to go back to saying, "You can choose to take your medicine(s) and be a functioning member of society or you can go hang out with Nurse Ratched all day. Your choice."
Jordan Neely killed himself, like what happens in a lot of these cases. People think they can act any way they want in public and then are shocked when someone bigger, stronger, meaner, and tougher comes along and makes them obey the rules of decent society and the laws of the land.
And despite what people think, that isn't the function of police. Police were created to protect the merchant class and their businesses.
In times long past, when everyone went heeled, you acted politely or you got yourself shot to death for being a jackass. This is why so-called "civilized" people have such bad manners... because they don't run the risk of someone cracking their skull wide open when they mouth off, much less actually threaten innocent people just trying to ride home on the subway.