[HN Gopher] Poor in Tech
___________________________________________________________________
Poor in Tech
Author : tosh
Score : 632 points
Date : 2021-05-19 10:55 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (megelison.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (megelison.com)
| throwaway713 wrote:
| A lot of this list just reads that they have coworkers who are
| jerks. Not interacting with cleaning staff? That seems like a
| personal problem. And I've seen plenty of frugal VPs that drive
| 15 year old cars and make their own lunch.
|
| That said, I was also pretty horrified once when I was waiting in
| the lunch line and heard the person in front of me complaining
| that their six month $100k bonus wasn't as high as they thought
| it would be right as the person making their plate of free food
| handed it over to them. There's always going to be at least some
| rude, thoughtless people; the best thing you can do is to try to
| avoid hiring them.
| fallingknife wrote:
| You shouldn't be horrified at that complaint. If a company
| hints that it's going to be 150k when they hire you and it ends
| up being 100k that is a valid complaint. You are just
| perpetuating the don't talk about pay rule which benefits the
| company over the workers.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| I think an important aspect is that, even if you're frugal,
| there's signifiers of class that you can easily 'turn on'. I'm
| pretty frugal myself (I drive a 15 year old hand-me-down from
| my parents, have the cheapest phone that will still function,
| and generally avoid buying anything new ever), but my
| upbringing was fairly comfortable. But I can definitely
| recognize that I'm able to fit in upper class settings, and can
| recognize easily when people can't.
|
| I think it's fair to say that an SF-based tech startup is a
| place where you're going to see a lot of these upper class
| signifiers.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| "I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because
| nobody else ate the Hot Cheetos that were stocked in our free
| snack kitchen. Seaweed snacks were always empty. Nobody had those
| telltale red stains on their fingers but me."
|
| https://i2.wp.com/writingtheother.com/wp-content/uploads/202...
| [deleted]
| lovegoblin wrote:
| You should be a better person than you are being here.
| [deleted]
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| In the interest of harvesting downvotes, I'd have to say that
| I'm bored with people like Ms. Elison.
|
| Looking at this essay, and at the summaries of her books,
| she's obviously in the grievance porn business.
|
| 'Poor in tech' is a real thing but needs a better champion.
|
| Shout out to the few still-sane folks out there.
| dang wrote:
| Can you please stop posting personal attacks to HN? It's
| not what this site is for, and you've done it more than
| once recently.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
| nerdponx wrote:
| About half of this sounds like "I knew I was the only not-
| fabulously-wealthy person at my tech startup."
|
| I grew up in a quantitatively upper class home, and I'd still
| feel like an alien around the people the author is describing.
|
| I think this person is suffering more than they need to (while
| being offensively underpaid) because they happen to be in a
| particularly weird and wealthy bubble.
|
| I understand the point of the article. It's worth reading. But
| for anyone out there who is also poor: no, most people at tech
| companies are not like this, even the ones who make $500k/year
| and come from wealthy families.
| ideamotor wrote:
| Assuming the trip to Greece was a joke was pretty good, as was
| the comment about hearing other people's hobbies and just
| thinking about the expense. There are definitely cultural
| signifiers from wealth. Discussing housing endlessly is the
| biggest one.
| tome wrote:
| Are indoor rock climbing and adult soccer known to be
| especially expensive activities? I haven't done much indoor
| rock climbing, but I've done a lot of adult soccer, mostly for
| free.
| jonfw wrote:
| The gyms in my area are several times more expensive than
| regular gyms, but as far as a hobby goes it's pretty cheap.
|
| I'd say a hundred bucks a month keeps me in shoes, chalk, and
| a gym membership
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| And you know Association football (soccer) is lower class in
| the UK.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Indoor rock climbing for sure. A gym will cost you at least
| $50 a month (where I am, but I doubt it's that much different
| elsewhere), and the equipment costs aren't astronomical but
| do add up, especially compared to "cheap" sports (at least
| $200 for shoes / harness, and additional gear depending on
| what sort of climbing you want to do).
| wlesieutre wrote:
| The indoor wall where I'm from was at a YMCA, which has
| financial assistance programs for people who qualify. On a
| tech salary the author would probably be looking at full
| price, but if she were still poor it'd be a cheaper option.
| Grustaf wrote:
| I'd say even the receptionist at a SV startup can easily
| afford to do rock climbing if she wants to.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Right, but if they just started at that job, and they
| previously had worked for much lower pay, they wouldn't
| be exposed to indoor rock climbing much at all. I don't
| think the author is saying that they couldn't rock climb
| if they wanted to, it's just a very different context
| when people can suddenly have (relatively) expensive
| hobbies.
| awhitby wrote:
| At least. NYC is more than double that: $120-130 a month.
| maury91 wrote:
| In my country the price to do adult soccer is "one soccer
| ball", many soccer fields are free, you just go and if no one
| is playing you can use it. The only problem is that you can't
| play at night because no one is going to turn on the light
| for you.
|
| The fancier soccer fields with lights on cost 25EUR/hour,
| divided by 22 players it becomes just 1EUR each ( and you
| still need to bring your ball )
| creshal wrote:
| Taking a _3_ day vacation overseas definitely is a joke. You
| 'll spend as much time sitting in a plane or waiting at the
| airport as you'll spend at your destination, how's that
| supposed to be relaxing?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| If you fly business/first class. I know people who went to
| Macau for a weekend or Paris and that is how.
| vetinari wrote:
| Since Concorde service was discontinued, business or first
| class passengers are not going to spend less time on board
| of the airplane than economy passengers.
|
| 12+ hours for each way quickly dampens the enthusiasm for
| the weekend.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Business and/or First class do _not_ make up for the
| jetlag.
|
| I had this near mythical idea of flying business class, but
| when I finally joined a company that actually had me fly in
| it, I was sorely dissapointed.
|
| I mean, it's definitely better than flying economy, but
| you're still stuck in a pressurized tube for 10+ hours.
| stephencanon wrote:
| First/business class is not miserable, but it's also not
| relaxing. For a three day trip, spending a whole day of it
| in airports or on a plane is not at all relaxing, no matter
| what class you're flying. Personally, I draw the line at a
| week for non-business travel to Europe, and two weeks for
| Asia.
| creshal wrote:
| > Personally, I draw the line at a week for non-business
| travel to Europe, and two weeks for Asia.
|
| Sounds about right, especially when you factor in jetlag.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Plus nobody would 'recommend a hotel'. An island, maybe
| contriban wrote:
| You said that because you're poor too. Rich people travel
| right into resorts, not specific places, because resorts
| sell you the dream directly.
|
| I definitely saw the videos of those dreamy Greek hotels
| with in-room balcony pools and if I were rich I would know
| their names too. I'm sure that if you contact them you'll
| just have to drive to SFO and the rest will be taken care
| of by them.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| > because you're poor too.
|
| Well you say that because you haven't visited greece ;).
| It's not the "spa" type of tourism, and those kind of
| luxuries are usually sought after by spoiled arabian
| princes. The aspirational SV person would choose one of
| the many hotels, book trips and food tours around the
| islands, or hit the beaches and the nightlife. In fact
| all-inclusive hotels are geared towards pensioners and
| budget-level UK teenagers.
|
| But it's certainly not possible to do those in 3 days
| with jetlag.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Not all rich people want to go to cookie cutter resorts,
| seems more like an upper middle class thing. Maybe it's
| different in the US.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| The rich people I know have their own vacation homes in
| nice places and/or make exotic travels where resorts are
| unusual and unneeded. Less rich people aren't usually
| interested in constrained luxury experiences like resorts
| and cruises; the closed environment doesn't compete well
| with freely experiencing a proper tourism hotspot and its
| varied attractions and extravagant luxury doesn't compete
| well with a better location or a longer stay with a
| cheaper, good enough accommodation.
|
| Resorts are a specialty for amateurs or a resource for
| special cases (e.g. a safe environment in unfriendly
| locations like Egypt or Maldives).
| Aeolun wrote:
| Why would you not? I would definitely disrecommend hotels.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'm sure it's a much better experience if you fly first
| class.
| username90 wrote:
| Average workers at tech startups don't fly first class...
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The part that's the worst isn't being on the plane. It's
| going to and being at the airport. First class doesn't fix
| the god awful experience that is flying.
| jsnell wrote:
| There are plenty of ways to make the airport part more
| pleasant with more money. Priority check-in desks and
| security mean you don't need to get to the airport as
| early just in case, it will be consistently fast.
| Priority boarding removes the need to queue. Leaving
| first probably means shorter queues at immigration.
| Lounges are much more pleasant to wait at than the
| general access areas. Does first class baggage also get
| offloaded first?
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I just looked it up and flights from SF to athens and back
| are almost 35 hours. Add in a few hours at each airport, an
| hour to/from the airport on each side and you're talking
| 40-45 hours of door to door round trip transit. That's
| insane.
| wdb wrote:
| Plenty of people fly to New York or Vegas for a long weekend
| from Europe
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Bullshit. I know my share of wealthy people and nobody does
| that. Especially when you have plenty of vacation days to
| use anyway.
|
| Las Vegas is 14-15h away from most European hubs. NYC is
| 8h. Even the best case scenario (first class and the
| airline staff walks you through immigration) means 10h
| door-to-door.
| wdb wrote:
| Bachelor parties or Boys weekends in Las Vegas is quite
| common for Londoners in some circles. Leave Friday and
| come back to work on Monday morning. It's not much
| different from a weekend Crete or Canary Islands or
| Weekend away in the Caribbean
| hocuspocus wrote:
| That's certainly not the behavior of _plenty of people_.
|
| If you have this kind of disposable income, why not take
| a few days off?
| wdb wrote:
| Colleagues at work in the City didn't at least once or
| twice a month. Well not to Vegas/NYC (probably 2-3 a
| year) but Crete, Berlin, Ibiza for partying/clubbing many
| times etc. I can see it happening more now that companies
| are more open to remote work. You could work remotely
| from the place on Thursday/Friday and then party and come
| back on Monday morning
|
| I have done it in the past went to Switzerland or Hong
| Kong for the weekend to buy things as it was cheaper to
| fly there then to buy the same product on the grey market
| in London (saved $3-5k).
| creshal wrote:
| It's just as stupid going the other direction IMO.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Maybe from the US (unless you go to Cuba or the Caribbean).
| In Europe it makes total sense, even from far away
| Scandinavia. You can easily be in South of France before
| noon.
| rcoveson wrote:
| Yes, the difficulty of traveling "overseas" is closely
| correlated with the size of the seas over which one must
| travel.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Found that bit surprising one. For European startup long
| weekend in Greece isn't that special. The flights can be quite
| cheap and Greece generally isn't that expensive country. A few
| hundred all together could probably be done.
| pdpi wrote:
| The idea that "A few hundred all together" isn't that special
| is precisely what the post is about!
| dkersten wrote:
| Sure, but it's quite a flight from San Francisco
| stephencanon wrote:
| Yeah, and I don't think there are any direct flights, so
| it's even more painful. Best-case scenario is a stop in
| Frankfurt, IIRC.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I've always been surprised by the flight costs of some
| European airlines. It seems cheaper to fly around Europe than
| it is to fly within the US. I recall during the peak of the
| pandemic some people I know posting pictures of $5 flights
| while in the US they were they were still 10-11 times that
| for domestic flights.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Would the European startup workers you know fly to Malaysia
| or Peru for their 3-day weekend?
| nickd2001 wrote:
| Not talking to the cleaning person is just rude and mean. Seems
| to me if no-one else in the office does it, that's an opportunity
| to be the person that changes things. If one person starts
| talking to the cleaning lady/man, other people probably will. Or
| if they look at you weird for doing so (yeah to be honest this
| sadly did happen to me) then ** 'em, they need to learn. As for
| free stuff, hey, if the company wants to give away free stuff,
| its our moral duty to use it, right? ;) If like the author we're
| struggling to make ends meet, then we should take whatever free
| stuff we can use. If we don't technically "need" it, well how
| about pass it on to someone else who does. Or give extra money to
| charity. Really, why be embarassed to be the only person using
| free stuff. Will people really deep down judge you? If they
| really do, go work somewhere else with better people ;)
| Flow wrote:
| I grew up poor(but no longer am). I can sympathize with some of
| the things she wrote, but not very many. I too talk to the
| janitor and cleaners. I once had a job like that.
|
| What strikes me is that she describes a work-life that are quite
| a few years long, perhaps even decades, and she still is dirt
| poor apparently.
|
| I know that no-one just gives money away, but how come she lives
| a frugal life and after years of working still is extremely poor?
|
| Her writing makes me think she thinks like a beaten dog. Either
| she is exaggerating/lying or she has some other problems that are
| not actually money-related.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| She does say she is paid less then everyone else in the company
| and it seems she lives in San Fransisco, so it doesn't seem
| like too much of stretch to me
| [deleted]
| aphextron wrote:
| This hits hard. I can remember landing my first job in SF as a
| poor kid from the midwest who had only ever worked menial labor
| before. For the first few weeks I would leave my Macbook at the
| office every night, because I was incredulous to the fact that an
| employer would let me take home a $3,000 laptop.
| MrBeansForReal wrote:
| She is such a masochist. Women bring misery wherever they show
| up. IT has been fun for such a long time. But they will destroy
| anything so it is all about them. The Womym. Always suffering,
| always unhappy, always about THEM. How can you even be poor when
| a software developer? This takes some serious clinically
| recognized masochism to be so!
| cryptica wrote:
| I'm also poor. I once told a well-off investor that if I counted
| the hours I spent working on my open source project, my hourly
| rate over my career would be below that of a McDonald's employee.
| His answer was "It's an investment in yourself, you'll make it
| all back later." - He was partly right, it was an investment, but
| all it got me was a foot in the door at that company as a regular
| run-of-the-mill software developer, nothing more.
|
| 2 years later, I'm a proven 100x developer, working on some of
| the most complex projects imaginable as self-employed - I managed
| to pull myself up by the bootstraps but I still earn much less
| than all my ex-colleagues who work bureaucratic corporate jobs. I
| don't see anything changing for the better. It only seems to be
| changing for the worst. Nobody even cares about open source
| anymore. I'll have to be a 1000x developer by the end of the year
| just to make ends meet as a self-employed developer.
|
| The situation is getting so bad, I find myself fantasizing about
| communism. Anything to end this crony-capitalist nightmare.
|
| I often think of the quote "In communism, we pretend to work and
| they pretend to pay us." - The "pretend to work" aspect sounds
| like an upgrade over the deal I'm currently getting.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I read the whole thing trying to find something I could relate
| to, as I grew up in a place that was a proper third world country
| as recently as in the 90s.
|
| This appears to be _American_ poor - which I think is in its own
| category, because comparing to American rich it 's just so much
| worse off.
|
| It's not that she's necessarily _materially_ poor. It 's just
| that there's no one around who can even begin to understand her
| predicament.
|
| I only ever get close to this when I talk with people who have
| inherited wealth and give sage advice like "you should be saving
| 70% of you salary".
| SkipperCat wrote:
| What I find so fascinating about this article is how it conveys
| the anxiety of being poor in America. How you're always one
| "bad luck" event from falling down a socio-economic peg, and
| recovering from that is so hard. Other places around the world,
| you're poor, but so's everyone else and you're all in it
| together.
| oaiey wrote:
| She lives in her social environment and is subjectively (and
| relatively) poor compared to the rest of the social environment
| The word poor is not strictly defined, so her "poorness" does
| not compare to "third-world-poorness".
|
| She expresses exactly that. She starts each sentence that she
| realizes that she is poor compared with them. Relative. I do
| not have the feeling that she even feels miserable about it.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.
|
| Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay
| Gessiah?
|
| You're right there Obediah.
|
| Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here
| drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?
|
| Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup
| o' tea.
|
| A cup ' COLD tea.
|
| Without milk or sugar.
|
| OR tea!
|
| In a filthy, cracked cup.
|
| We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a
| rolled up newspaper.
|
| The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
|
| But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
|
| Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, 'Money
| doesn't buy you happiness.'
|
| 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to
| live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the
| roof.
|
| House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one
| room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the
| floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner
| for fear of FALLING!
|
| You were lucky to have a ROOM! _We_ used to have to live in a
| corridor!
|
| Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a
| palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish
| tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting
| fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.
|
| Well when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground
| covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.
|
| We were evicted from _our_ hole in the ground; we had to go and
| live in a lake!
|
| You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty
| of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.
|
| Cardboard box?
|
| Aye.
|
| You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag
| in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in
| the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to
| work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When
| we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
|
| Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock
| in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go
| to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home,
| and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken
| bottle, if we were LUCKY!
|
| Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the
| shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean
| with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold
| gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for
| fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would
| slice us in two with a bread knife.
|
| Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night,
| half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric
| acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill
| owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our
| Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves
| singing 'Hallelujah.'
|
| But you try and tell the young people today that... and they
| won't believe ya'.
|
| Nope, nope..
| [deleted]
| StavrosK wrote:
| What did poverty look like for you? I am also from somewhere
| very different from this, though I can't say I grew up poor, we
| did okay.
| Tade0 wrote:
| For me it was mostly not being able to afford school books
| and clothes, shoes other than Chinese supermarket stuff - so
| something that wouldn't last two seasons. Also five people
| living in a 45m2 apartment - thankfully only until I was
| twelve or so.
|
| We reached a low point as a family when I was in college and
| my father, who left a few years earlier, stopped supporting
| us. Fortunately by that time I had a part-time job and could
| at least pay for my own food and cleaning products most of
| the time.
|
| My SO had it worse though - four people in a studio apartment
| until she was about eleven and her father, the sole
| consistent breadwinner, left when she was a teenager, from
| which point on they had to sustain themselves on alimony and
| occasional jobs their mother would take.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| A family member has told me a story of her poor childhood
| in the thirties in rural Poland. During springs, their
| family had to steal rotten potatoes from other people's
| fields and eat weeds to survive. THAT's being poor. What
| the original article describes sounds more like a anxiety
| over a risk of falling into poverty, than actual poverty.
| pschuegr wrote:
| What you're describing sounds like "destitute", not poor.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think a more precise term for it might be "financially
| insecure". You can make things work, it involves a bit of
| scraping here and there, but you are one bad-luck event
| (unexpected medical bill, car break-down, etc.) from
| being unable to pay your regular bills.
|
| Being in such extreme poverty that you need to eat stolen
| rotten food and weeds is another category entirely.
| znpy wrote:
| > I think a more precise term for it might be
| "financially insecure".
|
| it really feels like you're sugarcoating it.
|
| if having "to steal rotten potatoes from other people's
| fields and eat weeds to survive" is not being poor, then
| i don't know what is.
| leoc wrote:
| Well, if most accounts are correct, being "American poor" means
| you may have to endure, or at least seriously worry about,
| things like frequently missing meals, going without important
| and relatively basic healthcare, being forced to live in a
| dangerous neighbourhood, and even homelessness. It might not
| make you one of the world's poorest people, but it seems you
| can quite easily experience a pretty meaningful level of
| _absolute_ poverty in the US, not just find yourself poorer
| than others in the country. And this is worsened by the fact
| that certain "non-essential" things like mobile phone service,
| Internet access or even a working and fuelled-up automobile may
| be essential to keeping your access to paid work.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Involuntary poors are a huge threat to our society. They lack
| morals, discipline and intelligence because if they didn't they
| would have pulled themselves up their own bootstraps already.
| They are never more than one step from petty crime, and never
| more than two from snapping and going berserk on the people
| around them.
|
| When some inpoo walk by me with their smelly ragged clothes or
| poo on some SF street (seriously, it's so common it's basically a
| trope???) I instinctively watch my back and clutch my pearl
| necklace firmly because I know they are just waiting for an
| opportunity to steal it (I managed to get a good deal, when it
| was on sale for at $18999 at Tiffany's, and it looks so sparkly
| and amazing. I always get a lot of compliments for it!).
|
| But anyway the point I'm trying to make is that the inpoos are a
| menace and a threat to our dear city, and they should be driven
| out by ensuring high quality environmentally friendly housing
| that they can't afford, by taking down their tents and upgrading
| benches to those new ones you can't sleep on. And the police need
| to keep them under constant surveillance. It's not enough but
| it's a start at least.
| the_only_law wrote:
| The sad part is I am actually having trouble distinguishing if
| this is a joke or not.
|
| EDIT: yeah it probably is, the "bootstraps" quip, pearl
| clutching joke (followings by the price point bragging), the
| poke at the benches and mostly the joke about building
| unaffordable housing give it away, but there's enough in their
| not to far away from serious suggestions I've read.
| hartjer wrote:
| the feels
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| I think one wrinkle in this narrative is that this is about a
| crypto company, where there was a lot of new money sloshing
| around too. You won't experience things like this at HP, Adobe,
| Amazon, or Veritas to name a few companies in the Bay. I've
| worked at several companies but I've never met someone who went
| to Greece on a 3 day weekend.
| andrew_ wrote:
| I don't understand the post because I identify with every single
| point of their claims of being poor in tech, and I'm not poor,
| and am in tech. Perhaps the author is simply an outsider in their
| bubble, rather than actually poor?
| leetrout wrote:
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| was the only person who would say hello to the cleaning lady as
| she meekly made her rounds around us when we worked late.
| Everyone else had a long habit of ignoring anyone like her.
|
| I hate people that do this. We're all human and worthy of respect
| and decency. A simple hello goes a long way.
| userulluipeste wrote:
| I happen to be that sort of people that ignores people at work
| (whenever possible). That has nothing to do with my
| attitude/sentiment towards them. It's that being at work, most
| of the time I'm just absorbed, having something on my mind that
| I want to pay attention to. In that state I'd rather ignore
| _everything and everyone_ around me, but I can 't. Not
| answering to greetings from my peers would damage relations
| with them in the long run (not to mention that that greeting
| may be just an opener to something actually work related), and
| not answering to people higher up the chain of management would
| definitely have negative consequences, so I'm kind of forced to
| react to them. But then if sometime late the cleaning personnel
| happen to pass by, looking less like wanting to socialize with
| those at desks and more like wishing to get their tasks done
| and be over with, should both of us attempt to pay the time and
| effort of maintaining a human connection just for the sake of
| it?
| dack wrote:
| I definitely agree that being mean to the staff (be it cleaning
| lady, waiter, etc) is a very bad sign of someone's character.
|
| That said, if I were cleaning an office building I don't think
| I would want everyone chatting me up - just kindly get out of
| my way when I'm trying to clean something but otherwise I don't
| see it as rude to not engage with me when I'm doing my job.
| username90 wrote:
| > Elison is a high school dropout, a graduate of UC Berkeley
|
| > Meg Elison is a California Bay Area author and essayist
|
| So basically she went to one of the better universities in the
| country, but choose to follow her dream and become an author
| rather than an engineer. That is a rich person choice, a poor
| person would choose the career with high pay. She can only blame
| herself here.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| I doubt she was an author at a tech startup (though its
| possible of course). The more charitable reading is that she
| works in tech and publishes on the side (like I do any many
| many other tech workers).
| resfirestar wrote:
| Man, I felt this stuff a lot when I was in college. Coming from a
| lower middle class family in a poor state to a private school in
| California, there were so many little things to make me feel like
| an outsider. The part about hobbies was the most memorable
| because it made my social anxiety worse early on. I always
| struggled to think of something more interesting than "video
| games" or "reading". And, of course, the food stuff. Took me
| years to get into the habit of ordering a salad when out for
| lunch like a civilized human. But unlike the author's experience
| I was so much better off than many Americans with backgrounds
| like mine because I went to a private university that provides
| enough financial aid to students who need it. So for the most
| part, I was already better off in college than I was growing up,
| and I graduated with a manageable amount of debt. But there were
| times when my family needed a little help and I was scrambling to
| find some free food to get through to the next paycheck or
| wondering if Mom would pay me back in time to make the phone
| bill. I also wasn't the "only poor person" around, and I found
| others like me which really helped.
|
| I think all the useful political points have been made by others
| but I think it's also worth saying whatever happens with society
| overall it can get better for you personally. I hope others who
| relate to the post find a job that values them enough to start
| chipping away at the accumulated disadvantage. Once the major
| financial stress is removed, you can and will acculturate, start
| worrying less about these little things, and even become more
| like your peers, and I think it's ultimately a positive thing.
| These cultural markers are, in part, adaptations to the
| situations we're in, and if you're working in tech it makes sense
| that you will find things that newly resonate with you and shed
| some of the things inherited from parents whose work society
| decided to value less.
|
| Of course there is at least one serious obstacle to this, which
| the author astutely points out and which I don't have any good
| advice on because I still struggle with it:
|
| >I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| was afraid to seek mentorship from anyone above me, convinced
| that even asking would seem like bothersome begging. I watched
| the people around me network effortlessly, assured of favors and
| good words put in. I could only think in terms of what I could
| offer and how I could survive; they were thinking on the next
| level where they never had to wonder if they were good enough.
| johbjo wrote:
| I got: for her it's a job, for the rich it's a hobby and a pass
| time.
| isomorph wrote:
| Many of the comments on this article are so cold. I can't believe
| it. When I read the original article I was imagining all the
| constructive ways HN readers would interpret it and hold a mirror
| up to their own behaviour. Some commenters are doing this. But it
| surprises and depresses me how many people are commenting saying
| "no, this list isn't what it says it is, it's a list showing the
| author has a negative mindset / is not from the Valley bubble,
| and that problem can be fixed by just getting over it.". We can
| do better than that.
|
| As someone who has sat at some interesting class and race
| intersections during my career in tech, including my time at some
| very prestigious institutions like the University of Cambridge
| and FAANG, and has exhibited and noticed many of the listed
| behaviours and the lack there of, I can say this article had the
| undeniable ring of truth and made me feel sick to my stomach.
| Guilty for when I've been on the rich side and angry for the
| times I've been on the poor side.
|
| The psychology of growing up with financial uncertainty - and a
| risk of racial exclusion - is hard to shake and can be passed
| from parent to child. My life has mostly been financially blessed
| but you can't buy your way out of the mindset, or snap your
| fingers / empty the cache / cycle the power the way the average
| HN commenter seems to think you can.
| lhorie wrote:
| > Many of the comments on this article are so cold.
|
| I mean, the tone of the article is pretty much "me vs them", so
| is really any surprise that some people would take offense?
|
| The anecdotes range anywhere from caricatures (hot cheetos) to
| gaffes (cheering over a bonus cheque). What you're implying is
| that one ought to be empathetic about the OP's struggles w/
| "rich person etiquette". But that in itself is a bit tone deaf:
| it comes across as "first world problems" to those who aren't
| in the "silicon valley bubble" and it comes across as elitism
| strawmen to those whose entire careers are in Bay Area tech.
|
| It's kinda like listening to Justin Bieber sing about how
| lonely he is. It might strictly be true that he struggles w/
| loneliness, and it might strictly be true that empathizing with
| him is "the right thing to do", but it's also strictly true
| that everyone has a right to not give a rats ass.
|
| The "poor" mindset varies from person to person. Sure there are
| people that struggle w/ ghetto mindset, but I've had
| conversations with many people who self-identified as "cheap
| bastards" (in their own words) who would talk about slowly
| coming to terms with the fact that they now had decent incomes
| and disposable money.
| 2cb wrote:
| This has been my experience too. My mum grew up poor but
| you'd never guess it now. Knows all about etiquette and wears
| fancy designer clothing etc.
|
| I'm sure it's true many do have trouble adjusting after
| growing up poor but it's hardly as universal as some here are
| making out.
| sfg wrote:
| It's one of those articles you either relate to or don't and if
| you don't, you're going to pick up on the flaws. Not everyone
| that fails to relate will complain about those flaws, but any
| article designed to evoke emotions - as this one is - will
| inevitably stir up irritation in some, and those so stirred
| will complain about them.
|
| Written differently, but with the same message, it would carry
| more people with it, but then maybe those that related would
| relate less well, so maybe that would be a net loss.
| jonemi wrote:
| I CAN relate because I grew up poor, have a GED, have student
| loans because my parents didn't pay for my education, live in
| a poorer area than my coworkers, have a really old phone,
| worried about bothering potential mentors, don't fit in at
| the gym, relish bonuses, overeat free food because it's free
| (pre-covid), talk to janitors, was paid less than colleagues,
| etc. and yet I still find her sentiment negative, classist,
| self-victimizing, and unhelpful.
|
| In my opinion, this comes off as shaming privileged people
| for their privilege. She could probably say a lot about the
| hard work and lucky breaks she's had that have helped her
| advance in spite of her challenges, but instead she focuses
| exclusively on her disadvantages.
|
| I attribute most of my social mobility to a ton of lucky
| breaks. Some people aren't as fortunate, and there's a lot to
| be said about that, but I don't think this article advances
| that conversation.
| kixiQu wrote:
| Why do you think it's negative? It isn't a piece diagnosing
| the roots of inequality, and it doesn't pretend to be. It
| isn't a piece about "how I got here", and it shouldn't have
| to be. It's a piece about the weird aspects of not having a
| very, very specific background in tech, and her internal
| experience of those. It's not "here let me lay out the
| Nature Of The Thing Universally". I don't understand why
| you're holding it accountable to "advancing the
| conversation" about social mobility.
| jonemi wrote:
| I think it's negative because I think it focuses on the
| negative. It's just my opinion and my opinion can be like
| the author's--my interpretation of something based on my
| experiences. And it certainly doesn't have to advance the
| conversation or be about how "she got here", but I wish
| it would have because I think that would've been more
| useful. I'm OK if we disagree.
|
| I was primarily responding to the parent who intimated
| those irritated by it can't relate. I was irritated and
| CAN relate. That was my primary point.
| watwut wrote:
| > In my opinion, this comes off as shaming privileged
| people for their privilege.
|
| I don't understand where do you see shaming. Even in points
| I think fit me, where I am rich person, I did not felt
| shamed at all. In points where I could relate to her, I did
| not perceived myself as victim.
|
| > she focuses exclusively on her disadvantages.
|
| Most of points don't compare her to others in a sense of
| gaining advantages or disadvantages. The biggest
| disadvantage was salary one and there the complain is mixed
| with her own behavior that helped situation to happen.
|
| > She could probably say a lot about the hard work and
| lucky breaks she's had that have helped her advance in
| spite of her challenges
|
| She could also write about drawing or socializing with
| buddies. Not everything have to be forced into "how I
| succeeded admire me" framework. Sometimes people write
| about other things.
| jonemi wrote:
| Yep, she can write about whatever she wants. Some people
| like it, I thought it was unhelpful. I wish it were
| something else and you're glad it isn't. Cool.
|
| I mostly wanted to say I can relate AND didn't like it,
| responding to the parent.
| dang wrote:
| This is a case of the contrarian dynamic: an initial wave of
| objections to the article, followed by a wave of objections to
| the objections. The latter get upvoted, and so we end up with a
| top comment saying "I can't believe the comments in this
| thread" or (as in the current example) "the comments here are
| so $bad-somehow". Recent explanation here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27145616. More:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
|
| It's important to be aware that this is a mechanical process.
| The first comments to appear in a thread are there because
| they're the fastest to write, not because they come from "the
| average HN commenter". Another way of putting this is that the
| initial comments tend to be reflexive rather than reflective: h
| ttps://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
| (Objecting to objections can be reflexive also, but at least
| the second wave tends to be more substantive and charitable.)
| dang wrote:
| Replies are welcome, but I've collapsed this subthread to
| prevent the page from going too far off topic. Sorry--I know
| that my comment is just as off topic. But it has an
| educational function (at least under optimistic assumptions)
| and that requires people seeing it.
| twic wrote:
| What if we shadowbanned _all_ comments for half an hour, or
| an hour?
| lenocinor wrote:
| I think this could be useful. Or maybe something like
| suppress the first half hour of comments and then show
| them all at once but in reverse chronological order.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| It's possible that the current system is fine as it is,
| and that Dan is simply explaining how it is. Suppressing
| comments is an interesting idea, but there are all kinds
| of second order effects -- if it's a disaster story,
| people need to communicate. If it's not, the ranking
| algorithm would need to be adjusted, since the suppressed
| comments have an unfair time penalty. And so on.
| kevinskii wrote:
| Many of the "initial" comments here are at least as
| deliberate and thoughtful as the ensuing "objection"
| comments, including the one you replied to.
|
| I agree that such a contrarian dynamic likely exists on HN,
| but you're not quite being fair in this illustration of it.
| dang wrote:
| That's possible. I haven't read the whole thread, and am
| taking the GP's word for how they perceived it, since
| it's the perception that creates the reaction anyhow.
| w0de0 wrote:
| Let's clone dang and employ the clones as moderators for
| all forms of social media. We will of course pre-program
| them for compliance.
|
| We can replace one moral quandary with another, much
| darker, one, which is a boon because it is something to
| talk about. And we've solved twitter.
| oaiey wrote:
| I completely agree with you. I was also shocked about this
| disconnect and explain-it-away statements. Very disappointing.
| strken wrote:
| In some ways it's a laundry list of ways rich people in the Bay
| Area act like wankers, which is interesting, but also quite
| irritatingly stereotypical. There are plenty who _don 't_
| refuse to talk to the cleaning staff, lecture others on their
| choice of tampon, or snob fat people at the gym.
|
| I don't want people from outside the bubble (e.g. me, three
| years ago) to read this and think they'll be surrounded by
| wall-to-wall wankery and class prejudice if they take a job at
| a SF startup, because it's not wholly representative of all
| employees at all startups. Most of them are nice. Most people
| _everywhere_ are nice.
| metalforever wrote:
| I came from a family of coal miners and moved to the bay for
| a tech job. The second paragraph is more of the truth than I
| think people want to admit. People are nice, but they are
| also wankers. It's not that there's anything wrong with them
| a lot of the time, it's just they are extremely, extremely
| naive and sometimes in their naive ness and lack of
| perspective say incredibly offensive things. You have to
| shrug it off like you are part of the in group even though
| they just insulted your family. No one told me about this
| part of the job in college.
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| Not to detract from the broader point, which I completely
| agree with, but the gym example didn't strike me as a Valley-
| specific phenomenon. I could imagine something similar
| happening at a gym in a working class neighborhood, and I
| could also think of gyms which welcome all, regardless of
| being a beginner or not.
|
| People not near the median get critiqued often for their
| weight, and it happens to underweight people too.
| mgh2 wrote:
| "They are nice because they are rich" - Parasite
| watwut wrote:
| > In some ways it's a laundry list of ways rich people in the
| Bay Area act like wankers, which is interesting, but also
| quite irritatingly stereotypical.
|
| I dont think this is true about article at all. Quite a few
| points are not complains about other peoples behavior nor do
| they contain anything bad. I do indoor climbing, it does cost
| money, we talked about climbing in the work a lot. I would
| really have to work hard to perceive myself being criticizes
| by that point.
|
| Many are about authors own behavior.
|
| The thing with tampons was that rich person would not think
| of that tampon as "save me money" resource the way poor
| person did. Telling you not to use this or that for bogus
| health reasons is not something exlusive to rich people and
| author does not claim so. It just made the encounter more
| annoying.
| tmh88j wrote:
| >Quite a few points are not complains about other peoples
| behavior nor do they contain anything bad. I do indoor
| climbing, it does cost money, we talked about climbing in
| the work a lot. I would really have to work hard to
| perceive myself being criticizes by that point.
|
| I find myself in that situation quite frequently when it
| comes to sports cars. They are easily my biggest passion,
| but unfortunately it's not a cheap hobby. Even though I'm
| not struggling financially nor am I rolling in piles of
| cash, I'm certain that I'm far more comfortable spending a
| much higher percentage of my income towards them than other
| people. If the subject of cars comes up I often find myself
| talking about cars that are 2-3x more expensive than most
| other people in my income bracket are willing to spend, and
| I've realized how that makes me look to someone who only
| views cars as appliances and knows nothing of my personal
| finances. I've tried to bite my tongue and limit the amount
| of car related discussions I have with people who aren't
| auto enthusiasts. It makes me look like an out of touch
| person much wealthier than I really am, bragging about
| something they couldn't care less about.
| bumby wrote:
| > _I dont think this is true about article at all. Quite a
| few points are not complains about other peoples behavior
| nor do they contain anything bad. I do indoor climbing, it
| does cost money, we talked about climbing in the work a
| lot. I would really have to work hard to perceive myself
| being criticizes by that point._
|
| I did not read the article as commenting about what is
| "bad" about the tech industry but rather about how the
| homogeneity of the culture can make people feel alienated.
| Imagine your statement written by someone else read:
|
| "I dont think this is true about article at all. Quite a
| few points are not complains about other peoples behavior
| nor do they contain anything bad. I have a super yacht, it
| does cost money, we talked about the best places to take
| our super-yachts at work a lot. I would really have to work
| hard to perceive myself being criticizes by that point."
|
| Can you see how that would cause some people to feel
| alienated? Just because something is normative to you and
| your peer group does not mean it's normative across the
| board. It also doesn't mean it's automatically good or bad.
| watwut wrote:
| Did you read my comment _and_ comment I was responding to
| before writing yours? The parent complains that article
| listed things "act like wankers". Which clearly means
| "bad".
|
| Second, I worked with people who had completely different
| hobbies and interests than I do. I am not always in
| dominant majority, with climbing in that team I was.
|
| As far as I know, people having hobbies I don't care
| about is completely normal.
| strken wrote:
| The word wanker in Australian English denotes a specific
| kind of negativity, attached to egotism and acting as
| though you're better than others. I shouldn't have used
| it on HN, as it's a poor choice of phrasing for an
| international audience.
|
| As per [0], "the socially leveling term wanker ridicules
| a person who is pretentious and arrogant, thereby
| suggesting that humility, solidarity and being down-to-
| earth are highly valued qualities in Australian society."
| Vocally complaining about unbleached tampons and flying
| to Greece for one weekend are textbook wanker behaviour.
| I'm not sure of a good American English word to
| substitute.
|
| [0]
| http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2003/stollznow.pdf
| bumby wrote:
| Yes, I read the parent comment. I originally typed out in
| my previous post that I felt you may have missed the
| point of the article, but I felt that was too harsh. I
| don't think the main takeaway from the article should be
| certain things commonplace in tech culture are "bad" but
| how it can be alienating. To that point, both yours and
| the parent post seem overly concerned with the "bad vs.
| good" distinction. I do have some issues with the
| article, but I think alienating certain people (whether
| conscious or not) is something we should be concerned
| about.
|
| Edit: it looks like you've edited your comment quite a
| bit since I first replied but I think there's another
| important clarification:
|
| > _As far as I know, people having hobbies I don 't care
| about is completely normal._
|
| I'm not using "normative" to define "weird or not-weird"
| but rather commonplace. So regarding the article and your
| example, indoor climbing may be commonplace in your peer-
| group while still being non-normative in someone like the
| author's peer-group. Pile enough of these together and
| it's easy to see how one may begin to feel alienated.
| lazide wrote:
| At some point, you have to decide to either;
|
| 1) talk about what you like, even if other people don't
| connect well (be yourself at work?) 2) only like things
| other people connect with (seems limiting, but probably
| good for the social interactions) 3) pretend to like
| things others do and don't talk about what you like
| (pretty much the definition of the conversationalist, but
| doing that all the time seems fake and probably unhealthy
| mentally for too long?) 4) never talk about anything
| controversial at all - aka the big Corp, how's the
| weather answer.
|
| You can't be authentic AND make everyone happy. Literally
| impossible. If someone is alienated by someone talking
| about who they are, whose responsibility is that anyway?
|
| I certainly wasn't wealthy when I was growing up (or
| frankly had anything but hand me downs 90% of the time),
| but I still found ways to get out and do stuff I liked -
| salvaged old computers, went exploring in the desert,
| etc. it often meant not really connecting with mainstream
| folks (who were more interested in sports or the like),
| and I found it pretty alienating trying to have 'small
| talk' with 99% of the folks around me frankly.
|
| Learning how to connect with them was a skill it took a
| lot of time and effort to hone - it would not have helped
| them or me to think they had a duty to not be who there
| were or care about anything but what they cared about
| IMO. Anymore than me any my stuff.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Learning how to connect with them was a skill it took
| a lot of time and effort to hone_
|
| This was my main issue with the article. The author
| seemed so hyper-focused on the differences she saw day-
| to-day that she seemed unable to overcome them to find
| common ground to connect.
|
| > _You can't be authentic AND make everyone happy.
| Literally impossible. If someone is alienated by someone
| talking about who they are_
|
| This isn't really what I was getting at though. To me,
| the issue isn't whether or not we can talk about or be
| our authentic selves, but more about creating a
| monolithic culture that has in-groups and out-groups. You
| can have a culture that is homogenous but still accepts
| those from the outside as equals. In that context, I
| don't think your assertions hold; you don't have to have
| the same interests to connect with people. For example,
| you can connect by being legitimately curious about
| differing interests as long as it's a culture that is
| open to different interests without using them as a
| defining characteristic. From the author's perspective,
| it seems like she still felt like an outsider. How much
| of that was in her own head stemming from insecurities
| about being poor, I don't know.
| watwut wrote:
| > So regarding the article and your example, indoor
| climbing may be commonplace in your peer-group while
| still being non-normative in someone like the author's
| peer-group.
|
| It was normative in that one team and is not normative in
| other groups I am member of. You seem to assume I am
| perfect social fit in all teams and groups I am member
| off.
|
| That is just not the case. Climbing made me normative in
| that place. We talked about it a lot, note past tense.
| And in other places they talked about stuff that
| profoundly is not interesting or available ro me.
|
| It is super odd to me that you assume that normal state
| is to be perfect fit for working group you are in.
| bumby wrote:
| > _You seem to assume I am perfect social fit in all
| teams and groups I am member off._
|
| I made no such claims. I literally only used the sole
| example you used.
|
| > _It is super odd to me that you assume that normal
| state is to be perfect fit for working group you are in._
|
| Again, you are putting words in my mouth. All I am
| stating is that if you find yourself in a fairly
| homogenous group that you don't necessarily fit in, it
| can be an alienating experience. My only other claim is
| that point seemed to fly by you because you were more
| concerned with things you're interested in, like indoor
| rock climbing, being painted as "bad".
|
| > _It is super odd to me that you assume that normal
| state is to be perfect fit for working group you are in._
|
| I'm not sure how you can have this takeaway. My point is
| literally the exact opposite idea about how homogeneous
| cultures can be alienating if we aren't careful.
| oaiey wrote:
| I also do not read this article that way. I think she does
| not complain about them. Most of them are most likely nice
| people (ignoring the gym paragraph). She reflect that "she
| realizes" that she is "poor compared to them". She does not
| imply that they are bad people or that she feels miserable
| about her "poorness" (she seems to earn much more than before
| .. and quit ... and probably got something better ... and ...
| seems to write a successful novelthingy)
| domador wrote:
| The only other implicit criticism toward her coworkers was
| ignoring and not greeting the cleaning staff. For the most
| part, her coworkers come across as privileged, rather than
| mean or otherwise morally deficient.
| pentagrama wrote:
| > her coworkers come across as privileged, rather than
| mean or otherwise morally deficient.
|
| Yes, I find a parallel with the representation of the
| rich/privileged on the movie Parasite.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I'm not sure I see anything wrong with not bothering the
| cleaning staff while they're at work. The whole reason
| they've been hired is to spare everyone else the time and
| effort involved in cleaning, so to have everyone waste
| time on greetings would just be demeaning their work.
| gammarator wrote:
| There is a difference between "not bothering the cleaning
| staff" and not acknowledging that they exist and are
| human and are standing right in front of you.
|
| Author is describing the second, and it happens
| pervasively in the upper classes.
| godfreyantonell wrote:
| Shame on you for telling the truth. You have a right not
| to speak to anyone you don't want to speak to. You are
| probably smart as shit and make close to a million a
| year. Hell, I'd be a dick if I made that kind of cheese.
| fl0wenol wrote:
| Do you never say hi to a contractor ever in the
| workplace? Dude, that's cold.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Not even a "good evening" for your fellow human?
|
| I usually nod or say a quick greeting in passing as I
| head out for the evening. I've also thanked the guy who
| refills the soda can dispenser, pointing out that the
| company runs on caffeine. Each of these interactions
| takes less than 30 seconds and reminds us of our shared
| experience on this planet.
| bumby wrote:
| > _The whole reason they 've been hired is to spare
| everyone else the time_
|
| Do you extend this to other jobs as well? Is it demeaning
| to say hello to your boss because she's been hired to
| spare you the time of managerial decisions? What about
| the QA folks who've been hired to save you the time of
| executing tests?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Most people everywhere are nice.
|
| While true, places earn their reputations for a reason.
| lazide wrote:
| Introspection is expensive, and recognizing that behaviors that
| benefit you personally cause undesirable damage in someone else
| can be the most expensive of all.
|
| Most people will actively avoid it, it just makes their
| existence harder for no concrete benefit to them.
|
| Food for thought.
| egypturnash wrote:
| You have a much more sunny view of HN readers than I do; I was
| expecting to see a whole bunch of victim-blaming and complete
| lack of understanding of what it's like to be broke. I was
| delightedly surprised to see your comment as the top one when I
| looked.
| naturalauction wrote:
| I guess the unfortunate reality is that many of the people who
| engage in the behaviors that make people feel isolated go on
| the defensive when the harmfulness of their behavior is
| highlighted.
| bnralt wrote:
| I seem to run into more and more responses like this these
| days. Instead of responding to any specific comment a person
| has written, it attempts to paint any differing opinion as
| being somehow immoral. I can't say that this type of approach
| is conducive to open discussion.
| isomorph wrote:
| I summarised a bunch of comments. If you have an issue with
| my summary you can critique it directly, just like you wanted
| me to do. To me they don't look like differing opinions that
| have been thought through. They seem like kneejerk
| dismissals, which are against the HN rules.
| bnralt wrote:
| Sure, if you want me to got into more detail, I'm happy to
| oblige. To me the whole first paragraph seems to be simply
| dismissive, painting different opinions as incorrect and
| immoral, talking about how surprised you are that the
| comments are so cold, that people aren't holding a mirror
| up to their own behavior, that this depresses you and that
| "we can do better":
|
| > Many of the comments on this article are so cold. I can't
| believe it. When I read the original article I was
| imagining all the constructive ways HN readers would
| interpret it and hold a mirror up to their own behaviour.
| Some commenters are doing this. But it surprises and
| depresses me how many people are commenting saying "no,
| this list isn't what it says it is, it's a list showing the
| author has a negative mindset / is not from the Valley
| bubble, and that problem can be fixed by just getting over
| it.". We can do better than that.
|
| I don't see any engagement (in the first paragraph or
| subsequent ones) with the opinions of the comments (and if
| I missed them, feel free to point them out), or any effort
| to entertain the notion that they could have a point.
|
| There used to be a big problem online where people wouldn't
| consider other people's opposing views. But we seem to have
| reached the point where people are upset that people even
| have views that are different from our own.
| isomorph wrote:
| I don't think it's "immoral" [your word] or "incorrect"
| [your word] to have a knee-jerk reaction. It's a fact of
| life. I see that my statement has landed on you as a
| critique of morality or some kind of discussion-
| suppressing wokeness, but that's really not what I
| wanted, so I apologise.
|
| The phrase I used - "we can do better" - was not meant to
| mean "I think these replies are incorrect [your word] and
| immoral [your word]" but that we can do a better
| analysis. A DEEPER analysis which requires BOTH the knee-
| jerk dismissal and the interrogation of that dismissal. I
| don't think it's morally wrong but yes, it is depressing
| TO ME. I'm not saying other opinions should be banned.
| I'm not even saying those comments shouldn't have been
| posted. I guess I'm saying they should have been longer
| and more considered and frankly less rude!
|
| OK, let me write up my engagement with the other
| comments. I do agree with the possibility of cultural
| differences being responsible for some of the things in
| the post. I also agree that to some extent the "negative
| mindset" criticism is in some way valid, because growing
| up poor DOES give you a negative mindset. But the essence
| of my comment was that really the substance of those
| comments was missing the main point. There's a 1500 word
| article there with someone's actual experiences - a
| valuable outside perspective on part of tech and
| corporate culture. Even if one doesn't relate to the
| article and think it's wrong, one can say "Hmm... this
| doesn't fit with my experience." leaving the door open to
| the fact that one hasn't experienced that particular
| life, rather than just further marginalising the author
| by acting as if they have just magically generated 1500
| words of "wrong".
| ludamad wrote:
| Being HN, people love to debate, and god forbid you give an in
| for moral high-grounding.
|
| My student loans were crushing at one point. Now I require my
| friends and family to remind me the weight of a 'few
| thousands'. I feel drawn towards a bubble where I can do
| opulent activities without guilt. I've heard people say to me
| "yeah, eventually you just cut off those friends still working
| at McDonald's". I've never agreed - it takes an arrogant self-
| realization to agree with such a statement - but I've felt the
| gradual drift. The article is a good reminder in humility.
| don-code wrote:
| > yeah, eventually you just cut off those friends still
| working at McDonald's
|
| That's profound. As "the friend in tech", I've never had this
| said to my face, but have definitely felt it. There's an us-
| versus-them mentality when it comes to dealing with those who
| aren't also in tech; that, somehow, there's no reason to be
| friends with those who aren't also white-collar
| professionals. What's more, my own tendency to be friends
| with non-professionals has in some cases alienated me - who
| wants to go to a housewarming where half of the people bring
| Bud Light and tell inappropriate jokes?
|
| This split is something I've personally had a lot of trouble
| rationalizing.
| ludamad wrote:
| I didn't hear it from someone in tech; in fact they are now
| doing house flipping. However, they embodied this 'success
| personality' quite explicitly. I can definitely relate to
| hosting parties with mixed moods. Over time you realize you
| have to host multiple kinds of events - this is more
| maintainable for having multiple kinds of friendships. I
| have friends who can be comfortable in any event I might
| have, but it is best to find those naturally rather than
| during awkward parties
| ericmcer wrote:
| Yeah me too, my childhood friends are all still struggling
| financially (early 30s now). After a few years in tech I
| can finally afford vacations like Europe or lazing in
| Hawaii. My friends still view a vacation as driving to
| another friends house in a different state and crashing on
| their couch for a couple days. I don't want my vacation to
| be sleeping on a couch in a room with 3 other people.
| TheNewsIsHere wrote:
| This hits home with me as well. My spouse and I live a
| "DINK" lifestyle - dual income, no kids. He works from home
| for an established (not a startup) multi-billion dollar
| multinational in the Valley, so we live on the East Coast.
| He is well compensated enough that I don't have to work,
| but I do run our investment property and a small business
| we founded.
|
| The problems we have now are ones most of my own family
| can't relate to, so I just don't share them. His parents
| used to run an extremely lucrative firm, but that was after
| they raised him in much less lavish circumstances. So I can
| talk to them about some of these parts of life, and he and
| his parents know the value of a dollar.
|
| It can be isolating to know how "both halves" live, and I
| definitely feel a sense of guilt as to the amount of
| privilege I have and how radically more easy we have it.
|
| It does start to become hard to relate to people who don't
| have this kind of socioeconomic standing because so much of
| life is built on how many assets you do or don't have. Last
| year we were at Home Depot buying a new, rather pricey
| appliance for our new home and I realized in talking to the
| sales lady exactly how out of touch I had become. She had
| never had what we were purchasing and we were buying a high
| end model from a high end brand. I was trying to make small
| talk and I'm sure I sounded like a classist asshole, but I
| was trying _not_ to.
|
| I'm trying really hard to cling to a realistic relationship
| to money and class.
| brundolf wrote:
| > but I've felt the gradual drift
|
| I'm not sure why there would even be a gradual drift? My
| friends who aren't in tech are generally my most fun and
| interesting friends. We play D&D, we have dinner or drinks at
| each other's houses, we talk about anime and music and video
| games, we play with each other's dogs.
|
| The only version of this I _have_ experienced is the one
| where my non-tech friends are being forced out of my city via
| skyrocketing housing prices, which are largely due to - you
| guessed it - tech. It 's upsetting, but there's little I can
| do about it except trying to keep in touch over distance.
| ludamad wrote:
| Do you own a house in that city? If so, you would suddenly
| have a ton of house ownership problems your friends can't
| relate to. It is those sorts of things I am referring to
|
| I can't help that one of my most active chats right now is
| speculative investing, and it simply is not a game for e.g.
| people with high rate debt
|
| Then what about making someone feel shitty for describing
| your day? That you took a day off due to stress, and you
| remind them of their unchecked mental health crisis? I'm
| not saying you can't be a good friend through this, but
| that you _need_ to be a good friend through this. This
| makes it much more doable with long-time friends rather
| than new people who you subconsciously pick as being like
| you
| brundolf wrote:
| Sure, I guess those things just don't come up as much
| (and I will admit I intentionally avoid talking about
| certain subjects). But I wouldn't say that gradually
| erodes the friendship; we just relate over different
| things.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > you can't buy your way out of the mindset, or snap your
| fingers / empty the cache / cycle the power the way the average
| HN commenter seems to think you can.
|
| Reading the list, most of them are pretty harmless if not
| annoying. But one struck me as something completely different:
|
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because
| I was afraid to seek mentorship from anyone above me, convinced
| that even asking would seem like bothersome begging. I watched
| the people around me network effortlessly, assured of favors
| and good words put in. I could only think in terms of what I
| could offer and how I could survive; they were thinking on the
| next level where they never had to wonder if they were good
| enough. They were to the business-class manner born, at least.
|
| Seaweed Snack vs Cheetos is a class thing, and maybe cultural
| (I could see people of East-Asians origins reaching for the
| seaweed more than the Cheetos).
|
| But not being able to get help or mentoring and to network is
| an enormous barrier to career progression.
| 2cb wrote:
| But I don't see what insecurity around asking for help or
| mentoring has to do with wealth or lack thereof?
|
| This to me sounds more like an issue of shyness or low self-
| esteem than anything to do with money or class.
|
| I think the same of a fair few other items on that list as
| well.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| I don't know I'm not thrilled to be this negative or correct
| about this but it's been pretty much exactly what I expected.
| oaiey wrote:
| I was more naive ;)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| This doesn't surprise me one bit. Tech is just another white
| collar country club. The rules are just slightly different than
| the bankers country club and the surgeons country club and the
| lawyer's country club.
|
| If you're not one of the people who typically joins that kind
| of club you can hack it but you won't feel like you belong or
| you might but it will take you many years.
| lazide wrote:
| Definitely not my experience, if for no other reason than the
| overwhelming portion that I know or have worked with is not
| white, was not born in this country (regardless of which
| country we're talking about/in at the time), and I only know
| 1-2 with any sort of real social connections in the area they
| now live and work in. They haven't done as well over the
| years as most, but there are outliers of course (Bill G being
| one prominent one of course).
|
| Also no real generational tendencies (I only know 1 or 2
| folks with parents in any sort of engineering or computer
| discipline), unlike doctors or the like.
| cloverich wrote:
| One counter point, which is the defining feature of tech
| imho, is you don't need to be born into it. Its difficult to
| become a doctor without prepping years or more ahead of even
| applying. You can break into tech at basically any point in
| your life, it just takes time (as you said) and effort. And
| of course, interest will make it more enjoyable / tolerable.
| Its not a perfectly egalitarian club, but it is certainly
| _more_ so than any of those other professions, by a few
| orders of magnitude.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Soooooo much of this article is relatable to me. I remember my
| first office job, I couldn't snap myself out of the habit of
| asking my boss for a break to go to the bathroom. He finally
| said "You don't need to ask me, just go, jeez." I was just so
| used to jobs where you had to ask.
|
| The time clock thing too! To this day, the back of my mind
| still wonders if I punched in and whether all my hours are
| being counted. Can't just walk away from those habits once
| internalized.
|
| The culture difference is so real. I remember sitting in a
| meeting with a bunch of managers just a little higher on the
| totem pole than me. Not executives by any stretch. And they
| were all complaining about their taxes, the cost of private
| school for their kids, and the fact that they can't find a good
| second nanny. I'm just sitting there thinking "If I lose this
| job, I'm living in my car." Really hard to consider these guys
| my peers, and I know that affects my work and my working
| relationship with them.
| soheil wrote:
| You're the top comment on HN right now. What are you exactly
| complaining about?
| isomorph wrote:
| I'm complaining about what I wrote in the comment. It wasn't
| the top comment when I wrote it. That happened after I wrote
| it. It got a lot of upvotes so I guess people who agree with
| me were more comfortable upvoting/replying after I wrote it
| than commenting before me. Maybe because they knew that the
| comment would attract criticism like yours
| soheil wrote:
| Is the complain still relevant now that you have the most
| votes? To me it seems like HN loves to agree with people
| whom it thinks are shunned by HN, but in reality you _are_
| the voice of HN. Again, as evidenced here after a few
| minutes of posting your comment.
| isomorph wrote:
| I suppose it's become an unfortunate header for any
| comments agreeing with the article. I've never had a
| comment "succeed" in this fashion before so I wasn't
| prepared for the decontextualisation. If I could write it
| again, I would simply write how my experience seems to
| back up the experience in the article, and miss out my
| angry meta-commentary.
| aphextron wrote:
| I've noticed this trend lately on HN of people digging
| through user history to make some meta commentary about the
| poster. It's weird. This isn't reddit. Let the statement
| speak on its' own regardless of who posted it or why.
| soheil wrote:
| This is literally evident in the same thread. Just scroll
| to the top of the page to see the commenter?
| Kalium wrote:
| You're absolutely right. People are not reacting the way you
| had hoped. They are reacting by questioning the assertions in
| the article in ways that don't engage with the author's
| _fundamental humanity_. They are treating it like an alien
| artifact reflecting on a far-off culture.
|
| What if readers came in, reacted with warmth and kindness and
| empathy and compassion, and engaged with the article in a way
| that validated the author's experiences while perhaps gently
| questioning the article's conclusions? Would that be cold?
|
| Or would the abject failure to reflect when confronted with key
| truths from the life of a real person make you sick to your
| stomach?
| isomorph wrote:
| Thanks for the considered reply. I don't think it would be
| cold and I don't think I would have such a visceral reaction.
| I think the offhand tone implies a kind of misplaced
| confidence and shutting down of conversation - almost
| contempt - which is not a good way to start a conversation.
| Kalium wrote:
| You're completely right. The offhand tone many have adopted
| is how they might react to a purely technical piece, rather
| than someone's genuine pain exposed to their view. It
| would, after all, not be wildly out of place to react to a
| technically detailed root cause analysis document by
| questioning some of its assertions that struck readers as
| overreaching.
|
| For my own part, when I find myself reacting to someone's
| tone I sometimes find it valuable to pause and consider why
| they would adopt it. It can help me separate the other
| person's tone from the real, valid, lived experience that
| is my internal emotional reaction.
|
| Empathy cannot just be a thing I demand of others.
| isomorph wrote:
| That makes sense. Regarding your final sentence - I guess
| I felt that for me it's been the other way round. I feel
| that in most HN discussions I had silently been
| empathetic and not demanded any level of empathy from
| anyone, and clearly that was not going to work in this
| instance.
| Kalium wrote:
| My key has been to engage my empathy for everyone
| concerned. To read an article and engage my empathy for
| the author and the pain some know all too well is a
| necessary step. Yet to assume that all other readers will
| do the same is perhaps a opportunity to engage in empathy
| for them and how different their lives might have been.
|
| I find I'm often surprised by the actions and reactions
| of people I have put minimal effort into empathizing
| with. Sometimes I find their unexpected warmth welcoming,
| or their callous coldness a sickening contrast.
|
| Some - like myself - have a learned aversion to anything
| that tries too hard and too overtly to tug on my
| heartstrings.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Personally, I'm reacting negatively because it feels like she
| says she does all these things that I do, and that nearly
| everyone in nearly every office I've worked in does. And she
| uses it to draw a contrast between herself and us. So to me all
| but a couple items read as "I knew I was different because I do
| this thing that nearly everyone does."
|
| Maybe I'm in a weird lucky tech bubble where I've gotten to
| have a whole career that's mostly devoid of the people she's
| drawing a contrast against, but I've worked at a pretty
| disparate variety of jobs, and my experience seems to ring true
| with a lot of other commenters too.
|
| Maybe I'm just having a kneejerk reaction because the last
| articles I read this morning were "silicon valley and
| californians are bad/clueless," and I'm reading that into this
| when it's not intended subtext.
| hackerrrnews wrote:
| So maybe you're rich then?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Some people enjoy having their heartstrings tugged. Others
| don't. What causes people to feel sympathy differs from person
| to person. I remember reading some tweet from Chrissy Teigen
| before she stopped tweeting complaining about a restaurant
| serving her a $10,000 bottle of wine without mentioning the
| price when she asked for something that went well with her
| dish. Not my kind of problem but it annoyed her. No doubt there
| are Americans from generational wealth who could write about
| their discomfort dealing with Brits of similar status in
| Britain, not knowing all the correct shibboleths. People feel
| alienated all the time, everywhere. I felt alienated from my
| classmates all through primary and secondary school. I got to
| university and found my people. Not fitting in and figuring out
| how to fit in is a really common experience. Right now there's
| some black kid who's really, really into metal going to his
| first live gig and he's feeling awkward because he doesn't know
| anyone and when he does he'll pronounce something wrong or say
| cool instead of based or something. There's an American kid at
| his first day at a school in Britain who's going to get called
| a Yank. There's a leftist kid going to his first demonstration
| who's going to get called a TERF. This is a thing that happens.
| Kalium wrote:
| I would go so far as to say that some people have learned to
| think of having their heartstrings tugged as a prelude to
| attempted exploitation. I know that years in the Bay taught
| me that.
| [deleted]
| OOPMan wrote:
| Expecting HN commenters not to behave like the vapid nuts
| they're they're mocked as on n-gate is a big ask ;-)
| kls wrote:
| So the article resounded with me, because being raised by my
| grandparents on a family citrus farm during the transition thru
| the NAFTA years and watching my family loose what little land
| wealth they had. It left an indelible mark, a mark of
| insecurity and fear and it lead to behavior like this.
|
| I remember one time, when I just started out in tech, I went to
| an interview for a group that was contracting for NASA, the
| interview went very well, they loved me, the team loved me. I
| pretty much had the job. The team liked me so much that they
| invited me to lunch. I declined, you could tell the temperature
| changed at that very moment that I did. I did not get the job,
| and in retrospect I should have just told them I am not in the
| position to pay for a meal out at this time. I had literally
| put my last pennies into the tank of my car to get to that
| interview.
|
| Anyways, I back story that, to say this; I did well in the
| industry, I have exited a few companies and I have held some
| pretty impressive titles at some pretty big orgs but I never
| got rich. Some of that had to do with dragging my family out of
| poverty but some of it had to do with something else. I helped
| build a startup and we sold that startup for a good deal of
| money. I received a pittance because I did not know my value.
| It was enough to take off some of life's stresses but it was
| not FU money. I went to work for one of the companies that we
| had a B2B relationship with that was a downstream provider to
| the company we sold. Anyways it was here that things changed
| for me, and it was not because of me or my work. It was because
| the CEO of that company became my personal friend. Her name was
| Sheila and she told me something that I had never heard before
| and that was this.
|
| She told me that I was what she calls institutionally poor.
| That I had been conditioned thru my childhood to think like a
| poor person and in doing so you send out unconscious signals to
| others. She told me this because she came up similar. She told
| me that it causes you to over analyze and over estimate risk
| and therefore you will not take the bold moves that people that
| don't have to worry do. That while you can change the world and
| everyone see it. If you hold onto the fear on needing your
| safety net under you, that you will never extract your true
| value from other. So I said, so you are going to pay me my fair
| value, she laughed and said no, I got you for a very good deal.
| 3 Days latter I walked into her office, with my resignation
| letter and told her I had an offer from another company. She
| said, now you get it, how much did they offer. I told her, and
| she said I will double that if you stay. That was when I
| learned a tangential lesson, and that is sometimes hard ass,
| ball busters are the best people.
|
| Point being there is a piece of this, that the person that grew
| up poor has to break themselves free of and many times they
| don't even know what they need to free themselves of and that
| is thinking like a poor person.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Great story, helps me see the profound effect that such
| stresses put on a person.
|
| I got another clue out of it. That 'personal friend' was a
| user, a manipulator, a predator, and preyed upon folks like
| us. She must have felt something personal toward you else
| she'd never have said what she did and given up the raw deal
| she pushed over on you. To threaten to quit and get offered
| double - that's a situation to run from as fast as you can.
| Get double from the next person, but never, ever work for
| such a person as that again. That's my take anyway.
| kls wrote:
| I don't see it that way, she was a friend, she built a
| company from the ground up and she took care of people. At
| that time (2002ish IIRC) she was paying me fair market rate
| which in full disclosure was about $150k USD a year. She
| knew my worth, she was trying to teach it to me. She saw me
| build the other company and she saw that I did not extract
| my value from that deal. She paid me what I asked for when
| she called me after the exit of the other company and that
| is the point, I did not ask for more. She needed me to fix
| her companies technical problems, she knew I could do it
| and I did, she knew my value, I did not. She came to me in
| need, and "I" asked for market rate, because I was not
| working due to the exit and was worried about burning up
| the small safety net I had just acquired. She was a friend
| in tilting her hand. Had she just told me you don't make
| enough here, here is some money. I would not have learned
| the lesson that she wanted me to learn as a friend.
|
| When that happened I was annoyed, I went and interviewed
| and I asked for as much as I thought I could get. I had
| never interviewed when I did not need a job, it was the
| first time I has ever interviewed without a sword over my
| head and I had to do that to learn the lesson that she knew
| she could not teach me, but was in the position to nudge me
| into. She was stupid rich, it did not hurt her one bit to
| pay me double, the key was I never asked for it, because I
| thought like a poor man. Money was very valuable to me, to
| her it was an afterthought as compared to the important
| things she needed accomplished.
|
| When you are poor, money and the retention of it, is the
| bottom line. When you are rich it is not. It is a factor, a
| rich person is not going to go into a bad deal and loose
| money intentionally but in her case she was loosing
| millions in lost opportunity. Had I asked for $500k, her
| mind would have still been on the Millions is lost
| opportunity, not the $500k it will take to pursue it. It is
| as simple as that.
| lazide wrote:
| Who do you think would NOT be a 'predator' in that
| situation exactly?
|
| Sounds like she offered insight and a 2nd chance to someone
| she thought would benefit from it, and then helped them
| build on it in a way that stuck.
|
| Should she have been offering more than they thought they
| were worth? Who would that benefit? It would likely just
| cause anxiety and imposter syndrome.
|
| That's avoiding the whole issue of someone who knows what
| they're worth and is able to stand up and ask for it is
| worth more than someone who does not or will not. To
| everyone.
| burnte wrote:
| As someone who was very por growing up and worked their ass off
| to become who I am today, everything she said is 100% true of
| being poor and not an artifact of a bad attitude. If anything,
| the fact she sees the opportunities for free lunches and
| tampons shows she's actaulyl got a GOOD attitude and is
| resourceful. All of those things are indicative of an
| observant, hard worker.
| onlyfortoday2 wrote:
| duh this is hacker news LOL
| roenxi wrote:
| The author is complaining of being poor and talking about a
| lifestyle that her coworkers enjoy that I, who am quite well
| off, can't afford either. That doesn't make her poor, it makes
| her not wealthy.
|
| While I'm sure if I met her in person I'd feel very
| sympathetic, it is difficult to read about someone being
| unhappy because they can't take a 3-day holiday in Greece;
| can't collect antiquities or be driven to work by a chauffeur
| every day. These are not goals I'm sympathetic with either.
|
| I honestly don't care if someone is poor in relative terms to
| their co-workers either. I'm only interested in what my
| coworkers earn in the first place because it strengthens my
| bargaining position.
| fossuser wrote:
| Even without the race element - there's definitely a class
| thing.
|
| I noticed it when I moved to the Bay Area after growing up in
| western New York. The types of foods people ate or didn't eat,
| the restaurants people would or would not go to.
|
| The shows people would or would not watch, even the way people
| talked. I think I hadn't really seen the difference in class
| behavior before in America. Now it's easy to see it.
|
| A lot of it is tightly correlated to wealth and a lot of it
| reminds me of things the author describes (fear of not being
| able to find a job, fear of just "taking a year off" because it
| sounds financially crazy), but it's not only about wealth
| really.
|
| You can be poor and still act more "upper class" and you can be
| rich and still act "working class". It's a lot of little things
| people do in preferences and how they talk/behave.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| > You can be poor and still act more "upper class" and you
| can be rich and still act "working class".
|
| You are stunningly naive if you think that a poor person
| acting more "upper class" isn't reminded that they're "out of
| their lane" more than someone rich acting "working class".
| [deleted]
| jmt_ wrote:
| Spot on. Every time I wear "fancy" clothes I'm constantly
| worrying that everyone is pointing at me thinking "we know
| who you really are, you're poor and don't deserve to be
| acting this way". This is despite me moving away from my
| poor town years ago and establishing a solid job for
| myself. Nobody in my new town knows me at all yet I assume
| they know I came from a "less than" background. A poor
| person must undo decades of the effects poverty inflicts to
| truly appear "rich" where a rich person must simply "lower
| their standards" to act working class.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > must simply "lower their standards" to act working
| class.
|
| You make that sound easy, but I see the situation as
| symmetric. For example, my wife grew up wealthier than I
| did - and when it came time for us to buy a car, her
| first question was "how big a car would we need to
| comfortably move our family around" while mine was
| "what's the most affordable?"
|
| it's a completely different mindset - she is frustrated
| that I default to a poor mindset and I am frustrated that
| she defaults to a rich one. Neither one is easy to
| switch.
| jmt_ wrote:
| I'm talking about the case where a person doesn't get to
| "choose" to act poor. The poor person doesn't get to
| choose to think other than what is affordable, where
| someone with more money gets the choice to thinking of
| things other than affordability, like comfortably. The
| mindset that develops from a lack of agency in one's life
| is more traumatizing than one that does have that agency
| but must learn to change their mindset. Different people
| might not be as effected by poverty however.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You don't need anything even close to overly "fancy"; if
| you're the average poor person, you can vastly improve
| your image simply by wearing _any_ sort of formal
| clothes, as in a suit and tie. Even if others "know who
| you really are" they'll still appreciate that you're
| making the effort to relate to them, and that's what
| matters. We tend to forget stuff like this as we lose
| sight of the value of enduring traditions, but if you
| look at visual records of how older generations behaved
| you'll see plenty of poorer folks looking quite
| comfortable in formal wear.
| b3morales wrote:
| You're still not going to look right, though. You will
| have the "wrong" shoes, or you'll keep them so long from
| thrift that they'll go out of fashion. Your one set of
| nice clothes is precious to you in a way that the one-
| out-of-ten is not to someone in the upper class, and that
| will make you wear it differently.
| jmt_ wrote:
| But poor people hate feeling like they have to change
| their appearance to get the approval of the privileged
| classes. Feeling like you have to visually and verbally
| code switch to get "better" people to respect you just
| feels bad. Spending precious money on the cheapest formal
| wear you can find just so people will take you seriously
| further cements the divide poor people feel.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > But poor people hate feeling like they have to change
| their appearance to get the approval of the privileged
| classes.
|
| You say that like everyone else isn't doing the exact
| same thing. Being privileged is all about playing the
| "get everyone else's approval" game. But coming from a
| different social context it's even more basically a way
| of _showing_ others respect and earning their trust, so
| it 's not without consequence.
| jmt_ wrote:
| You're right, everyone is doing that to some degree at
| some point through out their life. But consider that
| there exists people who feel they need to dress better
| just to get the basic respect they deserve. In the case
| where someone cannot afford the appropriate clothing, it
| ostensibly seems they are unable to show the respect you
| speak of and are deemed "less than" because of that, but
| really their minds and character is the same regardless
| of clothing. Being privileged is having the agency to pay
| for the kinds of clothes that impress people and causes
| them to respect you, and in some cases, without having
| much other than a nice suit to justify such respect.
| fossuser wrote:
| It loops back around at the top. It's why there's an
| eccentric rich person trope and why it's called "fuck
| you" money.
|
| If you're totally financially independent you're more
| free to do what you want, independent of class behavior
| expectations (or even in contradiction of them). They no
| longer matter that much (unless you're doing something
| that requires politics or people).
| dcx wrote:
| No need to go for the throat there. And especially not when
| you're not totally correct.
|
| Paul Fussell's Class documents the exact phenomenon OP
| describes. Wealth is not class [1]; class is much more
| complex. For example, poor academics are higher class than
| rich blue-collar workers. Donald Trump is crazy rich but
| affects many of the working-class behaviours described in
| said book (technically "high prole"). Barack Obama has much
| less money but most would view him as upper-middle class.
| Nobody would accuse the above of being "out of their lane".
|
| My very rough approximation: class is something like the
| integral of wealth over very long periods of time. Being
| rich and well-connected for long periods gives you a chance
| to accumulate high-status behaviours and preferences, which
| can persist even when the wealth doesn't, and continue to
| confer benefits. Preferring golf or tennis to say, bowling,
| doesn't necessarily come with a major difference in
| affordability. But being good at golf might help your
| career more than bowling. Reading more helps in tons of
| ways, and most people only pick up this habit if they grow
| up with access to good education and parental cognitive
| surplus.
|
| [1] https://resourcegeneration.org/breakdown-of-class-
| characteri...
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah - I agree with all of this.
|
| On a related note, I think the US approach to dismissing
| class is preferable to the UK where it's very explicit.
|
| While both approaches have issues, when it's explicit in
| the culture people seem to discriminate on it more (or
| even self-sort themselves based on identity).
|
| I think ideally it's better for a culture to try to not
| do that, but pragmatically it's good to be aware of its
| existence in order to be successful. I mostly chalk it up
| to social skills.
|
| On specifically being told to "stay in your lane" my
| point was more that if you're behaving a certain way you
| won't be told that, because the other people will assume
| you're like them. It's not only about wealth (though as
| in the article, the behavior is often related).
| 2cb wrote:
| > On a related note, I think the US approach to
| dismissing class is preferable to the UK where it's very
| explicit.
|
| Huh. My perception has always been that America is far
| more obsessed with class and "keeping up with the
| Joneses" than Britain.
|
| That said, I have in the past been called "rich" in a
| derogatory manner just for owning an iPad. But that's
| more an amusing anecdote than social commentary. I find
| this type of thing to be the exception rather than the
| norm.
|
| For context I'm a Brit with a decent job but my family is
| certainly not upper middle class or even middle class and
| all my friends are working class because those are the
| people I naturally get along with. For the most part the
| fact I make more money doesn't cause any friction in
| those social circles. One of my mates even said to me if
| he didn't know better he'd assume I lived on a council
| estate.
|
| I guess the point I'm trying to make is the class lines
| are very blurred in modern day British society except for
| at the extremes. As such it's not something people tend
| to obsess over.
|
| On the other hand I've found that, in general, middle
| class Yanks tend to care more about being perceived a
| certain way so people know they're middle class or upper
| middle class or whatever else. I've even seen them argue
| over exactly what constitutes "real" upper middle class
| compared to regular middle class. Not something I've ever
| seen Brits do.
| watwut wrote:
| Donald Trump is as high class as it gets. From upbringing
| to the way his career developed. To the people he
| socializes with.
|
| > Being rich and well-connected for long periods ...
| which can persist even when the wealth doesn't, and
| continue to confer benefits. Preferring golf or tennis to
| say, bowling, doesn't necessarily come with a major
| difference in affordability. But being good at golf might
| help your career more than bowling
|
| He was literally rich from the day he was born to old
| age. He was getting those benefits whole his life. He
| plays golf.
|
| What he is not, is not being good person.
| fossuser wrote:
| I think this is wrong and misses the point.
|
| A lot of his political popularity is because while he's
| rich, the way he speaks is "working class".
|
| He's a good example of the difference we're talking
| about.
| watwut wrote:
| My point is, he speaks exactly how he learned to speak in
| environment of rich people.
|
| He is not all that much how actual working class behaves.
| Instead, he is his how middle class imagines working
| class. And people who vote him are economically not the
| poorest either. And he is also what poor people imagine
| super rich to be.
| rkk3 wrote:
| Since when has a reality-tv career been considered high
| class.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| And also surprising the author did not experience it at Uni
| where even well off middle class people, suddenly are mixing
| with much wealthier people.
|
| I remeber my cousin who went to UMIST saying this and that
| side of the family was well off.
|
| Its even more noticeable if you went to oxbridge and bumped
| into some one like Borris Johnson and his Bullingdon mates.
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| I think this is school dependent. In my experience, many
| wealthy kids will hide behaviors they know are associated
| with being wealthy / hide their backgrounds in order to
| better fit in. The awkwardness goes both ways.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Middle class kids might, not upper class wealthy ones not
| so much.
| kixiQu wrote:
| Not all of us went to schools that _have_ "much wealthier
| people" attending, of course.
| fossuser wrote:
| This is highly dependent on university - I didn't notice it
| much where I went (RPI), but it's a lot more obvious at
| Stanford.
| fmajid wrote:
| Much racism in America is actually classism. That's why
| something like Henry Louis Gates being profiled by a neighbor
| and a policeman as he was trying to get back to his Harvard
| home makes the news: Gates is an educated upper-class black
| man, and in this case he was treated as the latter rather
| than the former.
| istjohn wrote:
| I think you could argue that the opposite is true. Much
| classism in America is actually racism. For example,
| opposition to welfare programs have often been motivated by
| racist tropes like welfare queens. The truth is that racism
| and classism in America are deeply intertwined.
| twic wrote:
| We have the same discourse around welfare in the UK,
| where the stereotypical poor person is white. I'll bet
| you a bag of Hot Cheetos they have it in Hungary, Japan,
| and other ethnically homogeneous countries.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Explain how opposition to welfare programs is racism.
| Also, please explain why impoverished minority
| communities have not vastly improved regardless of the
| constantly increasing money tossed into welfare programs.
| chris11 wrote:
| The comment wasn't that opposition to welfare programs
| was solely caused by racism, just that it was one
| motivation. It's easier to defend a racist policy if
| racism is never explicitly brought up, the policy just
| has a disparate impact along racial lines. https://en.wik
| ipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#%22Southern_strate...
| CountDrewku wrote:
| >The comment wasn't that opposition to welfare programs
| was solely caused by racism, just that it was one
| motivation
|
| Ok so how would one oppose welfare programs and not be
| labeled racist? Do you believe there are no individuals
| taking advantage of the welfare system and that pointing
| out anyone who is would be racist?
| watwut wrote:
| I think that the above was comment abour welfare queen
| discussion that actually happened in USA around 1980 in
| presidential campaign.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Opposition to welfare programs happens in countries
| without race related problems as well. How do you
| distinguish between such opposition if you're going along
| with "that affects particular race more that's why they
| oppose it" argument. You can paint everyone to be racist
| this way.
| istjohn wrote:
| Opposition to welfare is not racist per se. But it has
| been used by politicians and pundits in the US as a dog
| whistle to drive a racial wedge between white and Black
| Americans. It's not explicit, and that's the point [0].
|
| 0. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-
| lee-atwa...
| bluecalm wrote:
| Yeah, it has been used but the way the argument goes it's
| impossible to form an argument against a welfare program
| without being painted a racist.
|
| What I mean is that a line of reasoning so often used
| these days: "this affects race X more therefore it's
| racist/racially motivated" is just incorrect thinking.
| cestith wrote:
| Have you heard of intergenerational wealth, which is one
| of the issues described in the OP article? Then, have you
| further heard of redlining, Jim Crow, slavery,
| sharecropping, lynchings, hiring discrimination, justice
| system discrimination, police discrimination, urban
| ghettoization, locally-funded school districts based on
| local property taxes, code switching speech, cultural
| discrimination on styles of dress and hair, and the
| digital divide?
|
| Would you like to take any guesses of any of those issues
| _not_ being involved in poor members of minority groups
| remaining poor?
| fossuser wrote:
| Welfare may be a bad example because I think there are
| more white people on welfare in general? Would
| potentially be evidence of class divide.
|
| I think there's truth in what you're saying though -
| single family zoning is an easy example. Also when they
| talk about welfare on the news and only show black people
| (even though more white people are on welfare iirc) - or
| how the sister reply to your comment gets indignant
| demanding you "explain how opposition to welfare is
| racism" and in the next sentence complains about minority
| communities. So there's definitely a racial component.
|
| I guess I mostly agree, we just see race more easily than
| class because of arbitrary skin color categorization. I
| hope in the future both are irrelevant.
| [deleted]
| shohpanhandler wrote:
| It unfortunately seems that many people in the tech world are
| very pro-capitalism and defensive of their own wealth. The
| attitude seems to boil down to "I got mine" with little to no
| consideration of others. Specifically, as regulation begins to
| intensify in the tech sphere, there's this feeling of people
| coming for their piece of the pie.
|
| Which seems pretty far from the point, but those people could
| view this as just another attack on their estate. They might
| feel like they deserve it, and deserve to act that way. This
| article highlights the ugly side, where someone who isn't
| already indoctrinated into that elitism is rubbing shoulders
| with the type who are used to the privilege available to those
| of us with longer running tech careers. And it looks bad. So in
| response, I suppose it inspires those people to circle the
| wagons and just accuse the author or not getting theirs
| effectively enough.
| augustk wrote:
| "I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| was the only person who would say hello to the cleaning lady as
| she meekly made her rounds around us when we worked late."
|
| This is just good manners.
|
| "I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| forgot my charger once and absolutely nobody had one old enough
| to be compatible with my phone."
|
| Taking good care of what you have is pure class. Always buying
| the latest is middle class behavior.
|
| "I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| never got over not having to punch a clock."
|
| I would love to punch a clock instead of reporting time in Jira.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Leave SF, problem solved. Why anyone would choose to live in a
| city where a closet living space costs what houses do in much of
| the rest of the country is beyond me.
|
| If that's what you want then fine but don't start crying to
| everyone else that you can't afford a living in one of the most
| overpriced markets in the world and you don't fit in with the
| elitists.
|
| And... the reality is that this woman's perception of poor is a
| standard of living that a large portion of the world doesn't even
| dream of. It's understandable to be upset because people only
| have so many experiences in their own little bubble but keep
| yourself in check and maybe consider that putting things like
| this out on the internet just make you look spoiled.
| schmookeeg wrote:
| Does living in Oakland really draw arched eyebrows like as stated
| in the article? Do the neighboring areas like Emeryville,
| Alameda, or Lafayette do that?
|
| (moving down to SF in a month or two, so just starting to get a
| feel for east bay ;) )
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| No, not at all. Oakland draws zero arched eyebrows (in my
| circles at least, which are made up of everyone from struggling
| to ultra-wealthy). If anything it's seen as a cooler place to
| live now that SF is stereotyped as boring techies.
| protomyth wrote:
| _I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because
| everyone else had good teeth._
|
| No joke. I grew up with free government dental, and it took years
| of earning to get at least presentable teeth. Not smiling for
| years doesn't help your work prospects.
| faceplanted wrote:
| Are you talking about alignment or whiteness here? I'm just
| confused as I thought even government dental would allow for
| braces, and it would be weird to whiten a child's teeth.
|
| I'm not from America and lucked into never needing braces or
| any dental work at all other than cleanings so I don't know
| much about this.
| protomyth wrote:
| Both, IHS had issues. One of those issues was a botched root
| canal that took three operations to fix. When you don't/
| cannot fire incompetents and just move them to another site,
| it makes things less than optimal.
| proxyon wrote:
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| was the only person who would say hello to the cleaning lady as
| she meekly made her rounds around us when we worked late.
| Everyone else had a long habit of ignoring anyone like her.
|
| I hope no one is gullible enough to believe this. This is bond
| villain stuff and most certainly does not apply to "tech" as a
| category. I even worked in Finance and never heard of this kind
| of behavior.
|
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because
| everyone's hobby talk was incomprehensible to me. Sailing. Indoor
| rock climbing. Building robots. Golfing. Sourcing and collecting
| antiquities. Adult soccer leagues. All I heard was money. Money.
| Money.
|
| The poorest people in the world play soccer and sports. My
| parents collected antiques on minimum wage. The biggest antiquers
| I've known were college students. And as for sailing, most people
| don't sail on their own boats, they pitch in their _physical
| labor_ in exchange for getting to participate in the hobby. That
| 's free, you just have to be physically active.
|
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| was afraid to seek mentorship from anyone above me, convinced
| that even asking would seem like bothersome begging. I watched
| the people around me network effortlessly, assured of favors and
| good words put in. I could only think in terms of what I could
| offer and how I could survive; they were thinking on the next
| level where they never had to wonder if they were good enough.
| They were to the business-class manner born, at least.
|
| This has nothing to do with poverty. My cousin grew up poorer
| than I did and is the most arrogant, direct, and demanding person
| you'll ever meet. If the job pays $100k he'd ask for $500k.
|
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because
| when I talked about paying off my student loans, people expressed
| their utter shock that my parents hadn't put me through Berkeley.
| Were Mom and Pop simply opposed to public school? Did they
| disagree with my choice of major?
|
| No one said that. Literally no one is shocked that anyone else
| has student loans. This is more bond villain hyperbole.
|
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because
| they thought I was kidding when I said I had a GED.
|
| Well yeah, but this has nothing to do with poverty. You were
| irresponsible enough to drop out of high school and people are
| rightfully shocked that you're responsible enough to hold a tech
| job.
|
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| forgot my charger once and absolutely nobody had one old enough
| to be compatible with my phone.
|
| Everyone knows this is _the opposite_. We 've all seen poor
| people in brand new shoes and with the latest iPhone and watch.
| People in poverty actually have the newest phones. That's part of
| what keeps them in poverty, irresponsible purchasing habits.
| Meanwhile most tech people I know have far older devices when it
| comes to smart phones.
|
| I stopped reading here. This isn't serious. OP is a professional
| victim who is outright misrepresenting things.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I started to sympathize and even being admirative at times, then
| it got darker.
|
| One word: theft.
|
| Taking advantage of free snacks, fine, it is what they are for.
| Taking stuff back home is borderline but ok. Not handing back the
| $350 headphones because no one is looking, definitely not ok. The
| way she described the situation as "everyone is rich so no need
| to lock thing up and check everything" instead of "people trust
| each other". The way she got her meal stolen 3 times in a
| previous job and didn't report it even though it is significant
| to her, as if theft was normal.
|
| It is the attitude I noticed from someone who just got out of
| prison. A nice guy, but he got caught in gangs and drug
| trafficking. It took a while for him to get back into a world
| where people just trust each other, where "take it" means exactly
| that. He has a job is living a honest life now.
|
| I hope that the author is fine now, that she managed to learn the
| lesson of poverty, keep the frugal attitude and respect for low
| paid workers while dropping the quasi-criminal thinking that goes
| with poverty.
|
| Also, that she goes back to the gym, show these assholes who
| think she "doesn't belong" the finger and lost that fat that
| seems to weight her down in more way than one.
|
| Also, how did we get to a situation where obesity and poverty are
| correlated? Really a paradox of the first world.
| umeshunni wrote:
| This is a work of fiction (The author is a novelist
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meg_Elison )
| rubyfan wrote:
| My boss once said to me "oh that must drive your cleaning lady
| nuts" and I just pretended like it did instead of saying that I
| or my wife take care of it.
| GeriatricYouth wrote:
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| was afraid to seek mentorship from anyone above me, convinced
| that even asking would seem like bothersome begging. I watched
| the people around me network effortlessly, assured of favors and
| good words put in. I could only think in terms of what I could
| offer and how I could survive; they were thinking on the next
| level where they never had to wonder if they were good enough.
| They were to the business-class manner born, at least.
|
| This one resonates very strongly with me, not sure if it's a
| poor-people characteristic though. It's anxiety but it may come
| out of the "poor person" mindset, I don't know.
|
| From elementary school to uni, I never asked anything any
| teacher, or had a tutor, because they obviously have better
| things to do than talking with me. Like, isn't it just being
| polite?
| pdpi wrote:
| > It's anxiety but it may come out of the "poor person"
| mindset, I don't know.
|
| You make it a habit to not make yourself vulnerable to people
| who consider themselves "your betters". It's a tough habit to
| break.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| It's definitely not anything to do with being poor. It's a
| confidence thing and having a will to learn and improve.
|
| Throughout life we always learn from those who are more
| experienced. Your seniors are there specifically for seeking
| guidance.
|
| You 100% should have spoken to teachers or tutors throughout
| school. Their job is to teach you and many of them enjoy
| sharing their knowledge and seeing someone want to better
| themsevles by going the extra distance to seek out information
| outside of the classroom.
|
| Yes, sometimes people do have more important things to do. But
| no one is going to say "Go away, I don't care, I'm busy".
| They'll say "can we schedule this for another time?" and then
| you plan that.
|
| Like, one of the most enjoyable things about my job is teaching
| other people things that I know and I think they can benefit
| from. I'll always have time for someone asking me question,
| it's never a bother. If someone else is blocked on work because
| they need help then I'll drop what I'm doing to aid them.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I have this issue too. As a youth I had a stutter and
| insecurity issues, which fell away when I realized my intellect
| was going to get me the hell away from the hick state I found
| myself. Through bravado and incredible luck, I managed to get a
| Harvard education - but while there nearly every single one of
| these insecurity issues cited in the article had a variation in
| my experience while attending Harvard. And after Harvard, I am
| barely and not really a member of the Harvard Network,
| primarily due to insecurity back then and being afraid to
| expose myself as not really being a Harvard Guy but some
| imposter hick.
| faceplanted wrote:
| If Harvard is anything like Oxford and Cambridge in the UK,
| it's not just that you didn't expose yourself, elite
| universities have their own stratification, between ones born
| rich who went to the most elite of private schools _before_
| they went to university, where they likely _arrived_ with
| some connections already, and the ordinary public who got in
| through work and talent but can have anywhere from that level
| to absolutely nothing in terms of pre-existing connections
| and the learned social behaviours to then get them.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| See it in a different way: all of those "mentor" type people,
| they have valuable knowledge in their heads. They have spent
| years and years building it up, refining their experiences and
| intuition etc. etc., you have the opportunity to go and ingest
| as much of that knowledge as possible at relatively no time
| expense!
|
| As soon as I realized this, I started obsessively drilling
| their heads for every little scrap (up until the point they
| would start being annoyed with me). It's free!
| Aeolun wrote:
| But... they're literally there to teach you stuff. And they
| like you better if you show interest.
|
| Why would you _not_ ask the teacher stuff.
| Kye wrote:
| IME they mostly didn't know how to teach anything once
| someone fell off the rails of the curriculum. I quickly
| learned that, for whatever reason, the "normal" way things
| were taught didn't work for me. The people whose job it was
| to navigate it didn't know how to help me. I was fortunate to
| have parents who, despite not having much money, knew
| computers would be important and always kept us in a working
| computer and internet connection.
|
| Even the early web in K-12 and early YouTube in tech school
| were more helpful because there were ways of teaching out
| there that worked for me, and I could find them. Math was the
| hardest because the teachers were mostly people who Just Got
| Math and didn't know how to help someone who didn't. They
| would get so into explaining something that they didn't hear
| me begging them to slow down so I could process it.
| tonyhb wrote:
| Because no-one in life has ever given you _actual_
| assistance.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Wow, I didn't consider that. That's pretty sad to think
| that some one could end up in that situation. That's
| terrible.
| moshmosh wrote:
| More generally, I've noticed being reluctant to ask
| others to do things for me _even when it 's their job_ is
| an attitude I have that's hard to shake, and is probably
| a result of my low-ish social class upbringing. It feels
| rude or imposing. This extends to hiring people to clean
| or work on home improvement projects for me--it's hard
| not to want to help out when someone else is doing stuff
| for me, even if I'm paying them. I feel bad if I pay
| someone to mow my lawn. I very much doubt folks who grew
| up with lots of "help" around feel that way. I expect
| it'd be _damn_ hard for me to run a business with
| employees, for similar reasons, at least until I got over
| the initial discomfort--it makes me feel really bad to
| pay someone to do something I _could_ do myself, not just
| because I 'm parting with money, but because it makes me
| feel like a lazy, rude asshole.
| 2cb wrote:
| Some of this is poor people stuff but some of it strikes me more
| as depression/low self-esteem. Of course one can lead to the
| other and that may be the case for the author, but it's not only
| poor people who feel depressed or suffer with low self-esteem so
| some of it seemed out of place.
|
| Obviously examples like the guy who didn't notice his paycheque
| bouncing are a sign people around you are wealthy though.
| redisman wrote:
| > Obviously examples like the guy who didn't notice his
| paycheque bouncing are a sign people around you are wealthy
| though.
|
| That means you're wealthy now. I grew up fairly poor but with
| 10+ years in the industry I probably wouldn't notice a missing
| paycheck for a while. I'm making 5-10x more than as a teenager.
| Doesn't mean I grew up as some kind of an aristocrat
| danbmil99 wrote:
| When did people who aren't poor stop taking Advil?
| Grustaf wrote:
| > Nobody had walked me away from my desk to keep me from stealing
| pens or staples or secrets.
|
| Are you saying poor people are always dishonest so by trusting
| you they treated you like a rich person, which is bad because ??
| . Honestly I'm just confused.
| scaramanga wrote:
| The article is about how poverty isn't just a financial
| situation but a shrinking of your world view.
|
| The author isn't complaining about that situation. She finds
| herself being surprised by it, and then noticing her own
| surprise begins contemplating what it might mean.
|
| I guess it means that poor people are continually treated as if
| they are thieves or guilty of something, and after being
| treated that way for so long, you internalize that judgement
| and treat yourself that way. Then when you notice a situation
| where you're not being treated that way, you might be
| surprised, and feel a mixture of emotions about the fact that
| you have been seeing yourself as guilty and untrustworthy for
| so long, and for no reason other than that you're poor.
|
| Reading your other comments you seem quite defensive about the
| fact that she doesn't have any real reason for saying rich
| people are so bad. But nowhere in the article does she actually
| say rich people are bad. She's saying why being poor sucks,
| what it feels like to go from being poor to being a bit better
| off, what that other world looks like from the outside or, more
| broadly, how your economic circumstances shape your view of the
| world and your expectations and interactions in it.
|
| I don't know why you would insist on reading it as some sort of
| attack.
| Grustaf wrote:
| I just find it so tedious when people spend their energy
| complaining, instead of making the best of their situation.
| At least when their situation is as good as hers.
| sethammons wrote:
| I've worked "poorer" jobs. They've been concerned with office
| supplies walking off. Never a concern at higher paid tech
| offices in my limited experience.
| drewbug01 wrote:
| I think what the author is getting at is that at many office
| jobs that lower-class folks work at, on your last day you'll be
| "walked out" by security to make sure you don't steal anything,
| "cause a scene," etc. The implication is that this is something
| that happens to lower-class workers, but not upper-class
| workers. And the "lower-class" job comes with low pay, and
| thus: poor. That's the logical connection I get when reading
| it.
|
| As someone who used to work in a "lower-class" (and low-pay)
| tech job (outsourced tech support, but the outsourcing firm was
| in America) - this is how they treated employees when they
| resigned (and when they were fired). It resonated with me, and
| I do not think it's a particularly rare thing in "lower-class"
| white-collar work.
| fmajid wrote:
| It happens to most workers involuntarily terminated, and the
| brutal and humiliating way most American companies go about
| it is quite telling.
| golergka wrote:
| Why would it be bad? Most of the list doesn't attack the
| "rich", in my opinion. It just highlights the difference
| between the subjective experiences, but I don't see as a vale
| judgement on anyone.
| Grustaf wrote:
| What is the point of the "nobody thought I would steal their
| stuff" comment then? It only makes sense if you assume poor
| people are thieves. In this case it was correct, but I don't
| think it's true in general.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| No, she's point out that no one treated her like a thief.
| Previous workplaces treated her like a thief because she
| was poor.
| Grustaf wrote:
| OK, if it was me my reaction to that would just be relief
| and gratitude.
|
| "Oh how nice middle class life is, I will do my best to
| remain here. I probably shouldn't steal."
| golergka wrote:
| That's what I thought this post was about...
| sidlls wrote:
| No, she's saying people perceive the poor as being dishonest
| and prone to thievery and therefore treat them as a group in a
| manner reflecting that.
|
| To be poor in America is to be lesser, not quite human, really.
| And our society is built from the top down to kindle that as
| early as possible, and to reinforce it at every stage of life.
| qq4 wrote:
| > "..because I couldn't restrain myself from eating and drinking
| myself into an absolute sickness anytime they threw a party and
| expressed no limits on our consumption, ..because I had the only
| fat body in the building, ..because I never got over not having
| to punch a clock, ..because I had gotten married younger than any
| of my coworkers.."
|
| Having an eating disorder, being obese, being insecure about an
| early marriage and taking the time to notice people blowing their
| money away is not exclusive to poor people. I've been below the
| poverty line and grew up in a strapped-for-cash household, and I
| don't see how the author is making a point, or what having to be
| in tech has to do with it.
| GlennS wrote:
| Some interesting culture differences in there.
|
| For example, one of the reasons that soccer/football is popular
| worldwide is because it's very cheap. Is it not so in the US?
|
| Also the assumption that everyone takes painkillers?
| schnable wrote:
| > For example, one of the reasons that soccer/football is
| popular worldwide is because it's very cheap. Is it not so in
| the US?
|
| No, but culturally soccer is played by middle class white
| people, not poorer people.
| falcolas wrote:
| > soccer/football is popular worldwide is because it's very
| cheap
|
| Cheap, in terms of money. Expensive, in terms of time. Due to
| the lack of money to make time available, the poor often have
| no time for such diversions (even as children, since someone
| needs to pay the dues and take the child to practice/matches).
|
| Also, if you're like most lower class Americans, you're likely
| selling your physical labor/wellbeing for a living, making more
| physical activity after work unappealing.
| drewbug01 wrote:
| > For example, one of the reasons that soccer/football is
| popular worldwide is because it's very cheap. Is it not so in
| the US?
|
| It is relatively cheap in the US as far as I know, but it's not
| nearly as common as basketball for pickup sports. I think the
| racial / class connections here are fascinating (and too
| lengthy to dissect here), but my general sense in the US is
| that soccer is actually perceived as more "other" / "foreign"
| than other sports.
|
| > Also the assumption that everyone takes painkillers?
|
| People who come up from lower-class backgrounds often have
| chronic pain - being overweight is one reason (as alluded to in
| this article), which is strongly correlated with income/class
| levels in the US. But also the work that one might do as a
| lower-class person in the US is different, and tends to be more
| physically stressful. That can add up to back/knee/neck
| injuries that never quite heal correctly and cause pain.
| ghaff wrote:
| >It is relatively cheap in the US as far as I know, but it's
| not nearly as common as basketball for pickup sports.
|
| In the US, while less broadly true today, poor has often been
| associated with urban. And basketball is probably easier in
| an urban environment than soccer/football, at least with
| anything approaching a standard playing field. It's also just
| never been a very popular US sport although at some point, it
| became mildly popular among the suburban soccer mom
| demographic, among others, for various reasons.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| To expand on this a bit the average (and many even most) poor
| person in America will be obese AND will have to stand a
| large portion of the day. Imagine your cashier at your
| grocery store who is not allowed to have a chair at most
| places in America or the fast food crew running around the
| Kitchen.
|
| The combination of being overweight (and sadly the author has
| a lot of photos so you can see she suffers more than just the
| average obese person) and being on your feet most of the day
| leads to a culture of OTC pain killers. I come from a poor
| background. There are two things I can guarantee about the
| BBQ I go to this weekend. 1) We are all going to have at
| least 30 pounds on us we shouldnt and 2) EVERY woman there is
| going to have a bottle of Aleve in her purse to the point
| where I wouldn't bother trying to find my wife when my
| inevitable back pain starts in, I will just turn and ask
| whichever woman is nearby with her purse in hands and I know
| already she's going to say "Oh of course sweety, here you go"
| as she pulls out two Aleve for me.
| caddemon wrote:
| It is definitely not expensive to play soccer in the US, unless
| this is another weird Bay Area thing. To play in an official
| rec league like she mentioned does have a bit more cost
| associated, but in NYC area every league I've seen is < $100
| for the season, which will usually span 3 months. Compared to
| the cost of playing pickup that's expensive, but it's also
| definitely not a rich person hobby. The cost of a few streaming
| services or buying a few video games over the course of the
| year will be more than playing a season or two of soccer.
| strken wrote:
| I ate the free "cheetos" (unfortunately, they were actually
| peatos), the free breakfast, used the occasional paracetamol
| tablet, got too drunk at parties and ate half the canapes, said
| hi to the cleaners, couldn't work out why everyone was so into
| snowboarding, failed horribly at networking, had an android,
| lived in the needles and shootings part of the Tenderloin, was
| just over the obese BMI when I left, and have never had my teeth
| whitened.
|
| I think those things are markers of the upper or upper-middle
| classes in the US, and if you're not from the US or from any
| other class, you don't have them. I haven't had to worry about
| bounced paychecks for a decade. My parents, solidly middle class,
| could have handled emergencies like a missed paycheck by dipping
| into their savings.
| fmajid wrote:
| Funny story: the main investor at my previous startup was a
| multibillionaire, one of the richest men in Canada (via his
| captive VC fund). He came to visit us maybe 3-4 times, and each
| time he'd make a beeline for the goldfish crackers in our
| canteen.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| I can relate to this guy.
|
| Not about the billionaire part, but about the goldfish part.
| Good to know that we at least have _something_ in common.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| _> What's great about this country is that America started
| the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially
| the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and
| see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca
| Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can
| drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of
| money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the
| corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the
| cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows
| it, the bum knows it, and you know it._
|
| -Andy Warhol
| leetcrew wrote:
| I get the point of the quote, but it's not entirely true
| today. setting aside the existence of "premium colas",
| there is a higher tier of coca cola: the one that has
| actual cane sugar and is imported from mexico. if you
| order a coke at a nice restaurant, you will likely be
| served one of these. the imported version isn't
| prohibitively expensive, but it is uncommon to see poor
| people pay a premium for soda.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a
| better coke than the one the bum on the corner is
| drinking.
|
| Not strictly accurate, as you can get bottled coke made
| with cane sugar instead of HFCS for a bit more and it is,
| in fact, better.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Back in 1975 that wasn't the case. But I guess it's
| another tiny symbol of increasing American inequality
| since then, we have special Coke for rich people now.
|
| Still true for goldfish as far as I know.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That was great! Thanks for sharing it.
|
| _> I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because
| they thought I was kidding when I said I had a GED. _
|
| I feel that. I have almost no formal training at all. I have a
| GED, and attended a redneck tech school. Everything since, has
| been OJT.
|
| As a manager, one of the things that I looked for, was minimal
| formal training, yet experience doing things that required it.
|
| Good sign.
| cookieswumchorr wrote:
| I had to google what a GED is. Turns out i'm rich )
| falcolas wrote:
| Or middle class, so you didn't have pressures from the home
| forcing you to quit high school.
| inb4_cancelled wrote:
| So I opened the About on the website and I can't quite put my
| finger on it, but the author is exactly who I imagined her to be
| after finishing the article.
|
| I agree that her coworkers are mostly jerks, but it sounds like
| she too may not be the most pleasant person to keep around.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| I stormed back to the website, arms filled with pitchforks
| ready to hand out, and was completely let down by the most tame
| About Me section my mind could have possibly summoned. I know
| you say you cant put your finger on it but can you elaborate a
| little bit?
|
| For those of you too lazy to click through to it here is the
| text (followed by a bunch of photos of her in different fancy
| outfits/settings):
|
| Meg Elison: Author & Essayist Meg Elison is a California Bay
| Area author and essayist. She writes science fiction and
| horror, as well as feminist essays and cultural criticism. She
| is a Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards finalist. Her work has been
| on the Otherwise (formerly Tiptree) longlist, nominated for the
| Audie Award, and won the Philip K. Dick Award. She has also
| been published in McSweeney's, Shimmer, Fantasy and Science
| Fiction, Catapult, Terraform, and many other places.
|
| She is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America
| (SFWA) and the National Writers Union (@paythewriter).
|
| Her debut novel, "The Book of the Unnamed Midwife" won the 2014
| Philip K. Dick Award. She has been an Otherwise Award honoree
| twice. Her YA debut, "Find Layla" was published in fall 2020 by
| Skyscape. It was one of Vanity Fair's Best 15 Books of 2020.
|
| Elison is a high school dropout, a graduate of UC Berkeley, and
| writes like she's running out of time.
| rendall wrote:
| _I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| was the only person who would say hello to the cleaning lady as
| she meekly made her rounds around us when we worked late.
| Everyone else had a long habit of ignoring anyone like her._
|
| Never fucking do this. Learn the name of everyone who comes into
| the office, greet them, and if they have a foreign native
| language, learn to say hello in it.
|
| I absolutely remember and judge those of you who treat your
| fellow humans like furniture. I see you. There will never not be
| a moment that I remember this, no matter how groovy you are, no
| matter your political posturing, no matter your accomplishments.
| mcherm wrote:
| I've seen this before. Not often, because the companies I have
| worked at have rarely hired someone from this social strata. But
| in the cases where we have, I have seen the alienation.
|
| Aside from the obvious "be genuinely friendly", does anyone have
| suggestions of what to do as a coworker to support someone
| suffering from this cultural barrier?
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Sure. First thank you for the honest question. I was poor
| growing up. Many things on this list resonate with me, but I'll
| add a few others.
|
| > During middle school, I would often skip lunch altogether.
|
| > The first time I went on an out-of-state trip was during
| college.
|
| > I went snowboarding (for the first time) with some friends a
| few years ago (age 24) and they didn't even balk at the $500 /
| night room prices for the all inclusive resort.
|
| > I now feel rich because my car's check engine light is not
| on.
|
| Ways you can help with this:
|
| * Understand that your coworkers may not have the same
| experiences as you. If someone tells a joke ("Summering in the
| Cayman islands" [referencing tax evasion or similar]), perhaps
| pull them aside later, one on one, and explain why the
| particular thing was funny.
|
| * Talk about the last book you read. Why was it interesting to
| you? Poor people and rich people read very different books.
| Offering insight into whatever issues you read through books
| might help them have easier conversations with others. For
| example I'm currently reading "An American sickness" which
| discusses the rising cost of health care in America. A poor
| person would focus on why *their* individual healthcare is so
| expensive, but a rich person looks at the whole system. And
| that is what this book more or less discusses.
|
| It's not unlike learning a foreign language. Even if you
| memorize the words and phrases, there's all sorts of ways they
| are used that can make it difficult to use as a communication
| tool. Try to identify those odd words or phrases and explain
| those to others. However this can apply to any company /
| culture, its not necessarily a rich / poor thing.
| Kalium wrote:
| Adopt a mentee. They need a teacher. Remember that when you
| offer guidance, it needs to be comprehensible and actionable
| and directed towards a coherent goal.
|
| Telling someone to reflect, for example, is none of those.
| Instead, tell someone to remember that what people show and
| what people feel can be different when they assume about
| another's mental state based on appearances.
| falcolas wrote:
| Become a friend. That is to say, make their worries, concerns,
| happiness, and joy as important to yourself as your own.
|
| It's easier for a friend to come to you with questions - not
| only about work, but about life in general.
| oaiey wrote:
| Be an ally.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| This is extremely vague.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because
| I made more there than I'd ever made before; a daring amount I
| had been afraid to ask for during the offer process. I
| discovered through misadventure that I still made less than any
| of the executive assistants, or the receptionist. I was, in
| fact, the lowest-paid person in the building including the
| interns. I hadn't known what was possible, so I couldn't even
| think to ask for what I was worth to them.
|
| One of the largest issues which would have caused many of the
| others on the list seems to be that they were absurdly
| underpaid. So make sure your co-workers aren't making peanuts
| compared to you?
| wdb wrote:
| One of the reasons why companies don't want you to share your
| salary ranges with colleagues
| emteycz wrote:
| Yeah, it clearly made all involved people uncomfortable. If I
| knew this I would have serious questions for my next HR one-
| on-one: "I am not going to work next to an exploited person -
| are you going to pay up or should I take the next recruiter
| call I get today?"
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Advocate for open salaries in your company. Everyone should
| know what everyone else makes, or at the very least, what the
| bands for every position / level of seniority make. Information
| asymmetry in pay is never to the benefit of the employees, only
| the employers - so why have it?
| ilikeatari wrote:
| Other then underpaid like in the other comment another way is
| to expose yourself out of the bubble. Volunteering if done
| right can expose you out of it.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Include them. Invite them to lunch, introduce them to other
| coworkers, make sure they know about happy hour events or other
| after-work activities. A few people doing this for me in my
| early 20s made the world of difference in my life.
| chubot wrote:
| I enjoyed this, it definitely made me think and generated a good
| conversation. I read it as mostly a list of observations and not
| something to be defensive about.
| globular-toast wrote:
| As someone from a poorer (not poor, we live in the UK and nobody
| is poor here) background, I can relate to some of this. But a lot
| of it is way off the mark. As I read further it sounded more and
| more like a woe is me piece.
|
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because
| nobody else ate the Hot Cheetos that were stocked in our free
| snack kitchen > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech
| startup because I couldn't restrain myself from eating and
| drinking myself into an absolute sickness anytime they threw a
| party and expressed no limits on our consumption
|
| That's not being poor. That's being fat.
|
| > Payday was marked in all caps on my calendar, every biweekly
| occurrence, forever.
|
| That's not being poor. That's being bad with money.
|
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| wouldn't dream of Ubering in.
|
| That's not being poor. That's being good with money.
|
| > I gave back the Macbook. I kept the headphones.
|
| That's not being poor. That's being a thief.
|
| Overall I think coming from a poorer background is great for
| happiness. My girlfriend is from a similar background. We really
| enjoy small things that other people would take for granted.
| We've surpassed the quality of life we had growing up easily, so
| everything else is a bonus. If I were to write an article like
| this, it would be because I felt sorry for the "not poor" people,
| not to make people feel sorry for me.
| gcatalfamo wrote:
| Can someone explain the Advil argument?
| oaiey wrote:
| Free Advil is something 99% of the people do not need and just
| take from home what they need. But when you are poor, you take
| the free offered Advil.
|
| The phrasing was a bit complicated. She realized, she was the
| only one taking Advil and it was never refilled because only
| she took from it and she did not empty it.
| RocketSyntax wrote:
| work in boston. no one cares.
| stemc43 wrote:
| ha. this article describes me.
| ElectricMind wrote:
| People don't change. "poor" in mind will always be "poor" even if
| surpass Elon Musk. What kind of stories one feed himself/herself
| on daily basis defines him/her. I am just at ease that everyone
| is screwed in his/her own way including me. Humans..
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| "You can leave the hood/trailer park but the hood/trailer park
| will never leave you."
| onion2k wrote:
| _" Because they have never been poor, they had no idea what I
| might do. Why would I steal, when everyone clearly has enough?"_
|
| The assertion that "poor people are more likely to be dishonest"
| betrays a view of poor people that isn't very nice. Rich people
| are just as likely to steal if they think they can get away with
| it.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| >"I am so poor" - sent from my $1200 Macbook.
|
| Typical tech bubble bullshit. She doesn't even realize what real
| poverty is.
| dkirill wrote:
| Agree. Strongly dislike this American sentiment of self
| victimisation. If you are born in USA you are not poor. If you
| are born in USA and work in tech, you are not poor even
| relative to other Americans. I mean most of the world
| (including me) dream of having an opportunity to migrate to
| USA, because living there is enormous privilege to have
| [deleted]
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Where does it say she owned a MacBook? She had one belonging to
| her workplace, but I've worked minimum-wage jobs where I've
| used equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars before.
| dusted wrote:
| I like that this person is not judging, merely describing their
| observations. Often I don't think wealthy people are aware how
| poor people interpret their actions, and I'm not arguing that
| they are required to either. I've somewhat seen both sides of
| this, and I think it's beneficial for both sides to understand
| where the other is coming from.. It'll make a poor person feel
| better knowing that the behaviour they saw was not intended to
| demonstrate anything, that this rich person is just unaware that
| what they did could be perceived like whatever. It'll also make a
| wealthy person understand averse reactions better, and avoid
| them, to understand how those who have less can interpret their
| actions.
| [deleted]
| elzbardico wrote:
| I identify with this article more in a meta-level of how much
| mental bandwidth one loses to the overhead of having been born
| poor:
|
| All those things you worry when you didn't came from a well-to-do
| family rob mental processing time, thus making it harder to use
| your time productively to escape further and faster from poverty.
|
| Rich people for example probably never ever entertain those worst
| case thoughts someone who was born poor usually obsess from time
| to time, like, "what if this recession I saw on news deepens, I
| am laid off and can't find a job for months, maybe years? will I
| become homeless? will my family have food?".
|
| This is mental processing time that wealthy people can use to be
| creative, to learn something new, to have fun, but for you, it is
| about a couple hours of extreme anxiety where you can't
| concentrate enough even to work.
| [deleted]
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| The people identifying this person's complaints as irrational
| ("he's not poor anymore") or over the top don't quite get where
| they're coming from. I know many people who are now well off that
| still have this mindset or remnants of it. I'm a first generation
| immigrant, my own parents will spend long amounts of time
| explaining to me that we are not as wealthy as other people and
| shouldn't forget it, because they won't. Her favourite
| restaurants all have three Michelin stars. When it stops being
| physical, it's completely psychological.
| j-pb wrote:
| A lot of passive aggressive dietary preference shaming for
| someone whose supposedly an advocate for body acceptance.
|
| Feels more like a salty rant to subconsciously justify her own
| unhealthy eating habits.
| incrudible wrote:
| _" Meg Elison is a California Bay Area author and essayist"_
|
| Many people will warn you about taking drugs or dropping out of
| school. Far too few people will warn you about becoming an author
| or moving to the Bay Area.
| domador wrote:
| One of the parts that most stood out to me was how the author was
| apparently paid much less that her comparably-skilled coworkers,
| since she didn't negotiate for higher pay. How common is this in
| tech companies in and around San Francisco? Are there a lot that
| would pay you as little as possible--even far below what is
| common for your skill set--if you didn't defend yourself through
| negotiation and awareness of market value for your skills? Was it
| more that she didn't ask for enough, or that her coworkers were
| much more aggressive negotiators?
| username90 wrote:
| She is a writer at a tech startup. Likely all her peers were
| engineers.
| domador wrote:
| I'd assume, though, that a tech writer's base salary would be
| higher than a receptionist's and maybe an executive
| assistant's. I'm trying to gauge if she was being vastly
| underpaid for her skill set and if Bay Area tech companies
| tend to do that if you don't negotiate aggressively.
| [deleted]
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| > once I realized they would keep restocking the tampons in the
| ladies' room, I stopped bringing any from home. I said as much in
| a fit of daring to a woman with whom I thought I would become
| friends. She admonished me for using bleached cotton products in
| my vagina. We are not friends.
|
| More evidence that the "sisterhood" is a total myth.
|
| What an awful environment to have to work in :(
| fredophile wrote:
| One thing that stuck out to me was how a lack of certain skills
| or knowledge played into keeping them poor in this position.
|
| If they'd known the salaries of other people they could have
| negotiated for more pay up front. Even once they knew they were
| the lowest paid person they weren't comfortable bringing it up
| and trying to negotiate for more. They lacked the confidence or
| people skills to ask for mentorship from the people they worked
| with. None of this is helped by the fact that being broke takes
| brain power just to get by so you can't apply that effort and
| energy into improving your situation.
|
| Many of us are lucky enough to have someone in our lives who
| could teach us these things. Is there a way we can make sure this
| kind of knowledge is passed on more equitably to help reduce
| intergenerational wealth gaps?
| simonswords82 wrote:
| Well played OP for finding a Tweet referenced from the hugely
| upvoted "The tools and tech I use to run a one-woman hardware
| company" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27199225).
|
| I wish I'd thought of it...
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| Not being able to spend $25 a day for lunch?
|
| Not going for 3-day weekend to Greece?
|
| Not getting Uber to work?
|
| Count me in, I'm poor.
| olingern wrote:
| I grew up poor and now live and work around "never been poor"
| folks. Classism 100% exists. The thing that I noticed most folks
| can't grasp is the appreciation for the small things and the
| security they have.
|
| I find that people who have never experienced being poor are
| often lacking in both humility and "can do" attitudes.
|
| For me, not being wealthy is a feature, not a bug. I realize I'm
| speaking from a place of privilege now, though.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Of course you view things differently if you've never been
| poor. But that doesn't make you evil, and OP is not a victim.
| In none of her examples was anyone treating her badly. (I know
| you are not claiming this, just saying).
|
| In fact, as you hint, having been poor and then getting in to
| the middle class you probably have a better chance of making it
| big.
| strken wrote:
| Paying her less than the interns was not a very nice thing to
| do.
| username90 wrote:
| She is a writer and not a software engineer. Comparing her
| salary to software engineer interns therefore isn't fair.
| tenpoundhammer wrote:
| I didn't grow up poor but we didn't have extra of anything and
| we sure couldn't afford to lose a paycheck. The thing I find
| absolutely unbelievable and will never understand is when
| people quit their job and just plan to relax for a while. What
| ??? You have a job you are making money, why would you give
| that up? I feel so lucky to have a job and to do something that
| isn't back breaking labor, I will never understand this and
| firmly feel like this is rich people stuff.
| lkbm wrote:
| After college I lived with a bunch of UT students (good
| university; median family income of students is $123,900[0])
| while working at a school for high school dropouts (median
| family income unknown, but definitely under $30k) and it really
| impressed upon me that people coming from families in the 75th
| income percentile expect to live free of the poverty/class
| markers mentioned in the article, while for people in poverty,
| they're merely effects of actual, pervasive struggles.
|
| Rich kid will thinks they're poor if they're low on petty cash,
| or if their phone is two years old and has a cracked screen.
| They never worry that they'll not be able to pay for their
| phone next month, or have skip a meal to make rent.
|
| I grew up in a well-off-but-frugal household, so I had a lot of
| the poverty markers listed, but for me they were frugality
| markers.
|
| The core of poverty isn't the visible markers. Anyone can have
| those. It's the pervasive stress of not having money,
| constantly being on the precipice of your life going into a
| sudden, deep dive. I never had that. Even when I earned
| ~$13k/year in Americorps, I was fine because I had no debt, I
| was used to living cheaply, and I knew that if it really came
| down to it, my parents could help me out. The poor high school
| students I worked with had the opposite family situation:
| they'd miss school because family depended on _them_ to help
| with the bills.
|
| If I ever have kids, I feel like I'll need to go out of my way
| to ensure they don't grow up segregated into wealthy enclaves.
| The US is sorted by income--neighborhoods, schools, social
| circles, and workplaces--and it makes us blind to others'
| situations. I don't want them to be constantly stressed about
| money, but it's important to be able to handle financial
| constraints, and to be aware and understand of the actual
| reality so many people live with.
|
| [0] https://thedailytexan.com/2019/04/25/median-family-income-
| of...
| bittercynic wrote:
| I relate to being (somewhat) well-off-but-frugal, and for me
| there is a danger of falling into the trap of thinking: I
| don't care that I have some markers of being poor, so you
| shouldn't either.
|
| It is largely a matter of luck to be in a situation where you
| don't have to worry about maintaining a certain appearance,
| and developing some empathy for those who do has been an
| important positive change for me.
| timwaagh wrote:
| So I guess we finally have poor people people in tech. Time for
| something else then?
| culturestate wrote:
| To me, this reads more as a list of "from outside the valley
| bubble" signifiers than it does as a list of things that people
| who've grown up in poverty might do, even if the former was a
| result of the latter.
|
| There are some exceptions - not noticing missed paychecks is the
| biggest - but most of it is just stuff that happens every day in
| other offices.
|
| Making your lunch at the office and not bringing Advil from home?
| I know generationally wealthy _investment bankers_ who do these
| things, and they 're the kind of people who spent their childhood
| summering at Fishers Island.
| isomorph wrote:
| But it IS a list of what someone who grew up in poverty did
| [deleted]
| reader_mode wrote:
| >not noticing missed paychecks is the biggest
|
| I work as a consultant and I regularly forget to send invoices
| for a month (sometimes two). It's been years since I was living
| from paycheck to paycheck, I can afford to skip out on months
| of income and not notice for day-to-day expenses. And I'm lazy
| about creating invoices (I should automate this and keep a
| regular activity log instead of pulling stuff from git and
| emails but yeah).
|
| More importantly I've worked with other consultants and I got
| the impression that people from finance are used to chasing
| _them_ for invoices, so I don 't think it's that rare.
| cratermoon wrote:
| There's a place somewhere between "making a lot of money" and
| "being truly wealthy" where a person can become obsessively
| frugal. Think of it as hoarders, but for money. They don't want
| to spend a penny more than they have to, because they have a
| kind of psychological investment in their net worth. Yes, they
| will spend a lot of money on some thing in order to be able to
| display their wealth as their class demands, but they'll pinch
| every penny in other ways. Think of the guy who tries to stiff
| a contractor, or never tips for service.
|
| So for your generationally wealthy investment bankers,
| summering at Fishers Island is a necessary conspicuous display
| of wealth as well a as networking and social process. Eating
| the office food and using the office pain killers are largely
| invisible, but to a person obsessed with having money, the
| costs are accounted for in their personal ledger.
|
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/wealth-can-make-us-se...
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Or maybe the office painkillers and office food are just
| plain convenient? Which is why the office supplies them in
| the first place? It has nothing to do with being "money
| obsessed." Maybe my office is some weird outlier, but nearly
| every one of these "i'm poor in tech because" examples apply
| to my office, despite us being wealthy in tech.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Well, yes, but are you the sort of independently
| generationally wealthy money-hoarder I'm referring to, or
| just one of the many folks who, while not poor, are still
| basically wage slaves who can't quit their jobs because
| they have a mortgage, kids, student loans, and need the
| health insurance? If you're the latter, the convenience
| factor is a money factor in disguise: you're so busy trying
| to maintain yourself and your family that you don't really
| have time to make your own lunch.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I think there are more groups of people than the two you
| described (money hoarders and basically wage slaves).
| wdb wrote:
| I brought my lunch to the office for many years but then I went
| in consulting and had to work from home and live in hotels and
| then its quite hard to prepare lunch or bring leftovers to
| work. If you stay in hotels
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Making your lunch at the office and not bringing Advil from
| home? I know generationally wealthy investment bankers who do
| these things"
|
| Generally they don't like to waste money. That's part of how
| they stay rich for generations (as opposed to someone who hits
| the lottery and the next generation is basically back to where
| they started in many cases).
| sidlls wrote:
| You think someone with generational wealth would stop to even
| consider the cost of advil or a lunch in FiDi? They don't.
| This little bit of mythology has always been amusing to me.
| They may make their own lunch out of habit or simply because
| they have a preference or whatever--but cost isn't a reason
| for people of that much wealth.
|
| They don't like wasting money, but what they consider "waste"
| is not the same thing as what someone who isn't wealthy would
| consider waste.
| [deleted]
| kixiQu wrote:
| Fun anecdata from my own life: I grew up under varying
| amounts of poverty and now I make Big TechCo money. As I
| have gotten a lot better about shedding a certain kind of
| survival-hoarding-mindset "I don't need to keep <this half-
| broken thing> because I can get a new one when I need one
| again", I have found myself developing new neuroses about
| "waste" of things that my old self would have considered
| insignificant: (personal) office supplies, succulent leaves
| that have fallen off but that I can propagate, 5-year-old
| magazines I haven't read yet. It's like I maintained some
| amount of the anxiety but in the absence of the pressure to
| direct it usefully, it's gone cuckoo.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Yeah if we are talking about lunches and people on 6 figure
| salary this is a fairytale
| giantg2 wrote:
| A lunch between $15-20 every day is about $4k per year.
| That's still a large percentage of a person's after tax
| income even making $100k.
|
| You might want to correct Warren Buffett since he
| recommends packing your lunch at least 3 days per week.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you like going to the cafeteria or out to lunch, by
| all means you should do so if you can afford it. But it's
| also entirely reasonable not to spend money out of habit.
| For example, while I may do so when traveling, I have
| zero interest in getting a daily Starbucks fix.
|
| (I often drive by a local Starbucks which usually has a
| line of cars around the block getting to go. I have to
| wonder who these people are who want to wait for 20
| minutes or whatever to get their $5 latte at all hours of
| the day.)
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If you make PS100,000 then an hour of your time is worth
| ~PS48.
|
| You can get lunch for PS10 or less, and cooking at home
| doesn't cost PS0, so unless you are replacing a fancy two
| course lunch with a made at home sandwith, I dont see you
| saving over PS2k a year.
|
| Warren Buffet is cool and all, but he is not the world's
| lunch expert
| geodel wrote:
| Yeah, but that's not how it works for most people.
| Because salary does not simply become 50% more if one add
| 50% more working hours.
|
| You do seem expert in peddling wisdom of internet cliches
| without even a bit of thinking
| [deleted]
| codegeek wrote:
| Yea I mostly agree. For example not greeting cleaning lady has
| nothing to do with being rich or poor. It is just manners and
| some of us do it and some don't.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 30 years ago the cleaning lady was staff and had a very small
| number of stock options and had time to chat with the people
| pulling all-nighters at work. I even dated her daughter a
| couple of times.
|
| Today the cleaning person works for an agency, is a different
| person every night and has 4 hours to do 8 hours worth of
| work.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Manners? I don't say hi to the cleaning staff for the same
| reason I don't say hi to most people I see in the office: I
| don't know them. If I did, then I would say hi.
|
| Do others greet every single person they see in the building?
| xyzelement wrote:
| Yes. You are working late, someone comes by your desk to
| empty your trash. You say hi and thank you. Especially once
| to realize you see the same person every night.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| > Do others greet every single person they see in the
| building?
|
| Yes I always did. Would get into some long chats with one
| of the cleaning ladies actually. And if someone came into
| my office to do maintenance on the aircon unit I'd of
| course greet them.
| augustk wrote:
| A member of the real (old money) upper class would certainly
| greet the cleaning lady, as the servants are seen as part of
| the family.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Sorry to say, but you're being extremely naive if you think
| you're right. People are awful to supporting staff and show
| them no respect on the regular.
| omosubi wrote:
| And this is across class lines, no?
| phone8675309 wrote:
| It happens across class lines _but_ I find that it's not
| the same degree. I find that the more used you are to
| people cleaning up after you the less that you thank
| them/acknowledge them for doing so. The teenage "I can
| leave my trash here - they have cleaning staff to clean
| it up!" mentality seems to be more prevalent the higher
| income your background is.
|
| I say hello to the cleaning staff, security staff,
| delivery drivers, food service workers, etc at work. I
| can't get my job done unless they're there, and I am
| acutely aware that our professional experience and
| treatment by management is significantly different.
| princeb wrote:
| this actually reminds me of an article i read on nyt some
| time ago, about poor college students or first gen students
| in top colleges.
|
| the parents were invited to the school to meet the faculty
| and the parents who were college educated or those went to
| the same type of schools understood the song and dance - the
| mingling with the adminstrative staff, the dean of students,
| the professors and lecturers - and the parents who were not
| educated or were part of the lower class didn't know what to
| do, so they hung out with the cafeteria staff, asked the
| cafeteria staff to take care of their kids. those were the
| people their families and relatives knew and understood.
|
| and the first gen students also understood that they belonged
| to the same social strata as the cafeteria staff, and things
| like office hours or asking for help from the professors or
| the TAs were something that they could not possibly be
| entitled to.
| scandox wrote:
| I grew up very wealthy and it is what it is. I read that list
| and some parts of it make me sad and some make me laugh.
| There's been times I've been that asshole, and times I've not
| been. Some of the things are very American - like the teeth
| thing which is basically the ultimate American neurosis. We
| were rich but I didn't want someone messing with my perfectly
| useful teeth.
|
| There's no point being overly defensive about these things.
| People with all kinds of life experience can learn from each
| other.
| rubyfan wrote:
| _> There 's no point being overly defensive about these
| things. People with all kinds of life experience can learn
| from each other._
|
| I don't think this is the fault of the author. When you've
| never had the chance or experience or bank account to dream
| of doing something that many people take for granted it's
| easy to sort of clam up or realize your different and that
| you have to try harder to fit in.
| scandox wrote:
| I meant that wealthy people should not be too defensive
| about it.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| But wealthy people should be defensive about it. Or at
| least acknowledge the fact that we have severe and
| increasing income disparity in America and a lot of
| people are suffering with anxiety and other ills because
| we let so many people expose themselves to massive risk
| by being poor.
|
| In Europe, you don't go bankrupt when you get sick.
| Health care is one of the top causes of bankruptcy in
| America. In more socialized countries, you don't lose
| your housing when you lose your job. You don't need to
| struggle to keep a car (which you need for a job) because
| there is public transit and you're almost guaranteed
| access to higher education.
|
| The upper middle class and higher need to realize this is
| a big systematic risk for the country.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yep this was my impression too. I'm from a professional class
| family in the rural part of the midwest now living in a
| cosmopolitan "crunchy" wealthy town. A lot of the stuff in here
| (like the stuff about food choices and tampons) is similar to
| things that set my teeth on edge just a bit in my town (and
| also, but not exclusively, at my office). I don't interpret it
| as stemming from wealth disparity but rather cultural and class
| disparity, which is related but not identical. For instance,
| people at the same wealth level as my family are much more
| likely to eschew fast food here and generally form more of
| their identity around their food choices. It's cultural.
|
| But a lot of the article does strike me as stemming from wealth
| disparity, and is very interesting. Indeed, another thing to
| add to the list is being unable to distinguish between
| behaviors that are different because of culture vs. because of
| wealth.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| I don't really see this as a valid criticism of the list
| though. A person identified a bunch of ways they are not like
| almost all of the rest of their coworkers.
|
| Do they have the information, experience, or responsibility to
| accurately categorize the specific cultural origin of every
| single one of those differences? Does it make the argument
| weaker if they miss a couple? Maybe a little but it's still
| strong.
| culturestate wrote:
| I don't want to trivialize what the author is feeling, but
| when the conclusion they draw is...
|
| _> Because they have never been poor, they had no idea what
| I might do. Why would I steal, when everyone clearly has
| enough? What even is scarcity? Why drink yourself to death
| tonight when there's another sponsored event a week from now?
| Why eat like there will never be enough, when there has
| always been more than enough?_
|
| ...I think it 's worth discussing whether they may have
| misidentified the real root cause.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| I was trying to be nice.
|
| It's worth discussing I just don't think you contributed
| anything useful to the conversation with that comment.
|
| To me it reads like you're dismissing the author's
| experiences based on a technicality, rather than engaging
| with them on their terms and merits.
| Kalium wrote:
| Do you think it might be possible to appreciate the
| reality and sincerity of someone's experiences while also
| questioning the validity of their interpretations? Would
| this be a form of substantive engagement on the merits of
| the piece?
|
| Personally, I see someone describing a number of points
| of cultural difference and an author who wholeheartedly
| believes they have identified the root of all of them. Is
| it worth discussing that the real, indisputably valid
| lived experience of the author, might also be linked to
| other things?
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| Yeah I think I've been pretty clear that I think that
| conversation is possible and also that I think that is
| not the conversation that is happening in this thread.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > Does it make the argument weaker if they miss a couple?
| Maybe a little but it's still strong.
|
| What if they miss almost every single one? That's how it
| reads to me, for almost every job I've had. That's why people
| are reacting like they are to the article.
| maury91 wrote:
| I'm from a "poorish" family, but from Europe. Some stuff is
| relatable some is not:
|
| - People ordering lunch always felt weird for me, in my mind I
| think "why should I pay 10EUR for a bowl of salad, when I can go
| to the grocery store below the office and have the same for
| 1EUR", or even better pay 70 cents for the raw vegetables, wash
| them and chop them in the office and they will last 3 days
|
| - Student debt doesn't apply, the good thing of being "poor" in
| Italy is that the country pays you to go to university and not
| the opposite
|
| - When I got my first tech job I was like "wow, I got a MacBook
| just for joining the company, this costs like 1 year of salary of
| my previous job"
|
| - The part of stealing I don't find relatable, even when my bank
| account was empty I would never resort to stealing, must be some
| honour system I grew up with
|
| - The gym part is also not relatable, when I was fat and I did go
| to the gym everyone was very supportive, and every little
| progress was celebrated by everyone making you want to go more
| and more.
|
| A thing I notice, is that the mentality stays with you no matter
| your salary, I always try to avoid spending more than necessary,
| with a comparison with my colleagues my monthly expenses are less
| than 1/3 compared to them.
| iagovar wrote:
| I'm from Spain and I find relatable. I've been in places where
| I didn't have to eat, so when people orders food every day I
| just compute in my head how much money goes to waste.
|
| Another thing that I do, is consider the ability to repair tech
| without lock-in. Being a techie poor teachs you to be careful
| about this decisions, but people seem perfectly fine to be
| locked in and just buy new stuff every time.
|
| There has been a lot of time since I don't buy new tech. My
| phone is second hand, my laptop is a second hand ThinkPad, I
| have two Eizo Screens that came through ebay, my upgraded
| desktop has an I5 from ebay, and RAM is probably second hand
| too, I don't remember.
| StavrosK wrote:
| > how much money goes to waste.
|
| Eh, it doesn't go to waste, it goes to other people.
|
| > Being a techie poor teachs you to be careful about this
| decisions, but people seem perfectly fine to be locked in and
| just buy new stuff every time.
|
| Yes, this is a big one! Ever since I got into hardware as a
| hobby I can repair many more devices with a 3D-printed part
| or replacing a burnt component, now I'm horrified at how
| often people will just get a new device. Repair shops should
| be more common, and repair should be easier, as that is
| _truly_ wasting money (because you 're throwing away a
| usually perfectly usable device that just needs a bit of
| repair).
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I grew up dirt poor in a police no-go zone, went on to spend
| roughly 18 months in homeless hostels over a few years, etc.
|
| Honestly, I feel like lots of these are related to being a
| poorly paid member of the tech company or having work at more
| working class companies.
|
| When I started out, I literally ate toast for lunch every day
| because it was provided and I had no other money as time went
| on I got paid more and I was spending 15-25 every day on lunch.
| I was spending more on lunch than some people I knew would
| spend on food for their entire week.
|
| The bonus at my current company was a massive issue for nearly
| everyone. It was constantly talked about for months because the
| company screwed up their finances and were talking ages to
| figure out what the bonus should be. Nearly everyone in my
| company comes from a middle class background and majority make
| decent money.
|
| And the thing about the gym is probably on them, the gym is
| full of people all trying to better themselves and some of the
| most supportive people you will meet will be the gym. I would
| routinely tell people they look awesome and I was in awe, I
| would have random people come up and say well done to me that I
| was doing well. There are a few people who only want to hang
| around with other gym rats but 99% are just normal people. I
| remember talking to a woman who is super hot and even she felt
| intimidated by the gym.
|
| The thing about stealing is a serious issue for working class
| companies. So many warehouses for example have security to
| search employees because they know if they don't lots of their
| product will walk out of the door with employees. I had friends
| that would talk about how they stole from their companies. I
| also heard a bunch of stories of people stealing when a company
| shut down.
| filoleg wrote:
| No desire to comment on the rest of the OP points, but the
| one about gym was the most baffling one to me. Out of all
| places I could think of, gym is one of the most accepting
| places ever for all kinds of people (including extremely
| obese people).
|
| From my own observations, people at the gym tend to fall in
| one of the 2 categories: they are either (a) extremely
| supportive or (b) totally not caring about anything but
| getting their own workout done and getting out. Of course
| there could be exceptions, but the only time i've ever even
| heard of such a thing happening, those types of people
| usually get shunned by the rest of gym goers for being
| assholes and ultimately banned from gyms.
|
| In fact, more often than not, when I see a person at the gym
| who is clearly a very beginner (judging purely by how they
| are walking around for a while trying to find a specific
| piece of equipment, regardless of whether they are obese or
| not), I almost instantly see other gym goers helping them out
| with minor stuff or cheering them on weeks later once they
| accomplish a milestone. From my personal experience, the most
| intimidating-looking fit people at the gym end up being the
| nicest and most helpful towards beginners.
|
| This sidenote aside, I find it extremely suspicious that the
| OP just said "It was crystal clear I don't belong" in
| reference to gym, without any specifics. What made it "clear"
| to her? The fact that she was looking at other people and
| realized that a lot of them were a bit further along their
| journey to being fit? Or did something actually happen that
| made her feel that way? Because a lot of her other points and
| complaints seem to have a lot of specifics, but this one has
| absolutely none.
|
| It is also a bit strange how she is all about utilizing all
| other benefits and perks provided by the company, as evident
| by her mentioning tons of specific instances of that (no
| shame in that, as everyone should feel empowered to take
| advantage of things offered to them by the employer for
| free). She even rationalizes a lot of it as something due to
| her being from a rather poor background, even if she knows
| she shouldn't utilize those as much (drinking until getting
| sick, because it is free). But when it comes to the gym
| membership covered by her employer, she is totally willing to
| give up this perk, despite it usually being a pretty valuable
| perk in terms of costs covered.
| kelnos wrote:
| Not all gyms are created equal, and it's possible she
| (perhaps through ignorance or lack of choice based on the
| reimbursement) picked one that is full of judgmental people
| who are already fit and just go to the gym as status
| signaling and/or to maintain their fitness. Also, "gym"
| might mean some sort of "fitness class program", so it
| might not just be a big room with cardio equipment, free
| weights, and weight machines. The fitness class type does
| anecdotally seem to attract more of the status-conscious
| people than do-your-own-exercise type gyms do. (To be
| completely fair, the fitness class type does of course
| attract a lot of people just looking for a more structured
| way to get into shape.)
|
| While I agree that most gyms are great places full of
| supportive people (or at least people who don't give you a
| second look and will leave you to do your thing in peace),
| there are also certainly some gyms that seem to exist more
| as status symbols than anything else.
|
| But still, assuming she had a choice (again, maybe the
| company gym perk only covered one specific gym), she
| absolutely should not have given up after that one
| experience, and should have tried another gym. I do get how
| it can be hard enough to get yourself to go the gym in the
| first place, though, and a bad experience can completely
| drain any motivation to continue on.
| g_sch wrote:
| I think the author's point about stealing has more to do with
| the way low-wage workers are assumed to be criminals by their
| employers, and have to deal with various invasive security
| measures their employer requires.
| itsyaboi wrote:
| > _I think the author 's point about stealing has more to do
| with the way low-wage workers are assumed to be criminals by
| their employers, and have to deal with various invasive
| security measures their employer requires._
|
| Assuming that all low-wage workers are criminals is obviously
| bad, from a "fellow human being" point of view. And yet, the
| author describes stealing $350 headphones in the last lines
| of the article because their employer trusted them to return
| equipment without any oversight. Honestly not sure what point
| they were trying to get across by leaving that in.
| kixiQu wrote:
| Because it's the kind of thing high-salary workers do often
| without even considering it stealing. The headphones are
| used. If someone has a bougie enough job, they probably
| expect not to be assigned used headphones, and they don't
| think through whether the company would be selling them on
| because _they_ certainly wouldn 't bother in their own
| life. Alternately, there is a mindset of "oh, well, it'd be
| more money to clean them than they're worth at this point,
| they're just going to throw them out" (mentally estimating
| from the effort at the rate that _that_ person is paid, not
| at the rate earned by the person who 'd get stuck with the
| cleaning). Personally, I've seen people do this in ways I
| find shocking. The author is pointing out that she has
| _also_ been affected by her environment, that she _also_
| has changed to act in ways she would have found
| unbelievable prior. I don 't think it's trying to say "look
| I've _advanced_ to act like these people ".
| StavrosK wrote:
| > - The part of stealing I don't find relatable, even when my
| bank account was empty I would never resort to stealing, must
| be some honour system I grew up with
|
| Do you mean the last bit about the Macbook and the headphones,
| or the bit about the snacks? The snacks were more of a "it is
| fundamentally impossible to steal cheap stuff because we have
| infinite cheap stuff, why do you even care that someone took
| it!" mindset.
| maury91 wrote:
| I was referring to this phrase:
|
| > Because they have never been poor, they had no idea what I
| might do. Why would I steal, when everyone clearly has
| enough?
|
| from how I understood it, because she has been poor, she had
| reasons for stealing.
|
| In companies I worked for the snacks are there for being
| taken, I notice in every company I worked for there's the
| rule "the company is going to put stuff in the kitchen in
| some common areas, everyone is free to take them", I did
| always ask to a colleague about that, just to be sure I don't
| steal the pack of chips another colleague left there.
| StavrosK wrote:
| > from how I understood it, because she has been poor, she
| had reasons for stealing.
|
| No, it says that nobody even considered that she might
| steal, because rich people don't see the point of stealing
| when stuff is so cheap relative to their wealth that it's
| effectively free.
|
| That's why nobody bothered to even escort her, stealing
| just didn't even occur to them at all.
| maury91 wrote:
| Thanks, I got the wrong reasoning, it's not that she
| might steal, it's that people that has never been poor
| don't think stealing is an option.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Yep, exactly! Because why would someone steal when they
| can just go on Amazon and have the thing delivered?
| maury91 wrote:
| I believe it depends on the value of the object and the
| chances of getting caught. If you steal a macbook in an
| office full of cameras is a bad deal. If you steal a
| macbook every other day in an office without any camera
| is a good deal.
|
| And the second option is exactly what happened in an
| office I worked on, at some point enough people
| complained that their macbook was stolen and they
| installed cameras.
|
| Funny thing in the same office my lunch was stolen once a
| week and that just became a joke during stand-ups "did
| they stole your lunch today?"
| bzzzt wrote:
| Didn't anyone bother to set up the MacBook activation
| locks? Or did people steal MacBooks anyway just to throw
| them away later when they turn out to be unusable?
| maury91 wrote:
| > Didn't anyone bother to set up the MacBook activation
| locks?
|
| The macbooks were handled by the IT department, everyone
| was just using them, so I don't know if such a function
| was enabled, the only security measures I know there were
| are remote login and disk encryption.
|
| I don't know what the person that stole the macbooks did
| with them, but because he/she stole more than one I
| believe he/she was able to make a profit
| beforeolives wrote:
| This is different from being poor in the financial sense. It goes
| deep into the poor mindset and pscyhology and how it can stick
| around even after you're doing okay. My parents are working
| class, I'm an immigrant and I had a minimum wage job for a few
| years - I've never felt any of the things listed in this article,
| before or after I was doing okay financially, in or outside of
| tech.
| Viker wrote:
| Coz Scandinavia or Canada....
| michaelscott wrote:
| Absolutely this. My wife and I both grew up very poor and even
| though we've worked up to being relatively well off in
| adulthood, we both still have a mindset in certain contexts
| that's very similar to this article.
|
| It's very scavenger-like and I suppose we may lose it if we
| manage to stay well off long enough, but it definitely colours
| our decision making even in little things. Being poor
| definitely stretches beyond the literally financial.
| redisman wrote:
| I checked off the majority of the points the author mentioned
| but I never felt bad or alienated for it. Money can buy you
| things, most of them are a dumb waste. Why should I feel bad?
| They're the idiots blowing their paychecks on trendy useless
| things.
|
| I'm also an immigrant and have never seen such salaries in my
| life outside of executives so I'm just riding the gravy train.
| Again, I feel extremely lucky and great to be a part of it. Not
| beating myself up over having a bigger delta from my childhood
| than some of my coworkers. Isn't that the American dream? I
| would also add that getting McDonalds was the summit of
| culinary experiences a few times a year when I was growing up.
| I'm sure people here would find that funny but I'm proud of my
| life and my background.
|
| I do use an Uber for social calls as it buys me easily 2 hours
| of my life back as public transport kinda sucks
| casey77 wrote:
| Read it again and replace poor with sane.
| budabudimir wrote:
| It does say something, one someone can become so overweight and
| being considered poor at the same time.
| apatheticonion wrote:
| Grew up poor in New Zealand. Parents moved there when I was 2 and
| struggled with being first generation immigrants.
|
| After years of under-employment, government assistance and
| scraping by, I lied my way into my first tech job and learned on
| the job.
|
| I hid the fact that I got one off government assistance for the
| new clothes I wore on the first day. The gravity of someone
| buying me a coffee struck me to my core.
|
| It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before to be
| guaranteed ~$500usd per week, every week. Living with 0 hour
| contracts, if you said the wrong thing you risked you next week's
| roster. Work on that level is fraught with petty politics and it
| really messes with your sense of identity to need to suck up to
| get by.
|
| Dealing with the government assistance office was demeaning.
| ~$100usd per week and you had to be in the office twice a week,
| attending the seminars and talking to your caseworker. With
| minimum wage at the time being ~$7 an hour, full time employment
| a dream due to labour laws favouring casual/0 hour contracts,
| employment was seldom worth it.
|
| It comes to a point of true apathey. I remember thinking "oh my
| bank account is 2k overdrawn, haha funny".
|
| I started to become politically aware when I got that first job.
| I, for some reason, thought people were more progressive. I was
| shocked when I heard my boss and colleagues complaining about
| taxes going to lazy people taking advantage of the system. I know
| the people they are talking about, and it's not like that at all
| but it's so outside my colleagues' bubble of understanding.
|
| As others have stated, it's not "developing nation poor" and I
| was given more social mobility than my family living in my
| country of origin - but it's not an easy thing to live through
| and my mother is still living like that today (though I help now)
|
| I can't appreciate enough the opportunities software engineering
| has opened for me. I am reminded that I didn't have a cushy
| upbringing from the little things that separate me from my
| colleagues.
|
| In some ways I am nostalgic for the times I was cold in my crappy
| damp house, burning treated offcuts from the local lumber mill
| giving off toxic fumes. I had so much drive to make it out, I
| started a new money making scheme every second week. One time I
| got access to a printer and made a bunch of flyers offering
| converting VHS tapes to DVDs. Another time I went to retirement
| villages and helped people set up Skype. I worked for a retail
| store (like best buy) and started selling my own "home computer
| installation service" to customers, billed outside of the company
| - I then started offering other staff cash to sell it too (which
| got me fired).
|
| This song really resonated with me when I was struggling
| https://youtu.be/8AjgWyxJAGQ?t=28
|
| ...that and literally any angsty song
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| This one made me wonder:
|
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| had gotten married younger than any of my coworkers.
|
| Do I understand correctly it means they got married in order to
| lower the cost of life rather than wait for the person they would
| truly love?
| caddemon wrote:
| That may be a factor, but getting married later is also just
| correlated with a higher level of education. It's very rare for
| someone that goes to college to get married before graduation.
| But in poorer areas it is not uncommon to see people marry
| shortly after high school.
| fmajid wrote:
| Reminds me of John Scalzi's masterful _Being Poor_ (written as a
| rejoinder to those who were asking why the poor in New Orleans
| didn 't just up and leave when Hurricane Katrina arrived):
|
| https://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/
| Invictus0 wrote:
| The author credits Scalzi as inspiration at the bottom of the
| blogpost.
| fmajid wrote:
| Yes, I just saw it now (I hadn't finished reading through
| when I posted my comment).
| [deleted]
| tomp wrote:
| It's interesting how differently her generalizations are received
| on HN, vs. Paul Graham's, even though her's are (IMO) much more
| extreme.
|
| I won't be the same as her, though, and say that _all_ poor
| people complain and that _all_ poor people steal. I 'm just gonna
| say, _she 's_ a negative, immoral person.
| avancemos wrote:
| Instead of seeing the bright side of life, in which this person
| clearly vastly improved their situation in life, all they can see
| is what they don't have.
|
| "I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| had the only fat body in the building."
|
| I'm sorry, but no, being poor doesn't make you fat. Your eating
| choices make you fat. Poor people have agency too. Agency is not
| something you buy. This is coming from someone who probably makes
| half of what you make in a year.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| It's normal and cool actually that we can take something that
| affects a MAJORITY of Americans and is tightly correlated to
| poverty and make it a matter of individual responsibility and
| moral weakness.
| Aunche wrote:
| It only counts as moral weakness if you're blaming your own
| obesity on somebody other than yourself. Most people people
| who are fat are quite happy with eating a bunch of junk food,
| so they just have different priorities.
|
| If you have have access to $1 frozen veggie bags, $2/lb
| chicken thighs, and assortment of different legumes, you have
| it better food options than the majority of the world. You
| can certainly achieve a healthy diet if you really want to.
| emteycz wrote:
| It is correlated, not caused by poverty. Rich people are
| often fat too, and the reason is poor education (not even
| rich people schools teach this) and poor self-control.
| Jochim wrote:
| Your environment and mood affects self-control. Stress is a
| huge factor and poverty typically increases levels of
| stress.
| muglug wrote:
| It's not just food education. If you're poor in the US
| you're much less likely to live near a source of fresh meat
| and produce, which makes calorie-rich fast food more
| tempting. You're more at the mercy of many multi-billion-
| dollar industries that serve unhealthy food to the masses.
| jjdin14 wrote:
| "Less likely", "more at the mercy", it still comes down
| to the individuals choices, it's not that hard to not be
| obese when poor.
| MattRix wrote:
| "it's not that hard to not be obese when poor."
|
| The statistics make it quite clear that it is hard, maybe
| your assumptions are wrong.
| emteycz wrote:
| If we're talking about the obesity rate, statistics make
| it clear that _it 's easy to be_ obese when poor, not
| that it's _not_ easy to _not_ be obese for the poor.
|
| Or are you talking about statistics that asked if poor
| people tried to not be overweight but couldn't do it? If
| so, could you please send link to that - as I'm not aware
| of any such large-scale study and quick search didn't
| reveal anything significant?
| username90 wrote:
| Or your assumption wrong. Here is a reasonable
| explanation: People are poor since they got bad self
| control, which also makes them fat. People who lack self
| control are easily tempted with shitty fast food, so
| their areas mostly serves it rather than real food
| creating these "food deserts".
|
| If there was demand for food in those areas people would
| sell it, but there isn't.
|
| Edit: A strong piece of evidence is that people aren't
| getting poorer, but they sure are getting fatter.
| [deleted]
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| If it's not hard to avoid being overweight when poor, and
| most poor people are overweight... what is happening? Do
| you see the obvious conclusion here? Do you endorse it?
| username90 wrote:
| People are getting fatter and fatter. It is much worse
| now than 20 years ago, and even much much worse than 40
| years ago. Any explanation you can come up with needs to
| be able to explain this as well. Does poor people have
| worse access to food today? Do they have less money for
| food today?
|
| If we put poor people in the same conditions they had 40
| years ago they would be slimmer than rich people today.
| istjohn wrote:
| _Over the past 30 years, grocery store prices have risen
| 4.5 percent above economy-wide prices, indicating that
| food has become relatively more expensive than some other
| consumer goods... Real prices for fresh fruits and
| vegetables grew the most among all major food categories,
| increasing just over 40 percent... Over the same time
| period, real prices for fats and oils, sugar and sweets,
| and nonalcoholic beverages grew less than overall
| inflation._
|
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2015/july/growth-in-
| inf...
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| Yes I know where you stand on this, I don't need more
| information about your opinion.
|
| I asked if you see the conclusion of this view, and if
| you endorse it.
|
| To be very very clear it goes like this: if poor are fat
| because they make bad choices and for no other reasons,
| then you can reasonably conclude that that is also why
| they are poor. That they deserve to be poor for that
| reason.
|
| Is that a fair summary of your view?
| emteycz wrote:
| > That they deserve to be poor for that reason.
|
| Where are they saying that? This entire conversation has
| no relevance to what one deserves. Causality is not
| changed by one deserving something.
| isoskeles wrote:
| That's not a fair summary of anyone's view, and you know
| it.
| kungito wrote:
| I'm from a developing country where these things are
| affordable and less wealthy people spend money on
| cigarettes rather than salads. Here it definitely isn't
| about money but about having proper food culture
| istjohn wrote:
| When you have a hard life and can't afford comparatively
| costly luxuries like a vacation or air conditioning, you
| find cheaper pleasures.
| Applejinx wrote:
| There's an opportunity cost and a time cost (and an
| attention cost) to making food properly and eating right.
|
| Opportunity: if your area cannot give you produce (raw
| materials to cook with) that's pretty direct. Time: I'm
| fortunate enough that I can blow at least an hour a day
| just cutting up meat for stir-fry or preparing my omelet
| and oatmeal, and a lot of this is really time-optimized
| but it's still way more than the microwave-box lifestyle.
| That hour (at least, and distributed among all my meals
| for the day) is also an attention sink that I can't skip,
| even though I make the same stuff over and over. If I
| couldn't do that, I'd have to not only be getting
| different foodstuffs, but also figuring out different
| recipes every time I got bored.
|
| You can let corporate America do that stuff for you and
| just pick different enticing boxes of microwaveable
| stuff, but you will get bombed with combinations of sugar
| and salt because competing in the supermarket aisle is
| serious business and those who fail are lost. They'd be
| putting fentanyl in the Hot Pockets if they dared.
| Anything to make the sale, it's that or perish.
|
| Then, that's what you eat, if you're poor and can't spend
| hours doing it yourself and doing it right. And if you're
| poor enough... the selection at Cumberland Farms is going
| to be strictly kept to whatever the other poor people in
| your neighborhood are addicted to, because that's what
| will sell.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > poor in the US
|
| That's it. There's a huge difference between US and many
| other countries
|
| It also compounds with the social/cultural context of a
| living in a city full of very wealthy people.
| npwr wrote:
| As someone who does not live in the US, it is often discussed
| in my social circles. To us, it appears that this cultural
| propaganda is a political necessity to stay far from
| communism. The cultural conception of the extent of the free-
| will impacts notably justice (individual responsability vs.
| psy impact of the environment) and wealth redistribution
| (welfare vs. meritocracy).
|
| The conception that most of the bad things that happen to an
| individual is because of poor choices makes perpetuating
| inequalities easier. Notably thoses that stem from free
| market capitalism.
|
| In France we have a strong cultural awareness of our
| low/inexsitent free-will. This translates readily into state
| welfare.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| Yes this is exactly my understanding as well, from inside
| the US.
| teachingassist wrote:
| Food insecurity is an aspect of poverty and is not uncommon in
| the United States.
|
| "Your eating choices" as a poor person might be to eat what and
| when and where you can afford to.
| fmajid wrote:
| Eating choices are not really choices (or Hobson's choices)
| when you have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet and
| have no time left for food prep.
| username90 wrote:
| Why could people manage to stay slim 20 years ago but not
| today? It isn't like the poor are more insecure now than back
| then.
| teachingassist wrote:
| The last 20 years has probably made (much) less difference
| than you appear to think.
|
| From Wikipedia: "The rate of increase in the incidence of
| obesity began to slow in the 2000s".
|
| But, to attempt to answer your question: e.g., the
| expectation that both adults in a household will work means
| that people/parents are more likely to be time-poor and not
| able to cook. Cooking skills have been lost.
| watwut wrote:
| > Instead of seeing the bright side of life, in which this
| person clearly vastly improved their situation in life, all
| they can see is what they don't have.
|
| First, I dont think this accurately describes the list at all.
| Second, it is ok for people to express negative feelings or
| observations. Forced positivity is toxic.
| jgtrosh wrote:
| Obesity is significantly correlated with lower income. However,
| in an individual case it is not sufficient to draw conclusions.
|
| Edit: also you seem to present the author's formulation as
| meaning that they believe poverty caused them to be fat. As far
| as I can tell she is merely pointing out a series of
| correlations to both prove that she, in fact, stood out as
| poor, and to show how this distinction affected her
| furthermore. Btw I'd say the only actively harmful behaviour
| from the company she pointed out was making her suggest a
| salary rather than them making an offering.
| leoc wrote:
| It seems that much of Chapter 6 of _Wigan Pier_ is still pretty
| relevant: http://www.george-
| orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Ah we posted this at almost the same time :)
|
| I'm glad I didn't read that book when I was still "poor",
| it's so relatable and hits hard. I recommend it for anyone
| kind of wondering (he's not exactly kind to the working
| class, but he does try hard to understand it all and does
| have insight).
| istjohn wrote:
| _Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome
| things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like
| the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel
| and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is
| that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a
| thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live
| on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is
| this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you
| feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy
| breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an
| unemployed man doesn 't. Here the tendency of which I spoke
| at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are
| unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed,
| bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome
| food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is
| always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have
| three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-
| cream! Put the kettle on and we'll all have a nice cup of
| tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C.
| level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don't nourish you
| to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think
| so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water.
| Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be
| constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the English-
| man's opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better
| as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread._
| leoc wrote:
| Yes, but before that excerpt Orwell pointed out that the
| financial margins involved in eating healthily on the
| minimum income were much narrower than the "why don't they
| just" contingent knew or admitted. That doesn't carry over
| to the contemporary US as self-evidently as the
| psychological point does, but I suspect that it does carry
| over somewhat.
|
| I do encourage anyone who hasn't already to read the whole
| chapter http://www.george-
| orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html : it's not really
| very long though I felt that the relevant parts were a bit
| too long, all together, to fit in a comment.
| est31 wrote:
| There are food deserts in the USA, where you literally can't
| buy high quality food like vegetables in a large area, and have
| to resort to only eating the highly processed and highly
| unhealthy food. These food deserts usually are located in the
| poorer neighbourhoods.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
| Kharvok wrote:
| Food deserts mostly myth. I'm looking for the study in my
| notes but there is only a very slight difference in diets
| between tax brackets.
| gadders wrote:
| Then eat less of it?
| ratww wrote:
| Eating healthy is not just about eating less, it's also
| about eating the right things.
|
| If eating was just about quantity then nobody would eat
| salads, there would be no Keto diet, and nobody would
| complain about McDonalds.
| gadders wrote:
| Calories In/Calories Out is 90% of it. You're better off
| being relatively slim on junk food than being fat on good
| quality good.
| teachingassist wrote:
| > You're better off being relatively slim on junk food
| than being fat on good quality good.
|
| This has consistently proved false.
|
| Being 'underweight' is associated with significant excess
| death; being 'overweight' is associated with a lower
| death rate than 'normal' BMI:
|
| e.g. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-
| abstract/20073... (many other sources are available)
| gadders wrote:
| I said "relatively slim". I actually meant by that a bit
| of a tummy, but not morbidly obese. I'm not recommending
| six packs for all. God knows I don't have one.
|
| Also, being "overweight" could be for a variety of
| reasons, including excess muscle. I'd be interested to
| see mortality correlated with % body fat.
| albedoa wrote:
| Can you help me reconcile the apparent contradiction
| between the title and the results? Title:
|
| > Excess Deaths Associated With [...] Overweight
|
| Results:
|
| > Overweight was not associated with excess mortality
| (-86 094 deaths; 95% CI, -161 223 to -10 966).
| teachingassist wrote:
| I'd translate this title into non-academic English as:
|
| "Are excess deaths associated with being overweight?"
| (The result is: no - or actually yes, but negatively).
| proxyon wrote:
| > Being 'underweight' is associated with significant
| excess death; being 'overweight' is associated with a
| lower death rate than 'normal' BMI:
|
| This is nonsense. In many medical deaths such as cancer
| (and especially since euthanasia isn't available) the
| person dies by slowly withering away. One of the first
| things that happens is that they become skinny and frail.
| That doesn't associate underweightedness with mortality.
| It intentionally draws a false correlation.
| teachingassist wrote:
| This criticism is apparently quite reasonable. You can
| also observe that being underweight is correlated with
| smoking.
|
| [Edited to add: this article explicitly considers the
| link to cancer, and rejects it, https://bmcpublichealth.b
| iomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1... ]
|
| However, it doesn't explain why being 'overweight' BMI
| consistently proves to be protective against death,
| despite it being so stigmatised that it affects quality
| of medical care.
| proxyon wrote:
| > However, it doesn't explain why being 'overweight' BMI
| consistently proves to be protective against death
|
| I don't see how the "protective of death" conclusion is
| able to be maintained when it was determined by comparing
| the mortality of overweight people to frail and dying old
| people and cancer patients. The reality is that it's the
| opposite. It's well known that being overweight damages
| the organs and makes a person more susceptible to dozens
| of diseases.
| istjohn wrote:
| But junk food is less filling and satiating than real
| food and much more dense calorically. You can eat lettuce
| all day and never consume the number of calories in a
| fast food burger.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Which supermarket chains in the US do not provide vegetables,
| fruit, meat and only offer processed food? Please find us a
| 'food desert' where there are no supermarkets nearby.
|
| This is a myth that's easily refuted. There's an argument to
| be made that poorer people aren't educated on healthy food
| choices but the idea that they don't have access to anything
| but processed food is just silly.
| monoideism wrote:
| Food deserts are a big problem. Most of the urban food
| deserts developed after major riots burned down existing
| grocery stores in the late 60s (and then again in the 80s in
| LA).
|
| New food deserts now exist in Minneapolis (and likely other
| cities as well) after the recent rioting and burning there:
|
| https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-longfellow-
| neighborh...
|
| https://www.marketplace.org/2020/06/04/neighborhoods-
| where-s...
|
| Ironically, in the most recent riots, many - perhaps most -
| of the destructive rioters were middle-class "activist" kids
| who don't have to live with the results of their actions.
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| TIL, thank you!
| hacker_newz wrote:
| If you think this person "clearly vastly improved their
| situation in life" you may need to read the article again.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Are you suggesting that she chose to be employed at a start
| up and is actively choosing to stay there because it's a
| worse situation than she had before?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Everyone replying is saying various things about how it's not
| the poors fault that they've been taken advantage of and have
| crappy food options and that's why they're fat.
|
| They might be right about the bad food options but what these
| people don't get is that if you're poor you have a lot of
| bigger more time pressing, more tractable problems to solve
| than being fat. Most of these people would still be fat if they
| had more ready access to "good" food because good food wouldn't
| magically make being fat jump to the top of their priority
| list.
|
| When you have little money you can very easily justify skipping
| lunch everyday or something like that. Skipping breakfast or
| lunch, having a very minimal meal for the one you don't skip
| (think PB&J, maybe with a fruit cup if you're feeling like a
| high roller) and then having your big meal at dinner so that
| your hunger is focused on the parts of the day when you're
| working and distracted and you go to sleep full is a very,
| very, tractable form of dieting and cost cutting rolled into
| one.
|
| But if you have enough money to indulge in food/beer then why
| not do it, it's about the only luxury you can afford.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| wow never thought about it like that thanks im cured
| benatkin wrote:
| Thinking about it like that (my eating choices) is actually
| how I lost 15 pounds once, haha.
|
| I gained it back.
| DigitalSea wrote:
| There are quite a few papers out there on the subject. As
| someone who has studied a little bit of sociology, I can tell
| you there are numerous sociological factors which basically
| determine that wealthier people have access to better food,
| better medical care and live healthier lives in comparison to
| lower-socioeconomic people. Where you live alone determines
| your health equity, if you live in a remote area or small town
| away from a large city, your access to fresh and non-processed
| foods is heavily reduced.
|
| This is a great paper I suggest you read:
| https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/29/1/29/433380 -- this
| is a good starting point, there are others spanning back the
| last three decades or so.
|
| It is also worth noting that it's not necessarily how much
| money you have that is the contributing factor, it can be other
| factors. The lack of green areas or pathways to walk/exercise
| (especially prevalent in remote Australian communities), the
| number of hospitals or doctors close by. But, ultimately, lack
| of health services and fresh food are correlated to obesity
| both of which are determined by your location which, in turn,
| is determined by your financial status.
| kardianos wrote:
| > if you live in a remote area or small town away from a
| large city, your access to fresh and non-processed foods is
| heavily reduced.
|
| Do you really think this? I know the sticks. You apparently
| don't. You can live off potatoes, eggs, and oatmeal and not
| be fat. Those are available anywhere.
|
| There is a "poor" culture, there is an "elite" culture, and
| then there is a "responsibility" culture. I grew up
| financially poor in a manufactured home in the sticks, but my
| culture of my parents was that of "responsibility". Know the
| difference.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| "The Road to Wigan Pier" had a great bit about this, which
| hits the nail on the head based on my experience being
| working class:
|
| _The basis of their diet, therefore, is white bread and
| margarine, corned beef, sugared tea and potatoes--an
| appalling diet. Would it not be better if they spent more
| money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread
| or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New
| Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it
| would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is
| ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being
| would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw
| carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money
| you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on
| wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off
| orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn
| 't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the
| last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed,
| which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored and
| miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You
| want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some
| cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three
| pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream!
| Put the kettle on and we'll all have a nice cup of tea!
| That is how your mind works when you are at the PAC level.
| White bread-and-marg. and sugared tea don't nourish you to
| any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think
| so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water.
| Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be
| constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the
| Englishman's opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much
| better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown
| bread._
|
| So yeah quite irrational, but it is comforting.
| devchix wrote:
| Not irrational at all. I've often wondered at some
| ascetic values of the very rich: cold showers, building a
| cabin with your own hands, short duration of rough
| wilderness living, and in your quoted case, abstemious
| diet. Humanity spent generations trying to escape those
| conditions, poor people will never willingly engage in
| them. Is it because the rest of rich people's lives are
| elevated away from those conditions, so it's a choice to
| embrace it, and thereby redefining the thing's perceived
| values?
|
| Yet another data point on why the poor are playing the
| lottery, eating crisps and not virtuously buying and
| cooking rice and lentil, there's a game-theory-ish idea
| that the poor understands that as much hard work and
| lentil they could shovel, they stand little chance of
| getting out. So with the money they have they buy the
| best value thing possible, discounted for future
| possibilities; and those best value things are junk food,
| lottery tickets, sometimes expensive (relative to their
| circumstance) and flashy things like clothes or phones.
| Aunche wrote:
| >The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live
| on brown bread and raw carrots.
|
| The only people who think that have a very privileged
| upbringing. My SO worked in an archaeological site in
| central Asia, and the vast majority of the hosts meals
| were just raw onions and stale flatbread.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "if you live in a remote area or small town away from a large
| city, your access to fresh and non-processed foods is heavily
| reduced."
|
| This simply isn't true. Most food deserts are in the poorer
| areas of the cities because nobody is bringing fresh produce
| in there to sell. If you live in the country or small town,
| many of these places have farm stands, farmers markets, and
| local farmers providing seasonal produce to the local stores.
|
| Not to mention, lower density housing generally means that
| there is enough land to have a veggie garden, depending on
| the specific circumstances.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| >ost food deserts are in the poorer areas of the cities
| because nobody is bringing fresh produce in there to sell.
|
| Talking about things that simply aren't true.... Every
| major city in the US has a large farmer's market present
| and typically more than one happening in neighborhoods all
| over the city. These cities also have free/cheap public
| transportation to get people to the farmer's market.
| Additionally, you don't need a farmer's market to obtain
| healthy food, supermarkets are just fine.
|
| The is just trope along the same lines of black people
| can't get their own ID's or figure out the internet. It's
| an incredibly racist way of thinking. They're not stupid or
| incapable people. If they want to they can certainly obtain
| healthy food.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "The is just trope along the same lines of black people
| can't get their own ID's or figure out the internet. It's
| an incredibly racist way of thinking."
|
| I never said black people. That's your own bias talking.
|
| I agree that people _can_ travel to a supermarket (and
| that supermarkets have healthy food). It 's much more
| difficult to take a weekly trip for a family's needs in
| public transportation as opposed to loading up a car.
| More frequent trips tend to incur higher opportunity cost
| due to the commute times.
|
| IDs are a completely different matter. The need for those
| trips are about once every 4-6 years and generally lower
| expense too.
| [deleted]
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Rural areas being chock full of farmers markets is mostly
| nostalgia, anyone I know who lives in the country is far
| more likely to shop exclusively at Walmart than anyone in
| the city, and likely to prefer more non-perishable food
| (i.e. processed) because daily or multiple times a week
| shopping trips are infeasible.
|
| The farms in rural areas are generally focused on growing a
| single thing (either one type of livestock, or all corn,
| etc.), entirely for wholesale, farmers markets are a
| distraction for most of them, outside of smaller farms that
| are more of a lifestyle / hobby thing a lot of the time.
|
| Farm stands sometimes exist, but they're an exception
| rather than the rule in most places, and unless you're in
| an area known for growing fruit or something like that (and
| primarily selling to tourists driving by) it'll be one-off
| things like sweet corn in season or eggs.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| You're both kind of right here. The farmers market stuff
| is mostly BS.
|
| In the rural areas the weekly/biweekly shopping routine
| involves everyone (rich and poor alike) dragging their
| butts to the one strip mall in a 1-2hr radius and that
| strip mall will have at the bare minimum a super-walmart
| with a good fresh produce section or a Walmart with a
| grocery store beside it because that's the place where
| rich middle and poor from the entire area shop and it
| needs to cater to them all in order to get them to drag
| their butts there and do business. The poor will buy less
| and fill in the gaps with Dollar General food (which is
| bad food at a bad price).
|
| The poor urban areas which can't economically support
| supermarkets and who's residents can't economically
| justify traveling the range they'd need to travel to get
| to those supermarkets (because the run down not always
| running cars that underpin the transportation of the
| rural poor are not as economically viable in cities) so
| they're stuck buying food at CVS, the bodega or whatever
| convenience store is accessible.
|
| If you draw the food desert line at "no Whole Foods and
| no farmers market" then they both suck. But if you zoom
| in on the area below that the rural areas have a slight
| edge.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Why are farmers markets BS?
|
| "If you draw the food desert line at "no Whole Foods and
| no farmers market""
|
| I don't think anyone is claiming that.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| The idea that farmers markets are commonplace in rural
| areas is mostly BS. They exist in cities for sure, but
| you pretty much need an urban population (and probably a
| fairly well-off population) to really support a farmers
| market.
|
| Just because farms exist in an area doesn't generally
| mean the people in that area are getting their food from
| those farmers (at least directly). That's mostly a relic
| of an old vision of farms that grew every type of produce
| and had a variety of livestock instead of the corporate
| monoculture farms that dominate today.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Sure, the truly rural people aren't going to farmers
| markets, but the people in small towns and suburban areas
| do (this is in contrast to the "big city" in the original
| comment). Most rural people use a store for most stuff
| and then go to farm stores/stands/neighbors for other
| things.
|
| There are still farms that produce a variety of produce.
| Many of them only produce them as a small percentage of
| their operation. For example, the dairy farm down the
| road plants sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, watermelon,
| cantaloupe, and (not food, but) manure. I know of several
| other farms that do similar things.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "because daily or multiple times a week shopping trips
| are infeasible."
|
| Do they not have a refrigerator? Once per week trips
| (maybe even less) were the norm for me growing up, and I
| had plenty of fresh fruits and veggies.
|
| I've lived in multiple rural areas. Yes, many people do
| get food from Walmart. I can see some of the more remote
| people preferring some processed food. I can also see
| those remote people growing and processing their own
| (canning, like I do). Many people use frozen veggies,
| which I don't consider processed and are nearly as good
| as fresh. Most of the "fresh" stuff you see is actually
| months old due to the way the supply chain works. It
| arguably loses as much or more nutritional value than the
| frozen stuff. This situation is completely different from
| the actual food deserts you get in the city. The rural
| people have the option to buy fresh but may choose not
| to. These people living in food deserts in the city don't
| have the option of fresh produce in the stores they go
| to. They generally don't have space to grow their own
| either. This lack of choice is the big issue.
|
| Every area I've lived in has had farm stands and farmers
| markets. It has also had local stores that contract with
| local farmers for seasonal produce. Individual
| vendors/farmers do tend to have limited selection by
| focusing on one or two crops. But there are usually
| multiple farmers focusing on different things (and
| coordinating through the local grange). Yes, the majority
| of farms are monoculture soy or corn. These other farms
| are usually 90% that but maybe 10% other crops, like
| pumpkin, corn, watermelon, tomato, cantaloupe, onion,
| potato, honey, hops, etc. There are also CSAs that you
| can join for a variety of produce, including meat and
| dairy. My parents live in an area where the local dairy
| still has delivery service - that's right a good old
| fashioned milk man.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| > Do they not have a refrigerator? Once per week trips
| (maybe even less) were the norm for me growing up, and I
| had plenty of fresh fruits and veggies.
|
| Yeah, I think we're agreeing - I'm saying that going to
| the grocery store once a week or less is probably going
| to result in purchasing a smaller percentage of fresh
| produce (certainly not none, but for meats in particular
| any less than once a week is starting to get sketchy in
| terms of keeping things fresh when refridgerated.)
|
| CSAs for sure exist, but I see way more usage of them in
| urban areas. You're certainly not prevented from using
| them in rural areas (although delivery might not be
| available and pickup might be far less convienent than it
| would be in an urban environment).
|
| This might be a function of where we're from, but in the
| countryside here hobby side farms by actual farmers are
| relatively rare and usually aren't producing enough to be
| considered much more than an in-season treat. I've never
| heard of milk delivery still being a thing (despite
| knowing a bunch of people living on farms), so I suspect
| you just have a different regional experience.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I grew up in a rural area and I think I can count on 1 hand
| how many times I saw a farm stand. People do not shop at
| farm stands and farmers markets in rural areas that often.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I'm in a very small town right now and it's a reasonable
| driving distance from farms. It looks to me like the
| average farm stand is simply some clever person buying
| crates of produce at the wholesaler.
|
| No shortage of healthy food at the local grocery stores
| of course.
|
| I expect that people who wave their arms about 'food
| deserts' could probably stand to visit either small towns
| or urban areas and form an opinion based on actual
| experience.
| giantg2 wrote:
| What area do you live in? I've had the opposite
| experience in a few states.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Being poor doesn't make you fat per se, but if you look at most
| stats, higher social levels(whatever that means in each
| country) usually means less obesity. When I worked in
| construction, most people were eating an absolute crap and were
| often overweight. Then I joined a professional services company
| and I literally walked into an office of 50 or so people, where
| everybody was slim and most people ate pretty healthy, home
| made food.
|
| There are lots of factors why that's the case,but to say it's
| not happening like this wouldn't be right either.
| istjohn wrote:
| This is true in a superficial sense. But healthy food is
| generally more expensive than junk food. Gym memberships,
| exercize equipment, personal trainers, and outdoor recreation
| costs time and money. It's hard to prioritize self-care when
| you're struggling with the day-to-day stresses of poverty, like
| how do I get to work after my car broke down for the third time
| this month. Poverty is stressful and stress-eating is a thing.
|
| Sure, there is no law of physics that makes poor people
| overweight, but it is much easier to have a thin waistline when
| you have a fat bank account. And indeed we observe that in the
| US, poor people are heavier than wealthier people.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Am I the only one who realizes that this is a work of fiction.
| This is the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meg_Elison
| websitescenes wrote:
| Victim blaming is THE classic tactic used to ignore the very
| real situational plights of many, if not most, Americans.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Counterpoint: Playing the victim is THE classic tactic used
| to rationalize and excuse the behavior of many, if not most,
| Americans.
|
| (If you found this point incorrect, dumb, or worthless,
| consider that is how many people feel about the point I am
| replying to.)
| indymike wrote:
| > Instead of seeing the bright side of life, in which this
| person clearly vastly improved their situation in life, all
| they can see is what they don't have.
|
| I think there is a self-deprecating humor to the article, and I
| enjoyed it. Life in tech world is strange sometimes.
| darkerside wrote:
| This one was odd. And why didn't she "belong" to the gym? This
| woman has impostor syndrome on steroids.
| istjohn wrote:
| She states that she was made to feel unwelcome at the gym.
| htamas wrote:
| Exactly my thoughts. This person just wants to make herself
| feel good about victimizing herself. Justifying unhealthy
| behaviour and habits by being poor earlier in her life? Come
| on. Yes, some of her colleagues seem to be on the other
| extremes, but many of her examples are just ridicolous. Eg:
| adult soccer leagues are one of the cheapest activities I can
| think of, besides running (which is also done by "rich"
| people).
|
| I'm also coming from a poor family and area, and I also had a
| few revelations, but nothing like this. My very first of these
| experiences was at a company paid dinner, where the waiters
| rolled out a trolley of beverages next to our a table and went
| away for a couple of minutes. I joked to my colleagues at the
| table that we could just steal that trolley and nobody would
| notice it. Nobody laughed, of course and I realised that at
| that point in my life I could buy a truck of those beverages on
| my hourly wage. That was nearly 3 months into my career and I
| just moved on right away.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| I must say I was rather triggered by that statement. I'm 100%
| sure that at one point my earnings were much lower than hers
| and I wasn't "a fat body". I had a second hand road bike that
| consisted of many different parts and I loved that thing, I've
| put thousands of kilometers on that old frame. And guess what,
| I still use it to this day, even though I could buy a fancy new
| one.
|
| As a matter of fact, not having a lot of money only emphasizes
| the fact that your health is one of the things you _can_
| influence.
| MattRix wrote:
| Did you grow up poor, as she did? If not, then you are
| missing the important context of what it's like to grow up in
| a food scarce environment.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Did you grow up poor, as she did? If not, then you are
| missing the important context of what it's like to grow up
| in a food scarce environment.
|
| I did, poorer in fact. I only stopped being thin when I got
| a good salary.
|
| She's full of it[1].
|
| [1] 'It' being 'victim complex'.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| We never had much money, but we ate well. And I ate a lot,
| but I was also very active. Being active is free.
|
| I know this will upset people, but if poor people are fat,
| food is not scarce. The quality of food may be low, but low
| food quality does not make one fat, a surplus of calories
| does.
|
| To be absolutely clear, I know there is a strong
| correlation between socioeconomic status and obesity. It's
| much more complicated than "just eat less", many factors
| play into this. Including food IQ. It's much more easy to
| overeat on Cheetos than it is on potatoes and green beans.
| A persons social environment will have a big influence on
| how and what they eat, how much they will move, etc.
| MattRix wrote:
| Low quality food absolutely can make you fat because it
| makes it harder to eat properly. Unhealthy food isn't
| just "easier to overeat" but also messes with insulin to
| make you feel more hungry than you actually are.
| proxyon wrote:
| > Did you grow up poor, as she did? If not, then you are
| missing the important context of what it's like to grow up
| in a food scarce environment.
|
| Yes I did and I'm still not obese.
| MattRix wrote:
| Statistically it's much more likely that you are.
| proxyon wrote:
| Because statistically poor people who remain poor have
| poor impulse control, prioritize short term pleasure and
| make bad decisions. Like many people who escaped poverty,
| I am not poor because lacking these traits elevated me
| out of poverty.
| shannifin wrote:
| Being poor stinks (even more when you're constantly reminded of
| it), but it's not something to be ashamed of. Not sure exactly
| what I'd've done in such an environment but probably would've
| tried to learn what I could from others, and try to just be a
| friend. If learning I was poor would make them ashamed of me,
| then the real problem is being surrounded by judgmental a-holes
| all day, not really being poor. (And unfortunately there are
| judgmental a-holes in all walks of life, rich and poor.)
| hntroll1221 wrote:
| Embarrassing. My heart is supposed to break for you because
| nobody else wanted to eat your kind of Cheetos? One of the most
| materially fortunate people who ever lived, richer than pharaohs
| and emperors of the past, still finds some way to write this
| tedious thing about being poor... at a startup... probably in
| California. Could you at least go visit rural areas of Cambodia
| or Nepal or something to get some vague notion of what being poor
| is like? Hint: it means you can't buy anything because you don't
| have any money, and there's hardly any way to get any.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| This is every bit as cringe as PG's Fierce Nerds post. I think
| it's great both of them are working through some of the
| insecurities from their youth, but attempting to extrapolate
| their personal issues into some overarching social model is
| solipsistic naval gazing at its finest.
| jameson wrote:
| You should be proud of it because the fact that the poor and the
| rich are working at the same company tells you how successful you
| are
|
| Or at least that's how I interpreted. I did almost the same
| things you did. My coworker (many of which are now close friends)
| went to fancy universities, had no gap in education and from a
| economically stable family. I wasn't. But here I am, working side
| by side with folks from amazing school and exceptional employment
| backgrounds... I love it
| [deleted]
| Applejinx wrote:
| "Three paychecks is a month and a half of income (rent and two
| car payments by my fevered calculations, which never stop)"
|
| Pay attention to those last three words. This is very important.
| I've been on both sides too, and to me those words are like a
| slap in the face: stark reality.
|
| If you're poor enough (relative to the costs of your life) you
| are at a constant exhausting deficit because you CANNOT stop
| calculating and recalculating the mechanisms of your basic
| survival. Even if you're not juggling bills and having to gauge
| what will blow up worst, you're projecting worst-case scenarios
| and trying to plan against adverse situations, which will come up
| more often for you (example: old car problems)
|
| "which never stop"
|
| Consider those words seriously. You can improve the quality and
| performance of a person a great deal by allowing them to function
| as they 'normally' would, rather than in constant emergency mode.
| chucky_z wrote:
| I've been extremely lucky moving to the Bay Area to be someone
| who has not failed. I grew up poor. Today, I have enough money
| for rent and bills, I still think and worry about them. The
| endless what if's are a lifetime long curse, and there is no
| cure.
| lazide wrote:
| Mindfulness, treatment/therapy, etc. can go a really, really
| long way though. Speaking as someone who's been there.
|
| Investing in yourself is absolutely key. It's something most
| folks from our background have been taught to not even
| attempt. Not doing it just reinforces the cycle.
| [deleted]
| Applejinx wrote:
| No, it's that you don't have enough margin (possibly because
| your lifestyle expanded to keep pace with your resources?)
|
| My parents died. They'd been sitting on property and had
| never tried to 'featherbed' their kids' experience, so we all
| grew up THINKING total failure was an option. I survived
| until I was over 50, very much living constantly with less
| than $1000 in the bank and a roof over my head (one exception
| to the latter, but it didn't last long)
|
| I went, at a stroke, from that, to more than $100k in the
| bank (quite a bit has now been turned into equipment for my
| work, but not all)
|
| If you have enough money to go for a YEAR with everything
| else collapsed and gone to zero... as in, however lush or
| humble your lifestyle, you lose all means of income, but
| it'll taka a year for you to burn through all your money and
| have none left... and then you have not lost your normal
| income after all... that would probably shut off the 'what
| ifs'.
|
| It's a margin thing. You can continue to keep track, you can
| continue to fill out your checkbook and all that, but if your
| margin is roughly a year before you're in serious danger then
| you will probably not burn extra cycles worrying about your
| finances. And if you do, the therapy to straighten that out
| won't be super hard.
|
| I bet you 'enough money for rent and bills' means you can
| always pay them, not that you've got 12 times that amount
| socked away. I absolutely wouldn't have ever had that except
| that my parents literally died and left it to me. I don't
| design my life to squirrel away 12x more money than I will
| ever need. I think it's unhealthy, though obviously my folks
| did something of that nature to create the situation.
| throwawaybbq1 wrote:
| The last sentence struck a cord with me. Emergency-mode doesn't
| just have to do with money. Asking for constant status updates
| on projects has the same effect. I don't understand why some
| companies force this on employees/teams.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I noticed where the writer found out they were the lowest paid
| person.
|
| This is how the wealthy class really keep people from moving
| up. Your pay is forever tied to what you used to make. It's
| hard enough to break the circuit in your mind, it's near
| impossible to do so with your employer.
|
| At my current employer, they offered me a 10% paycut to convert
| from contract to FTE. I could not afford that, but I also can't
| afford to be out of work. I pushed back gently and eventually
| agreed to converting at the same rate. I knew other people in
| the same job were making at least $10k more.
|
| The next guy to convert, was able to negotiate harder and I
| believe he ended up with a higher rate, despite making less
| then me as a contractor. He used the knowledge of my pay (and
| my name) to negotiate, which I would never do to someone, since
| I started at the bottom. This impacted my relationship with my
| boss.
|
| The company did later give me a pay correction of about 5%,
| after 2 other team members quit for higher paying jobs. One of
| whom was making more then me and one who was probably making
| less.
| lazide wrote:
| Companies thrive (or die) off the difference between their
| costs and the amount they can get paid by customers.
|
| There are many unscrupulous bosses that will use underhanded
| tricks to convince people to take less pay to help widen that
| margin. In my experience it is ultimately self defeating and
| results in lower quality people staying. In the short term,
| it is amazing what people can be convinced to accept (been
| there when I was younger). It's also amazing what people can
| feel entitled too beyond the economics of a situation.
|
| I'm glad you've been making some inroads.
|
| Step 1 is fixing the 'I can't afford to be out of work' part
| - it puts you in an incredibly disadvantaged negotiating
| position. You're holding yourself hostage essentially.
|
| Sometimes this is purely psychological (been there).
| Everything is so stressful it's too overwhelming to look.
| It's worth figuring out a way to get the emotional space
| there, or you'll always be stuck.
|
| Sometimes it's already insufficient pay, in which case
| figuring out a way to interview for the higher paying job or
| get credentials for a better role is the best way forward.
| Sometimes partnerships with others to help save on costs (a
| classic traditional reason for marriage and cohabitation) can
| be really good for everyone.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I've had to change jobs in the past. A sudden job loss
| would be difficult; but I would have moved on if they
| hadn't given me the adjustment. I'm still getting offers
| that are similar to my new pay. Once I spun up my jobs
| network it takes awhile to spin back down.
|
| I'm not a hard negotiator and I frankly don't want to be. I
| prefer to give a little when I can, and I'll just move on
| if I feel I'm being abused. There are too many other
| opportunities to stick around where you don't feel
| appreciated.
| lazide wrote:
| I'm glad you're not actually that on the edge - I hope
| you believe it when push comes to shove and don't forget.
|
| In many cases, not feeling valued means you're not
| getting the value you could be - and that can literally
| be millions of dollars over a career difference.
| cryptica wrote:
| >> Your pay is forever tied to what you used to make.
|
| It's not just a psychological "avoid the subject" kind of
| trick. They literally refuse to give you raises no matter
| what. In my last job, I was likely the top developer in the
| company (the company had hundreds of millions of $ of runway
| just sitting there) and I was putting constant pressure on my
| boss for a raise and promotion for years (they even admitted
| that I was one of their top devs). Instead of trying to give
| me a good deal, the CTO snapped and threatened me with
| violence - The next day, I continued the discussion and was
| still pushing forward with my demands (threatening to quit)
| and they refused to give me anything at all. I had a nervous
| breakdown right there (first time ever in my entire career)
| and I ended up rage-quitting (it got to shouting and personal
| insults).
|
| The only reason I took things this far was because I thought
| the system would finally yield some rewards once I showed
| enough initiative and ambition (backed by years of hard work
| and delivering great results). It didn't.
|
| The system is completely rigged. It's an illusion that there
| is any kind of meritocracy. Once you really buy into all the
| "you control your own destiny" rhetoric and start to push
| yourself and others beyond the limits you thought you were
| capable of (when you start to impress people with your skills
| and ambition), you realize that it achieves nothing. It's all
| a big show.
|
| "It's all a big club, and you ain't in it" - George Carlin
| xenadu02 wrote:
| I only realized a bit later in my career: If you ask for
| more and they refuse then bail out. You can nearly always
| get a raise just by moving companies so find one that
| rewards your efforts. My current employer is the first
| place I have felt like my achievements were appreciated and
| the appreciation resulted in financial rewards. I barely
| had to ask, let alone beg or fight for it.
| pnutjam wrote:
| Yeah, nobody gives raises anymore. The only place ever
| got raises, they were tied to a union contract that just
| happened to benefit me (a non-member). Every other place
| would give bonuses or 1% "raises" that didn't cover the
| increased insurance costs. Pay scales were only used to
| hold down salary, "we can't bring you in at the top of
| the pay scale".
| lazide wrote:
| It sounds like you took a particularly closed off and
| insular view of the 'you control your own destiny' meaning.
|
| You left - you took control. You didn't take control early
| enough however it sounds like, and started interviewing and
| looking for better options before losing emotional control
| and exploding.
|
| You could have done that at any time. We often close off
| our own options and don't really look to pursue things due
| to perceived risk, lack of experience, etc.
|
| If you'd come in with a resignation letter, you might have
| walked out with a raise - and for sure either way had a
| better deal. If you're not willing to walk away, you're
| never really properly negotiating - you're asking for
| favors.
|
| The more you're able and willing to walk away, the more of
| a real negotiation it is.
|
| It can take decades to save up the capital necessary to be
| in this position. Some people have it by nature of who they
| were born from. It is what is is.
| nine_k wrote:
| If you push yourself beyond the bounds of the expected, one
| good thing happens. Other companies are more willing to
| hire you.
|
| Pay rises happened to me several times. Promotions within
| the same company, never. The way to step up, as on a proper
| stairway, is to also step forward.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Don't ever tell a new company how much you currently make.
| And if you're not looking for a new company, you're selling
| yourself short. Of course the current company isn't going to
| give much; why would they?
|
| Everyone here is talking about it like the company owes you
| something. They don't owe you anything. And it goes both
| ways: you don't owe them. So get out on the job market and
| get yourself what you're worth.
| pnutjam wrote:
| Company doesn't owe me, but needs to meet my expectations
| of they want me to stick around. I'm always surprised when
| companies can't understand their high turnover.
| gumby wrote:
| > The next guy to convert, was able to negotiate harder and I
| believe he ended up with a higher rate
|
| This is why salary negotiations are inherently unfair* (and
| salary info does get around even in companies that try to
| keep it secret -- if it's fair who cares if it gets around?)
|
| * unfair because of an asymmetry: a hiring manager with any
| experience will have a higher _n_ in negotiating hires than
| any employee will have negotiating their own comp. Also
| unfair because it pays for more for a skill not needed in
| most jobs (negotiating a feature in or out of a codebase is
| not the same thing). It _is_ fair when the job calls for it
| (e.g. CEO or a VP of Business Development)
| tasuki wrote:
| In many places around the world, poor people don't have "old
| car problems".
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think people wildly over-estimate the costs of driving an
| older (say 5-15 years old) car and so are prone to over-pay
| for a new or newer car, believing they're making a good
| choice based on flawed data. (They remember the time they had
| to dump $1200 into repairs into some old heap that isn't even
| shiny anymore. They don't remember that for the last 24
| months in a row, they saved $450 in payments, $200 in
| depreciation, $125 in insurance, and $20 in property/sales
| taxes each month. They could have a $1200 repair twice a year
| and still come out way ahead.)
|
| We drive older cars. I can think of 3 times in the last 25
| years where we've had car trouble that interrupted or
| hampered motoring (a failed battery, a failed clutch release
| bearing, and an electrical short). The battery is a 20 minute
| swap; the electrical short indeed sucked [because it required
| a tow home and took me most of a day to find where the short
| was]; the clutch release bearing left the car limpable and
| she was able to drive it home with quick instructions on how
| to start the car and drive it with third gear selected for
| the whole trip.
|
| On one hand, I'm happy that the market (read: people) wildly
| underprices used cars, because it makes for cheap motoring
| for us. On the other hand, it frustrates me that people's
| third largest expense category is higher than it has to be
| and many of them could improve their situation by better
| optimizing this category.
|
| tl;dr: If you want cheap[er] motoring, buy a 4-8 year old
| Toyota or Honda and drive it until it's 15-20 years old. Drop
| collision insurance as soon as you've saved enough from this
| strategy to replace the car. Add that savings to your
| snowball.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Thank you! The days of those stereotypical used cars that
| fall apart at 100,000 miles are pretty much over. A 10 year
| old economy car, maintained basically (not obsessively),
| will probably outlast your need for it.
|
| Yes, a 1980s turbo Porsche or 1990s M3 will eat $10K+ a
| year due to constantly breaking. Not nearly the same as a
| 2010 Toyota Matrix, which you can probably get for $5000
| and drive forever.
| [deleted]
| sdenton4 wrote:
| (Consider also: just not owning a car. Bikes and transit
| for the day to day and occasional outlays for wknds in the
| mountains is cheaper than owning any car.)
| TwiztidK wrote:
| Worth considering in many places (especially due to the
| additional hassle of having a car in some cities) but not
| viable in others, at least without considerable hardship.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| There are no universal solutions... Car ownership
| shouldn't be considered as the default option, either. I
| tend to think people overestimate the 'hardship' by not
| fully considering options to use money to overcome them.
| Also, daily cycling - even if not strenuous - has
| excellent health benefits.
|
| For example, you can get a really nice cargo bike for a
| fraction of the yearly savings of not owning a car, which
| will last for decades and solves the 'hardship' of
| handling groceries. This won't work in every case
| (recall, no universal solutions), but it significantly
| shifts the decision boundaries.
|
| My fleet consists of a 'fast' sporty bike, a folding bike
| (for day to day, connecting with transit, taking on train
| trips, etc), and an old xtra-cycle cargo bike. The bikes
| were built/bought 15, 5 and 12 years ago, respectively;
| basically free once amortized. And since I'm saving
| ~$5000/year by avoiding car ownership, I just try not to
| feel shy about using 'expensive' one off transit
| solutions when it's substantially more convenient.
| fzil wrote:
| That requires living in an expensive city, at least in
| North America.
| qq4 wrote:
| The savings of not having a car might make up for that. I
| definitely don't miss having one.
| buescher wrote:
| Your math is off - for TCO you should be counting financing
| costs, not the payment itself. You don't really get away
| from financing costs by buying cash, incidentally: then
| they become the opportunity cost of not having the cash
| invested.
|
| I think people wildly overestimate how much you can save by
| driving a used car. Used cars are frequently overpriced due
| to demand for lower up-front costs and lower payments.
| Edmunds' five-year TCO for a five-year-old Corolla LE is
| $27095, for a new one it's $26634.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The cashflow differences between buying an $8K car for
| cash and a $40K car with 20% down are the entire monthly
| payment [plus the required collision insurance], not just
| the interest charge portion.
|
| I'd wager that poor people are generally running their
| lives on a cashflow basis, not on an accrual basis. When
| I was a near-broke college student, that's how I thought.
|
| With regard to the savings of paying cash being offset by
| investment returns foregone, I also agree with that,
| which is _all the more reason_ to save the $32K as above.
| buescher wrote:
| Yes, that difference, as I pointed out, is one reason why
| sensible used cars are overpriced. (Another is the
| "market for lemons" effect)
|
| Now you're comparing a $40K new car to a $8K used car,
| which is not a reasonable comparison. Yes, used cars will
| save you some money, but they will generally cost you
| more money than driving a new Corolla or Civic. Poke
| around on Edmunds' TCO calculator. The problem with your
| argument is that you can save more and more money by
| imagining buying an even more expensive car to compare
| to. I mean, you could have bought an $80K car with 10%
| down, right? Now you saved $72K!!!
| sokoloff wrote:
| I took the average cost of a new car in 2020 or 2021.
| Make it a $28K new car instead of an $8K used car and
| you're still saving a ton of money even with a few
| repairs along the way.
|
| I know plenty of people who owe money other than a
| mortgage who are driving $50K+ cars/trucks and sometimes
| have more cars than drivers in the household (and both of
| those _blow my mind_ for people with non-mortgage debt).
| buescher wrote:
| Why not compare it to a car you scrounged for free? I
| mean, I'm not just arguing with you to win points. I
| _was_ you.
|
| By the way. there are other problems with your math:
| you're double-booking the cost of the payment and the
| depreciation of the car. Really, play around with a total
| cost of ownership calculator like Edmunds'. It will be
| enlightening.
|
| Let's look at the F-150, the most popular vehicle in
| America. For the regular cab XL 4WD trim level, a 2020
| model is $38K (close to your $40k) with a five-year TCO
| of about $44K. A 2015 model is $24K... with a five-year
| TCO of $41K. That's a difference in TCO of $50/month.
| Hey, if you can save $50/month, do it, but don't tell me
| you're saving thousands every year.
| sokoloff wrote:
| One problem with that calculator is that it "rings up"
| the depreciation after 5 years, in effect assuming you'd
| sell the car at that point. Much of the savings here are
| driven by keeping the functional car for 10+ years, not
| having to carry collision insurance on a car that's too
| expensive to write off, paying less in transaction costs
| and taxes, etc.
|
| It's not the calculator is "wrong" in answering the
| question it asks, but that it's asking the wrong thing.
| Very few people want to buy an 11 year old car, so buying
| a 6 year old car and selling it 5 years later and doing
| the same thing again is overly penalized vs buying a
| 6-year old and selling it 10-15 years later (for much
| less), but only doing that once instead of two or three
| times.
|
| > Why not compare it to a car you scrounged for free?
|
| Because I can't repeatably find a reliable car for free.
| I can repeatably find many reliable cars for $8K in any
| city in the US. We paid $7500 for our 2005 CR-V in 2011.
| It was in overall great condition with high miles
| (165K-ish). It now has 220K miles on it and rust will
| kill it long before miles do (New England road salt).
|
| Edit to add: I agree that my method above was double-
| counting depreciation. I should have stuck to cash items
| rather than including a non-cash item.
| buescher wrote:
| Yeah, if you want to take it out past 5 years, you can
| make your own estimates. You just won't have the benefit
| of Edmunds' data. You are right that you will save on
| transaction costs if you do not buy a newer car every
| five years. You're also a bit of a special case in that
| it seems you only put about 5,000 miles per year on a
| car. I'd estimate your TCO on that car to be about
| $2K/year, which is pretty frugal. It wouldn't make sense
| for you to buy a new car, because you'd be losing
| depreciation to age faster than you'd be wearing the car
| out. At 20 years, you'd have only 100,000 miles on a car
| that would be essentially fully depreciated.
|
| It is pretty tough, though, to get the cost of ownership
| on a car driven 15,000 miles/year below about
| $3,500/year. By comparison a new compact will be $5k to
| $6K per year in total cost of ownership. So if you are
| wondering why gold doubloons are not accumulating in the
| chests in your basement that much faster than they are
| for the guy who drives a new Honda Civic, that's why!
| Kye wrote:
| They also don't necessarily find themselves in places that
| are entirely car-dependent. You can't really get by without a
| car in most of the US, and it's by design. Even in big
| cities.
| machello13 wrote:
| Could you explain what point you're trying to make?
| StavrosK wrote:
| I guess they mean that in many places around the world,
| public transportation is more usable, so people don't need
| cars.
| faraaz98 wrote:
| or someone that's considered poor, can't afford one.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Those have "no car problems" that are objectively worse
| than "old car problems", since the (often disastrous)
| consequence of the later is throwing some of the former
| at you.
|
| Yes, there are some places where public transportation
| both exists, doesn't take most of your day, and is
| cheaper than cars. Those places must be great, but as a
| 3rd worlder I barely know them (it's not a huge problem
| for me, personally, it's just enraging).
| _underfl0w_ wrote:
| Easier to do in some places than others.
|
| Public transport is nonexistent in several places here in
| Texas for example - you have to have a car (or know
| someone who does) to get to your job in the first place.
| But commuting puts wear and tear on the car, especially
| if you can't find work particularly close to where you
| live.
| swader999 wrote:
| I read a book once on extreme early retirement that
| advised to pick your place of work and house so that they
| were within walking distance of each other and also
| walking distance to a grocery store. The quality of the
| work and even your income weren't as critical as this.
| The idea being the goal was to finish work as soon as
| possible in your life when investment income could take
| over. Live in a one room rental, have one plate, a pot
| and a fork. Be a Spartan. That was the gist of it. Retire
| in five to ten years. Was compelling on some levels but
| orders of magnitude more difficult when you consider
| trying to bring a spouse and family into this.
| pnutjam wrote:
| That's rich people advice. Poor people know that wages
| can vary so much from place to place.
| kelnos wrote:
| I would find that kind of Spartan life to be pretty bleak
| and depressing. Sure, some people would like it, but I
| expect most people would not.
| 2cb wrote:
| Or since this is tech we're talking about, just work from
| home then live where you want, no need to be stuck in a
| tiny apartment in a big city.
| tasuki wrote:
| That's true too, the point I wanted to make is that in
| many places, poor people can't afford any cars.
| machello13 wrote:
| That's what you literally said, but why bring it up?
| tasuki wrote:
| I'm just trying to put into perspective "poor people
| around the world" vs "poor people in the US". From my
| pov, if one can afford a car, it's a little rich to call
| oneself poor when compared to all the people who can't
| afford basic necessities. And no, a car isn't a basic
| necessity, not even in the US.
| kelnos wrote:
| In most places in the US, if you don't have a car, you
| can't get to your job. Or you can, but it involves a
| fragile set of bus transfers that take you 2 hours (when
| driving would take 30 minutes) each way, and if you miss
| a transfer (because the transfers don't actually line up
| with any reasonable schedule), you're late and risk
| getting fired. So instead you add a 30 minute buffer in
| the morning and waste even more of your time.
|
| Or you can walk 5 miles each way. Maybe it's good for
| your health (though the winters might be brutal where you
| live, and your route might not have sidewalks, and
| walking into work covered in sweat in the summer might
| not be allowed where you work), but that's pushing 2
| hours each way as well. Getting a bicycle would reduce
| the time requirement, but most streets in the US are
| pretty bike-hostile, and you still have the weather
| issues to contend with.
|
| Sure, technically a car is not "required" in that
| scenario, but people who are poor essentially have their
| time as one of their few precious assets. Saving 3-4
| hours a day on a commute could mean picking up another
| job[0] that helps reduce financial insecurity just a
| little bit, or allowing a parent to spend a little more
| time with their kids.
|
| I think people just really don't understand what it means
| to be poor. I have (fortunately) never experienced it,
| but have heard enough first-hand accounts to get the gist
| of it. _Everything_ is harder when you don 't have money.
| Everything.
|
| [0] And that's a whole other issue, that so many jobs
| don't pay a living wage, requiring someone to hold down
| more than one just to make ends meet.
| tasuki wrote:
| Agreed that everything is harder when one doesn't have
| money. Agreed that with kids, time is a lot more
| precious.
|
| But in general... walking 5 miles each way doesn't sound
| impossible? Back before the pandemic, I walked 6km each
| way to a social gathering every week. I often walk
| errands up to ~8km each way.
|
| Cycling... I used to cycle to work 12km each way year
| round, in temperatures as low as -10degC. Challenging?
| Yes (I didn't have especially fancy clothes and my hands
| were freezing). Impossible? No.
| berns wrote:
| Why aren't scooters more popular in the US? Does it have
| to do only with the weather?
| webmaven wrote:
| _> And no, a car isn 't a basic necessity, not even in
| the US._
|
| This varies considerably. There are many places in the US
| that are entirely car dependent (nothing within walking
| distance, and little to no public transportation).
| tasuki wrote:
| The really poor people can't afford cars.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| Coming from a country in constant economic crisis, thinking of
| what ifs all the time is the way of living, then moving to a
| 1st world country life suddenly enters easy mode, as you know
| problems in a 1st world country won't ever be as bad as what
| you used to know, and since you are used to having issues,
| budgeting and saving become easier.
|
| A lot of the things the author mentioned, I would also do, just
| because I don't see the point of wasting money if they are
| offered for free, and saying hello to the cleaning crew is just
| basic human decency, c'mon.
|
| Also, the paycheck stuff, anyone who has ever cared about money
| would throw a fit if the money is not in their account the next
| day, from what I gather all the author's coworkers never had an
| issue in their life.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Tl;dr Poor people (and racial and ethnic minorities, and women,
| and queer folk) are not dumb. They just have to turn their
| equal cognitive resources towards things other (and more
| fundamental to survival) than their magnum opus/business
| idea/etc. Those who overcome this are HIGHLY effective, but
| it's not fair that we ask it of them. That's not how an
| effective or efficient or just society runs, and we leave money
| on the table and room for any adversaries we might have to
| maneuver when we doom whole classes of people to constant,
| pervasive desperation.
| username90 wrote:
| No, the solution is to acknowledge that they are dumb and
| therefore focus resources with the assumption that they are
| dumb. USA assumes that poor people are smart, Europe assumes
| poor people are dumb. The European way is much better, and
| yes poor people in American are dumb, just like they are in
| Europe.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Europe assumes poor people are dumb.
|
| This is one of the many drawbacks of socialism, even the
| "socialism with Scandinavian characteristics" that everyone
| seems to be obsessed with lately in the U.S. It assumes
| government paper-pushers are the smartest people around
| with the highest I.Q. ever, and everyone else is just a
| dumb lightweight. It's all about that soft bigotry of low
| expectations.
| christkv wrote:
| This trope has to die. The Scandinavian countries are
| market economies with a social benefits and health care
| system not socialist countries.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Tell that to the Bernie bros.
| lawn wrote:
| What an absolutely dumb comment.
| username90 wrote:
| I agree, it is so much better to say things that sounds
| good but doesn't help anyone. What I said doesn't benefit
| me at all, but spouting platitudes would.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Yes. The author of the comment seems not the understand
| simple concepts like averages and normal distributions.
| Additionally, he/her seems to assume a causal
| relationship where if you're poor it is because you're
| dumb, and not the other way around, or even a mix of
| those two things.
|
| Yeah, on average, poor people score a few points low than
| the average for rich people. true. But this is not an
| absolute as the post's author seems to believe.
|
| It doesn't mean all poor people are dumb, or that you are
| automatically smarter than someone who is poorer than
| you. Picture mentally two bell curves with a lot of
| overlap and very long tails. Things are in reality way
| more nuanced than this dumb statement that poor == dumb.
|
| On the aggregate, it is a useful datapoint, it means that
| probably as a society, you should reserve some more
| resources for education in poorer neighborhoods.
| bluecalm wrote:
| The society would benefit the most from policies that
| encourage smart and successful people to have more
| children.
| jschwartzi wrote:
| I can think of at least one society that formed in the
| 1930's for which this was an absolute mandate! But I
| don't recall reading much about them past about 1945, so
| perhaps you should do some further research.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Yeah and welfare programs and heavy redistribution
| programs were tried by a society that caused several
| times more deaths and suffering than the one you
| mentioned over way longer period which we don't hear from
| anymore either. What kind of argument is that, seriously.
| artem247 wrote:
| Oh shit! Several times more? Maybe you should actually
| read some actual data about Soviet Union. Saying that
| Soviet Union caused more suffering over longer period of
| time than Nazi Germany is way off.
|
| And by the way - free healthcare and free higher
| education are actually very good things that worked like
| a charm.
|
| I hope you will not have children, also.
| sophacles wrote:
| So your intelligence is based on how much money your
| parents made? Your intrinsic ability to be educated is a
| function of someone else's wallet? Something seems off in
| this statement. I wish your parents had money, then your
| statement would probably be coherent!
| username90 wrote:
| No, intelligence is mostly inherited. If your biological
| parents were smart then you will almost surely be smart
| and vice versa. And smart people end to earn more money,
| so intelligence is indirectly correlated with parental
| wealth. But when you put kids from poor parents into rich
| households they will continue to do poorly. They do a bit
| better, but their biological parents still matters more.
|
| If it was easy to produce smart kids then we would
| already do it, since smart people are so much more
| valuable to society the small amounts it requires to add
| that extra value would be nothing. But no country has
| managed to do this so far, its just a slow climb that
| follows the same trend in every western society no matter
| what policies they implemented.
| arvinsim wrote:
| The best way to produce smart kids is for smart parents
| to produce offspring.
|
| Unfortunately, most smart and educated people are
| actually doing the opposite. That is, not having kids.
| 2cb wrote:
| > If your biological parents were smart then you will
| almost surely be smart and vice versa.
|
| Doesn't really work like that. IQ is heavily influenced
| by environmental factors.
| nashira wrote:
| This doesn't hold up to the smallest amount of rational
| thought. Is everyone from a poor country less
| intelligent? How about a poorer city, they are stupider?
| This sounds like an argument made by a lucky person who
| wants to attribute that luck to some personal
| superiority.
| yonaguska wrote:
| It's not uncommon for smart people to be poor. You can be
| intelligent and have intelligent parents that came from
| poor countries, maybe parents that experienced a
| debilitating traumatic experience keeping them from
| working, or mental illnesses that don't inhibit
| intelligence, but do inhibit basic survival.
| periya wrote:
| Intelligence is not completely due to genetics as you are
| suggesting and has to do more with socio-economic
| conditions. Read "guns germs and steel" for why human
| development through the ages has a lot do with just being
| at the right place at the right time.
| proxyon wrote:
| > Intelligence is not completely due to genetics as you
| are suggesting and has to do more with socio-economic
| conditions
|
| This goes against all of the scientific literature we
| have. Intelligence is determined by genetics. It can be
| artificially lowered via poor socio-economic conditions,
| but it mostly cannot be lifted by higher socio economic
| conditions. In laymans terms, a traumatic life can make a
| child who was otherwise going to be smart not so smart,
| but a good life cannot make a child who was going to be
| dumb intelligent. Socioeconomic conditions can lower the
| intelligence determined by genetics, they cannot improve
| intelligence determined by genetics.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > But when you put kids from poor parents into rich
| households they will continue to do poorly.
|
| Have you considered it's because being a poor child is
| itself a traumatic experience that isn't magically cured
| by being ripped away from family and put into an
| environment of material abundance?
| proxyon wrote:
| > Have you considered it's because being a poor child is
| itself a traumatic experience that isn't magically cured
| by being ripped away from family and put into an
| environment of material abundance?
|
| What you've said is unfalsifiable voodoo mumbo-jumbo.
| Even if someone proved you wrong here and started the
| experiment with the poor child at newborn level, which is
| what people do when these bad faith criticisms are
| lobbed, you'd just claim that the DNA of the baby
| inherited generational trauma, which is what people with
| your bad faith criticism resort to once the criticism is
| inevitably proven wrong.
| curi0sity wrote:
| > inherited generational trauma
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/disease/epigenetics.htm
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
| proxyon wrote:
| I don't see how this points at evidence of inter-
| generational trauma which to my knowledge is recognized
| as bullshit voodoo. Can you explain where it does so?
| StavrosK wrote:
| This comment cannot be saying what it seems to be saying,
| can you clarify what you mean? Maybe it was worded oddly.
| username90 wrote:
| First point: I live in Scandinavia. Poor people are just
| as dumb here as in USA, but we take better care of them.
| USA assumes that poor people should be able to take care
| of themselves, which doesn't work. Taking care of them
| doesn't make them smarter, but it makes their lives
| better which is the point.
| StavrosK wrote:
| That's not about smartness or dumbness, though. I don't
| think intelligence is correlated with poverty much, but
| poverty is additional difficulty, so they have to work
| harder for the same thing as someone who isn't poor.
| proxyon wrote:
| > I don't think intelligence is correlated with poverty
| much
|
| There is a perfect correlation between the two
| bumby wrote:
| Can you point me to a reference that gives a "perfect
| correlation" I.e. corr(IQ, poverty) = -1.0?
| username90 wrote:
| But that isn't an issue where I'm from. The lifestyle
| difference between people with degrees and working class
| is tiny since the wage gaps are so small, and then add
| all government aids paying for everything including
| school lunches, daycare, college, healthcare etc on top
| of that. But still people from working class households
| perform extremely poorly. Helping them isn't about making
| them smarter or unlocking new potential because that
| doesn't work, it is simply to make everyone live a decent
| life.
| unbalancedevh wrote:
| It still doesn't necessarily come down to intelligence.
| It could just as well be motivation, or laziness, or
| other social pressures.
| zepto wrote:
| > I don't think intelligence is correlated with poverty
| much
|
| This is contrary to the available science. IQ and
| earnings are strongly correlated.
| [deleted]
| rvense wrote:
| I'm also from Scandinavia and I just don't agree with
| you. What you're saying doesn't line up with my own
| experiences, nor with my understanding of the statistics.
|
| In general, it seems like you are attributing all
| academic performance to some innate "intelligence" in the
| singular. This is just a bad assumption. There are many
| factors behind how well you do in school, and most of
| them are quite obviously social. That doesn't mean that
| your parents academic performance doesn't influence your,
| but there's no basis for claiming that it's genetic. We
| can help people do better, and we have done so. Of
| course, what we're doing now isn't perfect, but that
| doesn't mean it's not worth it.
| domador wrote:
| Is this sarcasm?
| username90 wrote:
| No. I think that dumb people deserve good lives as well,
| having policies that only works for non dumb people is
| dumb.
| domador wrote:
| Hmm... I'd agree that policies should help everyone,
| including people who are "dumb"... but not that poor
| people are categorically dumb.
| username90 wrote:
| Not all poor people are dumb, but most are. And since we
| are talking about statistical level effects poor people
| being dumb will greatly influence them.
|
| So instead of asking "why are poor people fat, we should
| fix that!" you can also ask "why are dumb people fat, we
| should fix that!". The second gives a lot of different
| angles and can help find solutions the first question
| wont find.
| bumby wrote:
| Is it possible this is a multi-variate problem and there
| are other systemic variables that better explain the
| differences in income?
|
| It seems folly to boil something as complex and social as
| economics to a single input like IQ to draw such strong
| conclusions
| Applejinx wrote:
| OP here: more like, if people's resources are NOT equal (and
| people's abilities are not really fungible: you can have
| someone who's not that great but has a novel POV, or a
| helpful trait) then this tilts things harshly against them.
|
| You wind up with people who are not the brightest and
| greatest, burdened by massive cognitive overhead, hindered
| rather than groomed for success, and then as a society we
| turn around and look at the ones who were a bit better at
| stuff and point to their opulence and go 'look how MUCH
| better this person is!'
|
| People don't have to be equal for this to be a concern. It's
| a matter of whether you think society's best served by
| finding the most exceptional person and then having them rule
| everything. Even if you were able to do that, even if the
| person IS quite superior, they will never measure up to the
| bar society sets for them. They're good, but they're not
| nearly as good as their wealth would make it appear.
|
| And you look at poor people or people who are flat out
| failing at life. They're not good, but they're not NEARLY as
| not-good as their poverty would make it appear. You're seeing
| them at their worst, and it's a wasted resource on a colossal
| scale.
|
| So this is basically the argument for 'create UBI under
| capitalism and dominate the world through the proliferation
| of cool GDP you create out of all your small business
| people'. Basically, 'one Elon Musk is useless compared to ten
| thousand folks a tenth as good as him'. :)
| jhap wrote:
| I recommend the book Scarcity for anyone interested in
| learning more about the psychology behind this. It was
| written Mullainathan and Shafir, both stars in their
| respective fields.
| swader999 wrote:
| People don't give credit to luck enough imo.
| throwawaybbq1 wrote:
| Yes .. but.
|
| I had a great education/CV early in my career, and had the
| opportunity to interview at some of the top most companies
| prior to their IPO (some when they were tiny companies).
| Google, Facebook, Stripe and maybe 3 more that went on to
| be billion dollar exits. I screwed up every single time.
| Either I did not take the interview seriously, or took a
| more prestigious academic job compared to the start up
| opportunity. Talk about being in the right place, at the
| right time and still missing out. I have barely paid off a
| small fraction of my starter home (no longer in the Bay
| area). I really wonder if it is just luck or more complex
| than that. (Good) Luck got me the right opportunity,but it
| can't just be (Bad) luck that snatched away all those
| opportunities from materializing? Clear, I made extremely
| bad decisions, missed out on the greatest wealth creation
| event in history, and must live with this till my end.
|
| Edit. There is a rich-dad, poor-dad point I'd like to make.
| My parents were extremely bad with investments and not very
| educated. This made me chase the higher prestige academic
| jobs as opposed to the lucrative startups. Also, when my
| white friends (with moderately-rich parents) were buying
| houses at 5% down, I said they were crazy and I was paying
| off 5% interest education loans, saving up for a bigger
| down-payment, buying my car for cash, etc. My parents went
| through the days of 20% interest and never understood the
| power of leverage. They passed on risk-aversion to me. Even
| now, I understand the power of leverage, but am still
| scared to use it.
| bumby wrote:
| I like the phrase "Luck is when preparation meets
| opportunity". So when you say you made bad decisions,
| didn't take it seriously, etc. it sounds like you
| recognize your own culpability in creating bad "luck".
|
| There is something to be said for overcoming the inertia
| of the (bad) ideas we may have been raised with. Malcolm
| Gladwell wrote in _Outliers_ how wealthy parent raise
| their children to be more assertive. One of his examples
| was a "genius" child with a 195 IQ who couldn't reach
| his goal of a PhD because of the ingrained passivity his
| parent taught him, which caused him to accept limitations
| he was told without questioning. To that extent, if we
| can't overcome those bad ideas, we're creating bad luck
| for ourselves.
|
| And please don't take this as me piling on, because it's
| fairly clear from your post that you are still bothered
| by this. I imagine it's because you spend a lot of time
| imagining "what could have been", but to quote Theodore
| Roosevelt "comparison is the thief of joy". If you can
| get to a point where you're grateful for what you have
| rather than mulling over what you missed out on, you'll
| probably be happier for it. Genuinely wishing you the
| best of "luck" in the future.
| throwawaybbq1 wrote:
| Thanks for your kind words. I took it in a positive
| light, and appreciate your thoughts.
|
| I usually bottle it in, but wrote the above post as a
| release. I'm definitely luckier than a good fraction of
| the planet. I also truly believe that at some point, we
| really need to stop blaming our parents, and take
| ownership for our own actions. It is just really hard
| some days, to face up to the missed opportunities.
|
| Now that I have kids, I imagine advising myself as if I
| was advising my kids at some point in the future. That
| has really worked wonders. I'd advise my own kid to say
| c'est la vie, and move forward in life with optimism and
| confidence :)
| 2cb wrote:
| Agreed here. I quite openly will say I'm lucky to have an
| intense interest in computers and to develop enough skill
| with them to get a job in the high paying tech industry. I
| didn't choose what my passions, talents, or skills are
| after all.
|
| I'm always surprised that people tend to take exception to
| this, saying it's nothing to do with luck, I worked hard.
|
| That's also true. I did and still do work hard.
|
| But that doesn't invalidate the fact that I had zero
| control over the fact I happen to live in a society that
| relies upon, and therefore places a high value on, the area
| I happen to be skilled in. There's people with great talent
| in other areas that are very hard to make a living from.
|
| Much of where we end up in life is determined by luck and
| chance. That doesn't mean we're not also working for what
| we have. Just means there's multiple variables, life is
| unpredictable and isn't fully within our control, and if we
| happen to be highly talented at something society places
| great value on there's an element of luck at play.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Well-said.
|
| Can you blame the author for being overweight and not wanting
| to put up with feeling self-conscious at the gym? Being poor
| can push you to your limits even just trying to survive every
| day, not to mention be an effective worker, and being a good
| parent/spouse/partner/friend/family/etc to whoever is in your
| life. Doing 45 minutes of cardio while also feeling like an
| outsider is just not in the time or energy budget.
| elzbardico wrote:
| And when you worry about the possibility of someday not
| being able to afford food due to some extend unemployment
| episode, when you feel vulnerable any time you hear the
| word "recession" on the news, it is hard to convince your
| body not to eat as much as possible now, while food is
| abundant.
| tomp wrote:
| Women?
|
| You do realize that men are more often victims of violent
| attacks and murders than women? Many (most?) of us are always
| vigilant for signs of potential violence, particularly when
| surrounded by groups of seemingly violent and/or armed
| people.
| ljm wrote:
| I feel like I can relate to many of the things here. It reminds
| me of the few times I got into enough of a pickle that I needed
| an advance on my salary. Just a lot of chickens that came home to
| roost.
|
| At the same time, I recognise my own privilege in that I managed
| to escape that and get to a place of comfort, and also that there
| were other things I was fortunate to not experience.
|
| To that extent, I could tell by my reaction sometimes that me-
| with-success was the one speaking, and not me-with-empathy.
| est31 wrote:
| > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I
| was the only person who would say hello to the cleaning lady as
| she meekly made her rounds around us when we worked late.
| Everyone else had a long habit of ignoring anyone like her.
|
| That's IMO the worst behaviour of the rich listed in this
| article. I've heard stories that at Google, the non-engineering
| workers at campus may not socialize with engineers at all. What
| kind of society is this that Google is building? Aren't you even
| allowed to acknowledge someone else's humanity?
| tyrex2017 wrote:
| i found that one weird
|
| in my experience, there is no difference in how poor or rich
| people behave towards low-level staff.
|
| in general, my feeling is the rich are more friendly, but it
| may be less genuine
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| I only got into tech a bit over five years ago and that was
| the first time in my entire life I had been above the
| (demonically low) US poverty level.
|
| There is absolutely a difference in how rich and poor people
| treat poor service workers.
|
| It's not that poor people treat them better per se but it's
| different. Poor people can be cruel to each other because
| they are all suffering, crab in a bucket shit.
|
| Rich people mostly ignore poor people because visible poverty
| makes them uncomfortable so they look away. They hate
| themselves if they see our humanity so they try not to.
|
| I've been on both sides of this and am speaking from painful
| experience in both cases.
| pracer wrote:
| "Rich people mostly ignore poor people because visible
| poverty makes them uncomfortable so they look away. They
| hate themselves if they see our humanity so they try not
| to."
|
| It has to be amazing having such a simple world model. Or
| better yet, being able to know the deepest ideas and
| thoughts in other people's minds and to explain their
| behaviour.
|
| Going back to seriousness, and leaving sit-com cliches
| aside, do you have any solid evidence about this? and when
| you say rich, could you give a ballpark of the money they
| have to have to be considered rich? Because poor people in
| US would have better living conditions than in other
| countries in Europe, for example.
| [deleted]
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| No I'm not getting into this. I've done this so, so many
| times and there's no value for anyone.
|
| You, or someone else, will move the goalposts, or find
| some hyper specific counterexample and claim it disproves
| the entire thing. Or claim that the poor aren't poor
| enough, or someone else somewhere has it worse so their
| misery can't be real.
|
| It's based on my experiences and there's no bibliography
| for my life. I explained the experiences and why I think
| they're relevant. If it doesn't work for you then it
| doesn't.
|
| From experience in similar conversations I expect this to
| be taken as a refusal to argue in good faith. The thing
| is though I don't want to argue. I said what I said and I
| stand by it. I have nothing to add.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| My decades of experience have been that wealthy people would
| rather ignore people if they can possibly do so.
| varjag wrote:
| Poor people would too but it's one of the things they can't
| afford.
| SkipperCat wrote:
| I personally think its how your family and friends raised
| you. Some folks think people are object, some acknowledge
| their humanity.
| trabant00 wrote:
| That got my attention as well, but instead it made me think
| that maybe the author exaggerated a bit here and there.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| This is the status quo at almost every company.
| kungito wrote:
| Not saying hello is a bit extreme but I feel like often IT
| people just refrain from initiating conversation with people
| unrelated to their interests/work
| giantg2 wrote:
| Some of it is situational though. I only sometimes say hello. I
| also worked as a janitor before and have no problem with people
| not saying hello. The bigger issue is if they are ignoring you
| and messing up your work (getting in the way, ignoring you when
| you need to get their trashcan from their desk, being an
| excessive slob like I'm here to clean but you don't have to
| make my job harder just because you don't have to clean it up
| yourself).
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > I've heard stories that at Google, the non-engineering
| workers at campus may not socialize with engineers at all.
|
| Googler for many years here. I've never heard of this kind of
| thing. One of the most prolific and loved content creators on
| the internal meme board is in sales. The closest thing I've
| _ever_ heard like this in the entire valley is that at Apple
| they don 't pay for the lunch bill of non-engineers, so having
| premium lunch options can feel exclusive to engineers.
|
| One of the most widely praised decisions Google made during the
| pandemic was to continue to pay their vendor staff who maintain
| the buildings even though there was no work to be done. And
| they kept that promise (as far as I can tell) for the entire
| process even though the initial expectation was that WFH would
| last for a few months.
|
| My personal experience at Google has been that people do chat
| with vendor staff like custodial workers and kitchen staff.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Apple's campus cafeteria is not a free perk for anyone,
| including engineers.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Last time I was there (which was admittedly like six years
| ago) the person I was visiting said they got some stipend
| to be used at the cafeteria. Entirely possible I've
| misremembered.
| rkk3 wrote:
| How about earlier this month when corporate asked child care
| workers to come back to the office to take care of your kids
| and refused to re instate their transportation benefits?
|
| https://thehill.com/policy/technology/552403-google-
| childcar...
| TrackerFF wrote:
| As Homer said almost 3000 years ago, god likes to pair like
| with like.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I'm definitely not poor, and I've always greeted the cleaning
| staff.
|
| That's not a sign of being poor, it's a sign of not being an
| ass.
| [deleted]
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| There's another side of this which is that you and the
| janitor have very little common ground so while you can say
| hi to each other anything beyond the most basic small-talk is
| going to get very uncomfortable for both parties very fast.
|
| I'm not going to post my credentials on HN but I have it on
| good authority that these jobs suck enough without having to
| pretend to relate to your customer. Hello is fine but beyond
| that and the janitor probably has their shields up lest they
| say something stupid the same way a white collar professional
| would be very careful talking to Bill Gates.
| Haruiko wrote:
| I'm not following your argument.
|
| You share the same space. How distant are you with other
| people that you can't just say hi? Does it matter if you
| don't discuss politics after it?
|
| When i was a kid, i had to take the bus and i forgot my bus
| ticket (a pupil, on one bus stop, everyday, the same bus
| stop the same bus driver on a school route...) and he put a
| lot of energy into telling me off.
|
| A few days/weeks later i thought about it and i also
| thought about why i'm not greeting my bus driver when i
| enter. I started to say hi. I liked it. I liked saying hi
| to my bus driver.
|
| I forgot my bus ticket again. No issues no worries. there
| was mutual respect and that mutual respect came to
| acknowleding him.
|
| I like greeting my neigbhours as well. Somehow it makes a
| small connection between us.
|
| and yes i read the part with the shield: The first step is
| a hi. Every other step is easier not harder. Finding out
| their names, a little bit of talking about family and
| friends etc.
|
| If i would have worked close enough to Bill Gates i
| probably would have talked to him sooner or later. Why not?
| He is a human, not like Mark Zuckerburg.
| underdeserver wrote:
| The janitor knows that if he pisses you off in any way,
| you might complain and he would lose his job, which he
| probably can't afford to. Why risk it?
| Haruiko wrote:
| People are always quite open to me, never had the issue
| that they didn't take the risk.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| I say hi only and came from a fairly well-off family.
|
| Every additional complaints about my life or happenings
| in my life that I would have would be unrelatable to the
| maids and the drivers at our house and it might make them
| feel uncomfortable.
| Haruiko wrote:
| And have you thought about finding out who your maids and
| drivers are? Talking to them about their lives?
|
| No interest in learning who they are? What they like?
| When they have birthday?
|
| If you have a bad day, for whatever reason, you think
| they couldn't relate to having a bad day?
| acdha wrote:
| There's a strong correlation, however, which I think comes
| down to whether you have either done or know someone in that
| kind of job. People who ignore the staff may not be
| intentionally mean about it - it's just outside of their
| normal frame of reference and they haven't been introspective
| about that.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Shitty behaviour can be out of ignorance or carelessness,
| but for follks on the other side of it, thats not much
| better
| fatnoah wrote:
| >That's not a sign of being poor, it's a sign of not being an
| ass.
|
| Seriously, why wouldn't you talk to the janitor or anyone
| else? They're the reason you have a clean place to work. I
| never got the "nothing in common" routine either. They're
| people, with lives and families and wants and needs. Yeah,
| they're not spending their day banging their heads against
| their desks solving reference counting bugs, but they're
| working to support their lives as best they can.
| halfdan wrote:
| The startup I worked for had Spanish speaking cleaning staff.
| I even brushed up my Spanish to greet them - the smiles on
| their faces are with me to this day. It wasn't what I was
| going for but I'm happy that it had this effect.
| chefandy wrote:
| Socially dominant cultures' mistreatment of others is always
| more visible to the others. You're one data point. People on
| the other side of the divide have many more data points from
| which to judge.
|
| I worked in an Ivy League university while poor-- and
| continued doing so for quite some time. I assure you that
| treating people in lower socioeconomic classes either as
| invisible or a mildly concerning presence, depending on the
| context, and coming from a wealthy, white background is
| closely correlated. Many of the wealthier students, faculty,
| and professional staff treated the cleaners, landscapers,
| catering staff and cafeteria workers like furniture. _Of
| course, there were exceptions._
|
| I saw a similar juxtaposition in tech, though the ratio of
| wealthy to non-wealthy wasn't as extreme as it was in an
| elite university.
| mrweasel wrote:
| We have cleaning during work hours, so the idea that someone
| wouldn't talk to the cleaning staff is absurd to me. Why
| wouldn't I talk to someone who moves around the office for
| most of the day.
| darren_ wrote:
| > I've heard stories that at Google, the non-engineering
| workers at campus may not socialize with engineers at all. What
| kind of society is this that Google is building?
|
| This isn't true at all.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This isn't close to being true at all in my experience.
| Flow wrote:
| I once read a AskReddit about people who worked for extremely
| rich people.
|
| Many said that the old man and wife, who built the fortune,
| were nice humble people that understood that they are so lucky
| to have made it in life. Many comments also said that their
| children were absolute spoiled brats who were the exact
| opposite to humble.
| jasode wrote:
| _> What kind of society is this that Google is building? Aren't
| you even allowed to acknowledge someone else's humanity?_
|
| The social interaction dynamics that happens at the Google
| building is a reflection of society at large. As another
| example, I've worked at the offices of _charity institutions_
| where the higher level white collar workers ignore the cleaning
| people. The common theme is that _humans in general_ (and not
| Google employees specifically) like to stratify people.
|
| I recently flipped through a high school yearbook (these books
| were more popular before the era of Facebook) and noticed that
| the _cafeteria ladies_ were relegated to a _tiny group photo_.
| However, the teachers got individual portraits. So a public
| institution funded by taxpayer money implicitly stratified 2
| different types of workers. Each page of printing a hardcopy
| yearbook costs money and the food workers are not the same
| value to the yearbook staff. See the common pattern across
| humanity?
| Ekaros wrote:
| I would say that having individual pictures of teachers make
| sense as those are the people students have most personal
| contact with. Now the other administrative staff and
| cafeteria ladies should be at same level.
| Viker wrote:
| Well yes. That is exactly as society.
|
| We ignore the people that actually feed us (farmers), and
| instead we focus all our energy on the people that feed us
| bullshit (Elon M.).
| fnord77 wrote:
| I don't think that's rich vs. poor. I think that's sociopath
| vs. non-sociopath. Maybe she was the only non-sociopath at her
| company?
| NoGravitas wrote:
| The two are highly correlated.
| kubb wrote:
| This might be a learned defence mechanism against a general
| feeling of wearines with the state of the world. You might work
| a (relatively) well-paying job at a megacorp, but often you're
| confronted with colleagues that get promotions through what
| seems like bullshit projects, you see how useless your
| directors or even execs seem to be and how much cash they
| pocket, and you're forced to do some sham work yourself, maybe
| because whoever is leading your team wants to advance their
| career. So your everyday work experience is crap, and you have
| no agency over anything, and you feel miserable.
|
| Then you see the cleaning staff, and you're confronted with
| their reality, the fact that they have to do work that is both
| harder and potentially more useful than what you're doing but
| they don't get any of the benefits, and they get paid a
| fraction of what you do, and that just makes you feel even
| worse, like this entire system is somehow fundamentally broken,
| which makes you want to trow your ergonomic chair out of the
| unopenable glass window of your open space.
|
| So it's easier to just look away.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| I am shocked that more people dont acknowledge that the more
| you get paid the less "hard" the work you do is.
|
| Like there's an entire well known meme about rest and vest at
| Google. (Amazon and Netflix will bounce you though if rumors
| are true)
|
| It's been true my entire life that every bracket of pay raise
| increase i've gotten has had a commensurate decrease in the
| amount of physical labor and mental exhaustion i would
| suffer. Going from minimum wage to 30k+ was a breath of fresh
| air. Going pass 100k was realizing you were living in a coal
| mine where everyone smoked and the 30k just meant you got to
| take clean air breaks every now and then. Of course then you
| have the attendant desperation in the US of "falling down"
| back to the level you were before and knowing the life style
| you live now can not possibly be sustained in those
| positions.
|
| A simple mental exercise. When was the last time you had to
| ask permission to use the restroom at your place of
| employment?
|
| One serious issue i've seen with alot of tech workers is that
| they have NO IDEA whats it's like to ever work minimum wage.
| They went from middle class existence to college to a tech
| job making more money than most people ever will. The minimum
| wage worker and even middle wage worker existence is
| invisible and nonsensical to them.
| krysp wrote:
| This is probably a large part of it. The higher up the chain
| you go the more obvious it is - the system, the game,
| whatever you want to call it. Finally understanding what it
| means to sell your soul, and seeing that at least the janitor
| kept most of theirs.
| Aunche wrote:
| For me, and I suspect many others in tech, this has more to do
| with introversion than anything else. When I cleaned for a
| cafe, I just wanted to focus on my task on hand.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| There's probably a handful of other people who would say hello
| to the cleaning lady but don't feel comfortable doing it
| because they're in the same position as the author but realized
| nobody says hello to the cleaning lady and decided they'll just
| do what everyone else is doing in order to fit in.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > I've heard stories that at Google, the non-engineering
| workers at campus may not socialize with engineers at all.
|
| I worked at HQ as an engineer, and didn't notice any such
| thing.
|
| Most of the time I probably didn't say hi to cleaning staff,
| for the same reason I wouldn't say hi to most of the people I
| pass by in the office: because they weren't someone I knew. Of
| course this might vary depending on context, but I was treating
| them the same way I treated everyone else, or at least trying
| to.
|
| Do other people say hi to every single person you see in the
| building every day?
| grayclhn wrote:
| > Do other people say hi to every single person you see in
| the building every day?
|
| Yeah, pretty much.
| jpseawell wrote:
| Lol, idk if that's true? I've been poor working with poor
| people and we did not all say hello on a regular basis
| Haruiko wrote:
| I'm doing it, always have. A lot of other colleuges never
| do it.
|
| I would argue that this has just nothing to do with
| poor/rich or where you work.
|
| Perhaps its just random how your work environment or your
| collegues are.
| avh02 wrote:
| one thing that stood out to me when i was in Southampton
| in the UK was that every passenger on the bus would say
| some form of "thank you" on their way off the bus.
|
| So, sometimes, yeah.
| fatnoah wrote:
| >Yeah, pretty much.
|
| I generally say hi to everyone as well, especially if I've
| made eye contact. At the very least, some kind of
| acknowledgement.
| novok wrote:
| To be fair, large tech companies have a lot of people, most
| people don't talk to most people in tech companies, even if
| they are the same 'position'. Much like you don't talk to most
| random students as you walk around at large university as a
| student at the university. You talk to your classmates and
| professors and if circumstance permits, you talk to random
| stranger students sometimes.
| subpixel wrote:
| Oh ignoring the cleaning staff is utter kindness compared to
| what WeWork did: costumed them in outfits featuring slogans
| like "Do what you love" etc. while refusing them $10/hr pay.
| sidlls wrote:
| Modern livery: belittling and dehumanizing.
| gorpomon wrote:
| I'm sure there's nuance in these scenarios the author describes.
| But not every blog post has to be an objective evaluation.
|
| This post is accurate in that it chronicles their feelings, and
| feelings happen regardless of external factors, there's not a
| whole lot correctness one needs to ask for. I applaud the author
| for their bluntness in communicating how these interactions made
| them feel. No need for them to alter their tone to come across
| differently, it's their blog, not mine. I have to manage an
| international team of very diverse backgrounds. This post is a
| great reminder that even those small interactions can contribute
| to someone belonging. And I've noticed that belonging directly
| correlates to software velocity.
|
| To me the takeaway is not that any of other people in these
| scenarios needs to change or correct behavior, but that as a
| manager if you're aware of an employee coming from a different
| background, you should make efforts in 1:1's to ensure they're
| feeling like they belong. Also shame on their hiring manager for
| letting them come on at such a low salary compared to others.
| Where's that peron's sense of human solidarity? If someone comes
| on to my team in a role, they are paid commensurate with others.
| If I'm worried about their performance they come in at the role
| that we both agree is suitable, and at all times there's honesty
| and transparency in what we feel works. Any hiring manager or
| company trying to "get a deal" on an employee has no business
| managing.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| This hits very close to home.
|
| When I was starting out I didn't take the jobs in Boston or SF
| because I couldn't conceive of paying such high rents. I knew
| that if I stumbled and lost a job that I'd be stuck in an
| apartment that I couldn't afford. So I didn't go. I took the
| crappy jobs with crappy people in crappy towns while working on
| my own projects.
|
| Moved to NYC. Tried to meet with investors but had a hard time
| getting meetings because I wasn't in any of the networks. Not a
| soul was impressed. I made $180k in profit the year after
| launching my company. "Who cares? I could just raise money and
| crush you."
|
| Was injured and lost my company because I didn't have a safety
| net. Had to leave NYC for a few years while I rebuilt.
|
| When I was young my school and early jobs were the issue. Now
| that I'm in my mid-thirties the fact that I haven't been funded
| before is the issue. There's always going to be a reason to
| exclude you. Why bother?
|
| Today I just make companies that make money and I don't even
| think about investors or the startup "scene". I'm even leaving
| NYC (again) to move back to my "crappy" hometown.
|
| Being poor in tech means that there are no reinforcements coming
| to help you. It also might mean making it and realizing that you
| don't have any interest in the idea of "it" anymore.
| watwut wrote:
| > Gym membership was included in my benefits. I went half a dozen
| times before it was made crystal clear to me that I did not
| belong.
|
| I would be curious about this one. What did happened in the gym?
| Not really doubting, some people in gyms are quite unfriendly
| when you dont look fit. But I am still curious what happened
| there.
| cookieswumchorr wrote:
| in my experience at the gym, you don't need to communicate with
| anyone at all. you take the free equipment, you lift, you make
| sure to put everything in its place, you shower and go home.
| wtf?
| sidlls wrote:
| Direct communication isn't required to create a hostile
| environment. Sly looks, offhand remarks overheard while
| trying to do an exercise, etc.--they pile up. And poor people
| especially are conditioned to be mindful of this sort of
| thing. It's often dangerous (as in, an altercation that can
| become physical might occur) not to be when in public.
| protomyth wrote:
| I would imagine you got it right with the "get out of the gym
| if you are not already fit". It's amazing how badly people act
| towards people starting out on their fitness.
| sol_invictus wrote:
| Literally never seen this happen. 98% guarantee the stigma is
| in the obese person's own head more than anything.
|
| It's just easier to transfer the responsibility to "an
| unfriendly environment" than taking responsibility & control
| of your own feelings and actions
| nerdponx wrote:
| I think it varies a lot by gym.
|
| Ironically (for this thread), all the private rich-person
| gyms I've been to have mostly been populated by people who
| were not in good shape, and everybody was very friendly.
|
| But these were also "health clubs" in the old school sense,
| not a fancy gym like Equinox where I would never even set
| foot.
|
| Edit: I also have heard enough gym bullying stories to
| believe that it can and does happen, but it seems maybe
| only under circumstances that I have never been in.
| LucidLynx wrote:
| Literally seen this almost all the time at three different
| gym places...
|
| I went to the gym I was asked to come back "later" as "the
| gym is near full (50% full actually) and we prefer
| 'regulars' to come and train for something instead of...
| kind of you...".
|
| So, if I am like you - just seeing with my own eyes and not
| follow the feeling and facts from other persons - I would
| say that gym regulars are just full of s*** :)
| sol_invictus wrote:
| I've been a gym rat for 15 years and the regulars I know
| will champion hardest for the people attempting a change.
|
| Sorry you had foul experiences, but I'll stick to 2% of
| the people being in that bucket.
| bumby wrote:
| I've been working out regularly for 20+ years in a gym
| and have never seen it either. If anything, I've seen the
| opposite, the super-fit go out of their way to encourage
| those who are unfit or just starting because they know
| the difficulties. I've literally never even been given a
| weird look when asking if I can work in on equipment even
| with the most intimidating gym rats. And this includes me
| doing a number of gym faux pas early.
|
| I'm sure legitimate bad experiences do happen, but I also
| think a lot of perception is based on the stories we make
| up in our own heads.
| rasfincher wrote:
| I've never seen it happen in person either. As someone who
| used to be terrified of going to the gym because I didn't
| want to look like the new person at the gym, I can say for
| myself that it was all in my head.
|
| "..you will become way less concerned with what other
| people think of you when you realize how seldom they do." -
| David Foster Wallace
| protomyth wrote:
| Was in a gym that put signs on the wall admonishing people
| from commenting on those trying to get in shape. They were
| not getting the new members they wanted.
| MattRix wrote:
| It happens, despite you not seeing it.
| watwut wrote:
| I have seen adults being hostile to fat people. Both in
| face and behind back. I don't think stigma is in obese
| persons head. I was curious about what went on in that gym
| specifically.
| maury91 wrote:
| I don't know if is something about "small town" gyms. But in
| the gym I used to go when I was younger, the owner of the gym
| was also a global personal trainer, he will follow every person
| that joins the gym ( for free ), he will tell you what exercise
| do today and will follow you if the exercise is new or he
| notices you don't know how to do it properly, he will also help
| you with diet and everything in between. The other members of
| the gym were also very friendly and supportive, congratulating
| with you for every little advancement like "you look slimmer
| compared to a week ago"
|
| When I moved to London I was never able to found a gym with
| that environment.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I used to be a "gym rat" but the general "guy culture" at most
| gyms is thinly veiled bully behavior. I can not count the
| number of times I interrupted normal, buff, and outright fat
| guys giving less-than-babe-status women grief. I finally found
| myself getting prepared for anger when going to the gym, and
| after switching gyms a number of times I gave up and now work
| out in parks and at home, away from the public assholes that
| ruin it for all but the beautiful.
| o___ wrote:
| In college, we had the gym "where you goto show off." Gold's
| Gym was for the rest.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| The gym I went to had almost exclusively very fit people, who
| obviously exercised a lot.
|
| When I started out I was fairly overweight and completely out
| of shape, could barely do a couple of pushups, and I felt very
| uncomfortable and out of place.
|
| However the others just did their programs, and I never got any
| looks or comments. So after a while I managed to relax and just
| get on with my own stuff.
| js8 wrote:
| Just say no to the gym, go out to a nearby forest and exercise
| there. A friend of mine (who I used to go jogging with) did
| that. He always found a suitable tree branch and that's all he
| needed for pull-ups. All other exercises can be done in nature
| too. It's gonna be healthier and cheaper, I assure you.
| Haruiko wrote:
| I'm not rich but very comfortable and i always and always have
| greated and talked to cleaning people.
|
| and still i wouldn't have taken the headphones. Because thats
| stealing and my moral and ethics are not defined based on other
| people 'bad' behaviours.
|
| A lot of people around me are 'oblivous/busy with live' and that
| has nothing to do with what they earn.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because
| people kept bragging their bodily purity based on what they would
| not eat or drink, and I could only feel pity for them.
|
| Is it common to use "bragging" in this way?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Everyone blue collar is going to have about the majority of the
| same experiences of being out of place in tech or any other big
| money white collar industry that the author did. You could write
| the same thing about being the son of a plumber working at an
| investment bank.
| Kharvok wrote:
| Why is it always people in tech-adjacent roles that trot this
| out? This kind of reads like someone falsely attributing class as
| a barrier when actually it's their cognitive abilities compared
| to peers.
|
| It always seems like the majority of the writer's woes would be
| solved if they were themselves more competent at what they do.
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Because the current US corporate culture has decided to reward
| victimhood, therefore we get more of it. Simple as that.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Because when you're actually getting a tech sized paycheck it's
| much easier to justify keeping your head down and continuing to
| make easy money, you're compensated well enough for what you
| have to put up with you don't care.
| tester34 wrote:
| But why focus on those things?
|
| We're on news hacker out of all places, where I guess salaries
| range between 300$ month to $40k month easily
|
| Temporarily embarrassed millionaire is healthier way, delusional,
| but healtheir in my opinion
| remoquete wrote:
| I don't understand a word of what you're trying to say.
| MisterSandman wrote:
| It's a cryptography challenge by a new SF startup, I imagine.
| obventio56 wrote:
| The last part is referencing a Steinbeck quote:
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/328134-john-steinbeck-
| once-...
| istjohn wrote:
| It's good to recognize that there is a monoculture in tech and
| that not all of us fit into that monoculture. We should strive
| to be more inclusive, and we can only do that if those who are
| marginalized or alienated can speak out and be heard.
| jpseawell wrote:
| I'm from the Midwest/South and a lot of the author's behavior
| would be considered normal here regardless of income.
|
| Although I'm not sure if stealing the head phones was a good
| call? (Unless they had a policy stating they were fair game)
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| I'm not financially poor, but I live like a poor, as a habit.
| (bike, old clothes, I always buy the old/damaged fruits/vegs and
| often get them cheap or free
| dack wrote:
| If you're poor but also have tech skills and are in the bay area,
| I would recommend working at a public tech company for a while
| first - then you're no longer poor and can afford to work at a
| risky startup.
|
| That's all I could think about when reading this post.
|
| edit: Maybe the point of the post was not losing touch with
| reality or becoming an ass to people when you start making money
| (which I can agree with), but they also came off a bit self-
| righteous to me.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I wouldn't consider myself poor or having grown up poor. I
| identify with many of the points on this list. I make less than
| many of my coworkers and my career has stagnated. I sometimes
| wonder if it has to do with this cultural gap. It seems like it's
| usually the people with an expensive image that are the ones who
| get promoted. Meanwhile I'm doing basically anything to save
| money and trying to leave work on time so I can watch the kid
| while my wife goes to work in the evening.
| dack wrote:
| I won't say there's no bias (I'm sure it exists everywhere),
| but I think it's not an "expensive image" that gets you
| promoted as much as confidence.
|
| Many people who grew up rich have a natural confidence to them
| (because they are protected if they lose their job, have been
| told they'll be someone important one day, given lots of help
| in life), and that helps a lot in giving a vibe that you'll
| succeed.
|
| The great thing is that the confidence can be gained even if
| you didn't grow up in the same circumstances, it just takes
| more work.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I've gone the other direction. The company has screwed me
| over enough that I know life is shitty and all the stuff
| teachers and parents tell you growing up is a lie. The
| confidence didn't help me anyways (due to politics) as I'm 9
| years in and only a midlevel dev, even though I've worked in
| roles above my current one (senior dev, tech lead, ASC). Most
| of the people in the office talk about fancy expensive
| things. If you don't participate in that lifestyle, there's
| little connection.
| kstenerud wrote:
| The trick to being the only poor person is to not let on. Once
| people know, they exploit the hell out of you. They don't seem to
| do it consciously; somehow it just happens. I made that mistake a
| few times during my time in SF.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Also, I think that most people have some unconscious bias that
| associate your apparent wealth level as a proxy for your
| competence level.
|
| People inherently trust more the judgement of people they think
| are rich. If you avoid looking obviously poor, you'll find out
| that you'd be given better assignments, more freedom, that your
| mistakes won't be scrutinized as much.
|
| The day you find this out and act accordingly, it is like as if
| you were black and them suddenly find out you woke white one
| day. All the invisible barriers, the glass ceiling, are subtly
| not there anymore.
|
| Yes, like racism, classism sucks. But you have only one life,
| your time is short, and while we must fight to try to change
| things, you'd also better be smart and try to work around
| classism just by not giving obvious clues about you have ever
| been poor.
| domano wrote:
| How does this exploitation look like?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Underpaying but still making the other person happy because
| it's more than they earned before.
|
| Giving them the shit jobs, unpaid overtime, etc.
|
| Remarks behind the back about things like weight, eating
| habits, and being ashamed about things they take for granted.
|
| Having your existence denied completely (e.g. the cleaners
| mentioned)
| domano wrote:
| Interesting. Coming from a rather poor background (refugee)
| i was lucky enough to not experience this in tech.
|
| I do notice a disconnect in perspective and priorities
| though. Also i live in europe, where this is maybe a tad
| different.
| kstenerud wrote:
| I live in Europe now, and it's far less pronounced here.
| Americans seem much more status and class conscious.
| Grustaf wrote:
| I'd say the difference is that Americans are obsessed
| with money, and they think you need to flaunt it just
| because you have it. The idea of having a rusty old
| beater car, let alone bike to work, if you're rich just
| baffles them.
|
| Status and class here is much more subtle, you often
| can't tell from the way a person dresses (at least at
| first glance) and what he drives if he's a billionaire or
| secretary.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think the pay difference in Europe is much lower.
| There's also a ton of not quite poor, but certainly not
| rich people.
| marcinzm wrote:
| I'm guessing lower pay, larger workloads, etc. I'm not
| surprised that many managers/founders will exploit your fears
| to get more work out of you for less. Same way that those on
| an H1B get the short end of the stick.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Opposite happened for me. I find I'm more ambitious and a
| harder negotiator than most of the people I meet from middle
| class backgrounds.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| A lot of these things I don't consider signs of being poor but
| signs that you aren't throwing away your money. Sure you can be
| poor and frugal but I would bet a lot of those people are racking
| up tons of credit card debt because they are betting on their
| stock being worth something eventually.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because
| I made more there than I'd ever made before; a daring amount I
| had been afraid to ask for during the offer process. I discovered
| through misadventure that I still made less than any of the
| executive assistants, or the receptionist. I was, in fact, the
| lowest-paid person in the building including the interns. I
| hadn't known what was possible, so I couldn't even think to ask
| for what I was worth to them.
|
| A lot of these issues would probably have been fixed if they just
| earned market rate. It seems that they were very underpaid. It is
| unsurprising that they felt poor when they earned the least of
| anyone in the company.
| sidlls wrote:
| This person is writing from a lifetime of being poor, not being
| cash poor in-the-moment because of a salary.
|
| This article resonates strongly with me. I grew up poor, too,
| and even though I have a 7 figure net worth now one of the
| first things I consider for anything is the cost. I don't have
| to, but I still do. I eat the low rent snacks and I use the
| company's daily cafeteria allowance to eat a sensible lunch and
| then take the rest home to share with the family. Being poor in
| America isn't just about money--it's about the psychological
| barriers and oppression that are erected.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I grew up upper middle class and do the same thing. I know
| generationally wealthy people that do too.
| sidlls wrote:
| But you didn't and don't have to just to survive, and
| neither do those with generational wealth. The context
| certainly matters.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I thought your point was the psychology: you don't have
| to anymore but you still do.
| shoo wrote:
| harder to negotiate a good deal for yourself when you are
| operating at an information disadvantage (e.g. not having
| friends/family/former classmates as peers in industry to give
| insider advice), if you don't have good alternative to employer
| lowball offer, or you are in poorer negotiating position due to
| having fewer resources (cash, time, higher expenses due to not
| having enough cash & stability to secure cheaper long term
| accommodation, etc).
| mwcampbell wrote:
| I don't blame her for not negotiating a good deal; I blame
| the company for screwing her over.
| throwaway00127 wrote:
| So poor she claims to "skip on meals", but is simultaneously
| morbidly obese.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I was feeling sort of sorry, but the last sentence ruined it.
| darkerside wrote:
| They. I kept seeing the word "they", and wondering about it. Was
| it really every single person in the company that thought you
| were joking about your GED, or was it a handful that you told?
|
| Attributing the actions of a few individuals to an entire group
| is a quick way to engender feelings of alienation in yourself.
| Pro tip: don't do that.
| Kalium wrote:
| I think "they" is best understood as an indicator of the
| author's mindset. When you feel like an outsider, it's very
| easy to feel that the whole of the group is unified against
| you.
| WeedRamen wrote:
| Billionaire CEO of a startup? Are there many? I imagine most
| billionairses are running established companies. Including the
| fact the OP says she is in oakland and can commute there faster
| than the other employees who get in from other places, anyone
| care to take a guess at who the company is?
| eplanit wrote:
| What a tedious read.
|
| Note how the writer is simultaneously both a victim and a
| hero.... and everyone else is vapid and shallow.
| DethNinja wrote:
| How much of that experience is true in USA startup scene? I feel
| like this might be a special case for SF. Because here in Canada
| most of the people who work at tech aren't rich at all and they
| tend to be more nerdy than snobby. I guess fintech scene might be
| more classist though.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| None of it's reflective of my decade plus working in the bay
| area. I think I've met just a couple people like that. There
| are almost certainly social bubbles like that, though, but
| that's not the vast majority of us.
| oaiey wrote:
| This happens everywhere in the world. Also among more
| "normally" paid teams.
|
| Look out for it and you will realize. In my experience, there
| is always someone who has a very hard life (money or time) and
| you do not even realize but hurt them without bad intent.
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