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Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

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Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#91

Post by carc »

haberman wrote: post #77
namenotrequired wrote: post #63

Finally someone who talks about the consequences of economic inequality. PG seemed to think all that mattered is the causes.

It's frustrating, not a single critique I've seen of PG's essay (including this one) seem to understand what he is actually saying. This essay supports PG's point, it doesn't contradict it. PG's essay calls out "kids with no chance of reaching their potential" as "very bad" aspect of inequality in the fourth paragraph! What essay did you read?

Glad I'm not the only person who felt this frustration..

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#92

Post by mikestew »

haberman wrote: post #77
namenotrequired wrote: post #63

Finally someone who talks about the consequences of economic inequality. PG seemed to think all that mattered is the causes.

It's frustrating, not a single critique I've seen of PG's essay (including this one) seem to understand what he is actually saying. This essay supports PG's point, it doesn't contradict it. PG's essay calls out "kids with no chance of reaching their potential" as "very bad" aspect of inequality in the fourth paragraph! What essay did you read?

It's frustrating, not a single critique I've seen of PG's essay (including this one) seem to understand what he is actually saying.

It's time to start considering that either PG made his point poorly, or that maybe you're the one that didn't understand it. I don't know what other reasonable options there are.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#93

Post by axlprose »

sotojuan wrote: post #29
rezistik wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like that survey. The lower class is completely unrepresented in tech. It's been one of the weirdest and hardest things for me to handle personally.

I think low-income people who go into tech do not go into start ups. It's a risk. If you fail (very likely), you are back to being poor. I'm a student and notice that a lot of the other low income students and underrepresented groups (of which I am a part of) in my CS program go straight to "safe" jobs, usually enterprise stuff. Actually now that I think about it: I work in my university's IT department, helping out…

As a hispanic person, I always hate it when people see me as some poker chip that should be used to fulfill some arbitrary quota. We have preferences for where we want to work like everybody else, and our backgrounds/cultures definitely have an influence in that. Is it possible that maybe, perhaps these clean-cut trendy startups just aren't appealing to us?

Personally, I can't see myself working at most of these startups, but it has nothing to do with their constituency (I get along great with those 'white and asian' people!), it's just that usually their vision/direction or products are simply uninteresting to me, and I definitely prefer working at startups to big companies. For example, I would much rather work at a food-oriented startup, than another boring code/SaaS type startup, and I certainly wouldn't touch any fashion startups with a 20ft pole, just purely because of what I'm interested in, having grown up in a latino community. Unfortunately, the types of startups that I am interested in, aren't usually the ones that get all the buzz on techcrunch.

Either way, having 'equal opportunity' shouldn't force those of us with different cultural preferences to meet some arbitrary ideals for 'equal outcomes'.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#94

Post by DrScump »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #44
robgibbons wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously have no idea what it's like to grow up poor. The fear, the guilt, the frustration, and the exhaustion that you learn almost as if through sheer osmosis from your parents. The author is not arguing that you literally cannot compete if you're poor. But it's the very mindset from growing up in poverty that, through almost every interaction you have in childhood, leads you to _believe_ that you cannot compe…

Growing up without self-confidence isn't something that is only for poor people. It's a personality trait that people across all classes share. What about growing up ugly? Ugly people also suffer from lack of self-confidence, that the "good looking popular kids" are better than them. Everyone has their crosses to bear, whether it's race, wealth, weight, beauty, etc. It's not all poor people have no self-confidence, p…

Discrimination based on looks seems to be the last acceptable form of discrimination. Nobody seems to think that the fact that all 20 Academy Award acting nominees are well above the median in attractiveness constitutes any form of prejudice:

http://s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/onevive/staging/inter...

(and the same goes for most years)

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#95

Post by knowaveragejoe »

BurningFrog wrote: post #62

> No one teaches you the basics Room for a startup/free service that does that!

It's called the Internet. The problem is that people generally don't know what to search for, if they even know they should be learning more about some facet of modern life.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#96

Post by Domenic_S »

AlexWest wrote: post #78
TrevorJ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not ok to look at someone's gender, age & race and make assumptions about there life, full stop. Applying a term like 'privileged' to an entire group of people based on a single characteristic is stereotyping at it's worst. This isn't to say that trends don't exist, but it is not ok to assume something about an individual simply because it's true, as a general rule for the group they belong to. Like it or not,…

But that's really the whole point of privilege - belonging to the group is enough to grant you the advantages of it. Period. It doesn't mean your life is great, it doesn't mean you don't have problems, but the members of a privileged class absolutely possess those privileges - that's how it works.

I get it, but I don't buy it. Rather, I don't buy that it's so cut and dried as to be accepted with "period". When you're part of the largest demographic, you're basically invisible: Generic 30s Middle Class White Guy #87473674282.

The term just isn't nuanced enough.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#97

Post by rezistik »

dtran wrote: post #23
rezistik wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like that survey. The lower class is completely unrepresented in tech. It's been one of the weirdest and hardest things for me to handle personally.

Hey-- feel free to reach out if you need someone to talk to-- david@crowdbooster.com and ricky@crowdbooster.com

That's awesome, thank you!

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#98

Post by CamatHN »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #95
BurningFrog wrote: post #62

> No one teaches you the basics Room for a startup/free service that does that!

It's called the Internet. The problem is that people generally don't know what to search for, if they even know they should be learning more about some facet of modern life.

This is a ridiculous comment. Certain ways of behaviour, certain nuances, cannot accurately or reliably be picked up through reading online, only through interactions.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#99

Post by Terr_ »

robgibbons wrote: post #18
pfarnsworth wrote: post #9

This is a really poorly written post. Where exactly is the inequality in Silicon Valley? The OP got into Stanford, and then got an entire free ride something most people can't get. How exactly does this prove inequality? And then he got into YC. If anything this proves how equal things are in the Valley, if you're hardworking enough, there isn't anything you can't do, regardless of your social status. Sure, you have…

You obviously have no idea what it's like to grow up poor. The fear, the guilt, the frustration, and the exhaustion that you learn almost as if through sheer osmosis from your parents. The author is not arguing that you literally cannot compete if you're poor. But it's the very mindset from growing up in poverty that, through almost every interaction you have in childhood, leads you to _believe_ that you cannot compe…

IMO terms like "mindset" and especially "self-confidence" tends to understate the scope and pervasiveness of what's going on.

Even ignoring stuff like disease or nutrition, I'm willing to bet you could find population-level differences in all sorts of things like pre-conscious fight/flight response, stress hormone regulation, mental estimation of risk/impact, and all sorts of subtle weightings for social-standing and game-theory.

A whole suite of adaptations on the physiological, neurological, and social level, which may be very successful... for the environment the person grew up in.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#100

Post by jandrewrogers »

rezistik wrote: post #20
dtran wrote: post #3

Has anyone done a survey of the family socio-economic status of startup founders and early employees? I'd be curious to see how many founders/early employees are from low-income families, whether their parents graduated college, etc. If not, I'd love to create one.

I'd like that survey. The lower class is completely unrepresented in tech. It's been one of the weirdest and hardest things for me to handle personally.

I know a number of people from truly lower class backgrounds in tech including some that have built substantial startups. It isn't as though they wear a "lower class" badge so that they are easily identifiable. Nor do they generally talk their lower class background -- when has it ever been socially cool to literally be rural "trailer trash" in America? No one likes to identify as a low status member of society.

A lower class person can hide in plain sight in tech because everyone assumes that if you are in tech you are not lower class, and no one checks your papers at the door. One of the motivations for someone from the lower class going into tech is so that they aren't perceived as lower class. They sure as hell aren't going to draw attention to that fact.

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