Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley • Hacker News Board

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#221

Post by bbcbasic » Sat, Jan 23, 2016, 8:55 AM UTC

jtolmar wrote: post #217

bbcbasic wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am planning a transition from middle class to capital class, which will take 10-20 years and require investing in real estate. Real estate is a great investment (at least in Australia) because it allows you to get access to larger amounts of credit to purchase assets which will generally go up in value over time because of the policies of central banks to target inflation. In addition buying in the right location w…

I've heard that being too keen on real estate is a common pitfall for middle class investors. Between that and personal bias, I'm avoiding it (at least directly). My portfolio is primarily stocks, which I find surprisingly easy to work with. You just pick well-run companies in fields you understand, ignore financial news, and wait. I should be capable of living off interest in four years.

I am not sure about the reasoning for real estate being a pitfall. Can you elaborate?

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#222

Post by busterarm » Sat, Jan 23, 2016, 9:12 AM UTC

poof131 wrote: post #174

gozur88 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's a strong thread of meritocracy in the tech community, but there is no such thing. When you choose the clearly better developer over the other, you're often choosing the one who had better resources growing up, not just natural ability. You're using an overly restrictive definition of "merit". When you hire the best person for the job you're hiring based on merit. How they got there isn't really that importan…

So could we then say based upon your comment and the parent that a meritocracy is antagonistic to diversity. Not trying to be argumentative, just more of a thought exercise. If a meritocracy chooses the best, and the wealthiest tend to have the resources and opportunity to make themselves better, then always choosing based upon merit means favoring less diverse backgrounds. Additionally, we tend to always view oursel…

i've also had the thought of hiring purely for diversity, but I'm not and likely will not be in a position to hire someone.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#223

Post by akjetma » Sat, Jan 23, 2016, 9:12 AM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #220

zasz wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously saying that everyone's disadvantages are the same? Wow.

Easily. If someone comes from a rich family it's in a way harder for him to build a startup: he will not belong to the demographic of 90%+ potential users of any startup, and it will be hard for him to understand what they want and how to pitch it to them, same thing about employees - it will be hard to lead and motivate people not understanding what the people who need to work to pay their bills feel. This is my per…

A rich person can throw money at this problem or at least has the financial and temporal capacity to research it and gain an academic understanding. I know the conventional wisdom is to build something that you would use yourself, but towards the later stages of most b2b companies--especially ones that deal with enterprise customers--the customer is just as alien to anyone as poor people are to you. This is such a tiny issue compared to being poor.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#224

Post by sandstrom » Sat, Jan 23, 2016, 9:20 AM UTC

zasz wrote: post #215

um_ya wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the majority of people make the mistake of reflecting on themselves and saying "if only I had this", or "if only I wasn't disadvantaged in this way"... In reality, everyone is disadvantaged in some way, and I can guarantee you that the successful people had a lot of disadvantages and setbacks. You shouldn't dwindle on what you don't have, but rather on what you do have. Successful people don't wait for th…

Are you seriously saying that everyone's disadvantages are the same? Wow.

I think he's point is that there are also disadvantages of growing up under high income (of course it depends on parenting too). Too spoiled, cannot relate to ordinary people, etc.

I seem to remember that many entrepreneurs are born to upper middle class parents.

Not spoiled enough that they cannot work, but still fortunate to have a safe upbringing and be risk tolerant.

(I do agree with you that people are born with very different prospects depending (among other things) on parents social-economic status)

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#225

Post by busterarm » Sat, Jan 23, 2016, 9:20 AM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #80

WalterBright wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad returned from combat in WW2 where 80% of his group were casualties and he expected to die in combat. He said he was amused at the triviality of everyday concerns. "What's your problem, you're not going to die tomorrow!" And really, if you're able-bodied and able-minded and nobody is trying to kill/maim/imprison you, then life is good. I went to retrieve the mail this morning, and was greeted with a bright blue…

There are a lot of us out there with similar backgrounds, yet when you tell people that any day that you aren't being shot at, or blown up or starving is a good day, they look at you like you are crazy.

I had to learn to just not share things about my life with coworkers. It's very alienating though.

This is actually a bond that I find I have with many people I know who grew up here in New York and work with mostly transplants (I'm not bashing transplants...).

I know a lot of people across a wide class divide. I've done some interesting stuff and I've also been in scary/dangerous situations that seem normal to me. The times I've mentioned them I've seen people go wide-eyed and get very uncomfortable.

I really hate the fact that I feel like I'm walking on egg shells whenever I'm not talking exclusively about work with them.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#226

Post by frodik » Sat, Jan 23, 2016, 9:42 AM UTC

It is a good thing that privilege is becoming a topic in these circles. It's fascinating to see how many people still try to present it as looking for excuses. Perhaps because they just don't understand what it really is. Or they need to validate their success by convincing everyone that it is only their hard work that matters and nothing else. Also, beware of survival bias. We don't exactly get to hear about the stories without a happy end here.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#227

Post by jschwartzi » Sat, Jan 23, 2016, 9:53 AM UTC

danielvinson wrote: post #56

keithba wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is this: http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2010/05/the-anat...

"More than 90 percent of the entrepreneurs came from middle-class or upper-lower-class backgrounds" I'd like to offer a potential explanation of this: Middle and upper-lower-class individuals have the most to gain by doing things on their own. * An upper-lower-class or middle class child will not have the same burdens and problems as a lower-class individual as describes in this post. They likely have just enough of…

My mom works in education and my parents are divorced, so I bought a degree from a lower-tier state school with loans. I still had to list both parents on my FAFSA and couldn't qualify for any need-based anything.

Basically I ended up paying more for a less valuable piece of paper. Because my chosen school sucked it was really hard to find a job. I'm only where I'm at because I'm lucky, and I don't think many people in my situation would have had similar success.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#228

Post by nitrogen » Sat, Jan 23, 2016, 10:00 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #27

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.

You know what's weird and uncomfortable sometimes? Going to lunch with your co-workers and listening to them talk about the awful problems of their lives, like how they wish their maids could come twice a week instead of every two weeks, and how difficult it is that they have to pay [my salary * 0.5] for their kid's private school. How worried they are about things like the stock market and how high the property taxe…

they have to pay [my salary 0.5]*

Learn to do whatever it is they do, then ask for a raise to match. I say this because one of the bad habits I got from my own upbringing was constantly undervaluing myself, and doing exactly this has made a huge difference.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#229

Post by dba7dba » Sat, Jan 23, 2016, 10:06 AM UTC

This story really made me reflect on my own similar past. Growing up poor in US as son of immigrant family and somehow getting into a nationally well known college (public though), I was shocked to see things that I had never known about.

The shock came from seeing how I lacked culture/experience/skills/confidence others had. And these others had grown up in more stable environments with either some or quite a bit of money.

I didn't know how to play any instrument. I wouldn't say everyone I knew in college played an instrument since I wasn't at Standford :) but still it was obvious to me I LACKED the soft skills my peers had.

I had not done many things as a teenager that are possible only when you grow up in a family with some means. And this weakened already not so robust confidence in myself, resulting in a mostly downward spiral as far as confidence in myself.

You see growing up with money buys you a lot of soft skill that helps you later.

I'm not bitter though. It is what it is. I try to be thankful for what I've had so far.

Re: Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

#230

Post by dba7dba » Sat, Jan 23, 2016, 10:10 AM UTC

jtolmar wrote: post #217

bbcbasic wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am planning a transition from middle class to capital class, which will take 10-20 years and require investing in real estate. Real estate is a great investment (at least in Australia) because it allows you to get access to larger amounts of credit to purchase assets which will generally go up in value over time because of the policies of central banks to target inflation. In addition buying in the right location w…

I've heard that being too keen on real estate is a common pitfall for middle class investors. Between that and personal bias, I'm avoiding it (at least directly). My portfolio is primarily stocks, which I find surprisingly easy to work with. You just pick well-run companies in fields you understand, ignore financial news, and wait. I should be capable of living off interest in four years.

I've heard that being too keen on real estate is a common pitfall for middle class investors.

I'm in US but I agree. I'm not old enough yet (I hope) but most of friends' parents lost all they had later in their life and from what I heard they were heavily into real estate. Some owned few houses and others worked as realtor.

For those that owned houses, they were extended too thinly and couldn't sell fast enough to cover mounting interest and cost when economy tanked, resulting in bankruptcy.