Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#271

Post by efaref » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 12:04 PM UTC

nsomaru wrote: post #261

alsetmusic wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got it from my father, who rose from poor to wealthy through education. He taught me that education was all that mattered. When I achieved a prestigious Silicon Valley position after dropping out of college, I considered myself a fake who would be discovered at any moment for a long time. All my colleagues had compsci degrees. Thing is, I eventually discovered that I could hold my own. What my father taught me is o…

There is a difference between 'having a degree' and 'being educated.' Maybe you did make it the way your dad showed you :)

Hence the quote, "I never let my schooling get in the way of my education."

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#272

Post by LouisSayers » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 12:46 PM UTC

Mz wrote: post #150

LouisSayers wrote: post #146

It's not what you know, it's who you know. If you're a poor kid that manages to mingle with the rich and famous, I'd imagine you'd have some pretty good opportunities come your way too regardless of education. That's the real factor here. If you're connected, you can sell your shitty web hosting to all your dad's friends, and you can have doors open for you with minimal effort. Regardless, there are rags to riches st…

If you're a poor kid that manages to mingle with the rich and famous, I'd imagine you'd have some pretty good opportunities come your way too regardless of education. In theory. It is a theory I would like to believe in. But as a homeless woman who has managed to become the top ranked woman on HN, a forum that has plenty of people with quite a lot more money than me, as well as expertise in making money online (the t…

Being popular on HackerNews is not what I'd consider mingling with 'the haves'. Mingling to me is being invited to dinner parties, socialising in the real world, being called a friend.

Of course if you start from homelessness, then you have a hard journey ahead of you. I'm not saying it's easy - it's a long and arduous affair no doubt.

I resent your tone somewhat, I can assure you that I did not start from the top at all - that my views are extremely well balanced.

It sounds as though you are quite competent intellectually, but as we can see from the research, competence does not equal effectiveness at least not in the financial sense. This is why I say - it is who you know. And not just 'who knows you', but who likes you, who has a feeling of obligation towards you or someone close to you.

I don't say this to beat down on people that haven't 'succeeded' in life, I say this as a pragmatist - as someone that recognises inequality, recognises that the world is not fair (and may never be), and offers a view of how to cheat the system somewhat. It's a hack, but it seems to work so why not give it a go?

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#273

Post by LouisSayers » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 12:49 PM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #148

LouisSayers wrote: post #146

It's not what you know, it's who you know. If you're a poor kid that manages to mingle with the rich and famous, I'd imagine you'd have some pretty good opportunities come your way too regardless of education. That's the real factor here. If you're connected, you can sell your shitty web hosting to all your dad's friends, and you can have doors open for you with minimal effort. Regardless, there are rags to riches st…

Actually, it is who trusts you to solve their problems. This is influenced by both what you know and who you know but also by your ability to communicate well, your ability to present a credible appearance, and your ability to actually deliver.

to a degree yes, but how many people subscribe to something just because it's "little johnny from two doors down". Many people will give you a shot just because you are close to them in some way. When you put someone credible next to someone close, you'd be surprised at how many people would choose the close person over the credible. Just look at how many family businesses there are - you can't tell me that the family members are always the most credible.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#274

Post by flattone » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 1:38 PM UTC

rhgraysonii wrote: post #167

Gustomaximus wrote: post #154

An event that will always stay with me, some years ago I a job opened up where I would have some sway in recommending candidates. I had a uni friend who would fit the role well. A great bloke, smart and hard working. He came from a very blue collar, low income background. His job was pretty middle of the road stuff. This job would have been lateral in responsibility but in a better industry giving about 2+ times sala…

This really hits home for me. I once had a conversation with a very, very experienced developer who ran a local meetup and was discussing salary options at a new job. He balked when I told them what I asked for, and replied: "Just because you grew up as poor as me doesn't mean you should fear wealth. If it makes you feel that guilty take the shit and donate it to charity." And its really true. My first engineering jo…

Ordering appetizers still occupy some sort of taking advantage of me immune response. At 60℅ muting of that.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#275

Post by ricksplat » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 1:44 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #264

ricksplat wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of pulp's "common people" ... you could call your dad he could stop it all yeah

Random trivia, the real person that song was written about, is the wife of Valve Economist and recent "star" of the debate around Greek economic issues with the EU, Yanis Varoufakis.

heard that yeah! Kind of ironic in a way?

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#276

Post by panglott » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

DominikR wrote: post #269

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And while this was a sample of one it really opened my eyes to sense of entitlement that comes with growing up in a wealthy vs poor enviroment. In the UK, the primary selling points of the Public School system (i.e. private schools priced far out of the reach of most of the population) are three things - social confidence, entitlement and a sense of superiority, and networking. Conversely, the primary products of th…

> In the UK, the primary selling points of the Public School system ... are social confidence, entitlement and a sense of superiority, and networking. > It's a perfectly rigid and self-sustaining caste system. The problem with your statement is that all 3 qualities you have listed could actually be acquired at the cost of $0, either by the parents raising their children differently or by the child itself if it desire…

Culture is learned behavior that is transmitted from one person to another. If your parents don't know elite cultural norms and your schoolmates don't know elite cultural norms, then how exactly is a child supposed to learn elite accents and elite cultural norms?

There is a staggering number of parents who are struggling to keep their children fed and in a moderately stable home life, and a staggering number of kids who go to school hungry nonetheless. More than any other first-world nation, the US tolerates a high rate of poverty and economic inequality, which is what drives our average standardized test performance down (for example). "Half the children need to starve to motivate the others" is not only an obscene moral argument, it drags everybody down.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#277

Post by rcafdm » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

kagamine wrote: post #242

ap22213 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I skimmed it, but I didn't see much of a point except that he seems to be implying that poor people are more likely to be less intelligent (or rich people are more likely to be more intelligent). So, let's say his analysis is correct. What then? Does it mean that we should, as a society, test for intelligence early in life and subsidize incomes appropriately? Or, just let the poor suffer if they don't have the correc…

It's probably not genetic. Ask any school teacher who does well in class and who struggles, who has ADHD and who concentrates for hours at a time and they will tell you diet and routine (also linked to wealth) are almost always obvious signals for success. It's not scientific, but the kids that struggle eat frozen pizza and stay up late. It could be the teachers I know finding evidence where there is none, but year a…

I created the blog post. That post was largely focused on academic outcomes, especially variation in various test scores and related measures of general cognitive ability (aka "intelligence"), but:

1) there is also good direct evidence that genes explain a large fraction of the systematic variation in economic outcomes. I invite you to read this https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/38881/HECER... (especially pg25, table 1, and compare h^2 vs c^2 )

2) Parental involvement is unlikely to explain much of the black-white disparity. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09645292.2016.123...

3) teacher observations and other casually observed bivariate correlations are heavily confounded by genes. the kids with seriously disordered lives are significantly more likely to have parents with low executive function and cognitive abilities and are more likely themselves to have low executive functioning. http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/137/2/201/

4) I am not arguing that parents/communities are entirely unimportant in all dimensions, but the role is much, much smaller than is commonly believed and it particularly has relatively little influence on cognition and closely related phenotypes. The influence of parents is more on things like educational attainment which, while significantly determined by innate ability, are probably not purely genetic (holding other things equal children of more educated parents get more education..... much more about culture/preferences than ability to afford though

http://www.nber.org/papers/w22734

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#278

Post by tankenmate » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #73

tankenmate wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually being poor in America is worse than being poor in most other OECD nations; most first world countries have unemployment benefits that don't have time limits (they may have performance limits, i.e. you need to apply for X amount of jobs per week, etc). A number of them have free health care (and even some 2nd world countries have this). A non trivial number have free university education, or a university educ…

That is not indicative of social mobility, the tax liability on the poor and the middle class in the US is considerably lower than in Europe. Wages are on the other hand considerably higher. This holds true even for low income jobs, McDonalds pays nearly 10$ an hour in the US vs 4.35 GBP in the UK, or 6.50 EUR in Germany (there are comming minimum wage changes in Germany so it will increase to about 8 EUR in 2017) an…

The current minimum wage in the UK is £7.20, and what's more if you are on the minimum wage in the UK the government will frequently top that up with tax credits (money paid directly to the claimant either weekly or monthly) and possibly housing benefit (money paid to either the claimant or landlord, and in some cases help to pay your mortgage) as well, although these typically only apply to people who are earning less than an equivalent to a full time minimum wage job and/or have children.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#279

Post by sixtypoundhound » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 2:06 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #88

justinv wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Journalists deserve to get paid for their work.

I don't think he was suggesting that paywalled articles should never be read, but rather that they're ill-suited to content aggregators like HN, where you're likely to visit 10 domains for every 10 links you click. Particularly because the vast majority of paywalls are subscription-based, not pay-per-content, paywalls and content aggregators aren't very compatible.

This.

Wapo has a huge social media team that tries to get free traffic from sites like us.

The paywall is a clumsy and ham-fisted attempt to monetize that traffic. It is unfriendly to the community and provides no value to many non subscribers.

I have no issue with ads or polite monetization (I am a publisher myself)... but paywall sites really don't belong on content aggregators.

If I posted a teaser article with thin content for a $199 report on HN, I would likely be banned as spam. Paywalled articles are very similar to this in principle.

Re: Poor kids who do things right don't do better than rich kids who do things wrong

#280

Post by Lord_Zero » Tue, Oct 25, 2016, 2:25 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #233

Throwaway892375 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a throw away account. I'm writing this because I'm the embodiment of poor and the embodiment of lack of social mobility. As a child of divorce, I lived in affluent suburbia. However, everything was devoted to keeping the house and to food. There was next to nothing for anything else. I had three jobs going through high school. When I was in school I was told that I couldn't qualify for financial aid because o…

I mean this respectfully, but have you tried to do some introspection? If you actually have the skills you claim, there is huge money to be made in hiring you as a programmer making $40k/year. Your background really should not be such a determining factor: I have clients who have literally never met me and have only the vaguest idea of who I am. It's all about making compelling work and demanding compensation for it.…

Im not sure where you guys are from, but the average Android developer salary is like $90K a year https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/android-developer-salary-...