341–350 of 817 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In many places around the world, poor people don't have "old car problems".
Could you explain what point you're trying to make?
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
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 privil…
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...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 the…
I grew up upper middle class and do the same thing. I know generationally wealthy people that do too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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 most…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This comment cannot be saying what it seems to be saying, can you clarify what you mean? Maybe it was worded oddly.
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 marke…
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 /…
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.
Note how the writer is simultaneously both a victim and a hero.... and everyone else is vapid and shallow.