Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poor in Tech

megelison.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 817 posts

Re: Poor in Tech

#551

Post by wdb »

hocuspocus wrote: post #374
wdb wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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?

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).

Re: Poor in Tech

#552

Post by jmt_ »

zozbot234 wrote: post #489
jmt_ wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 consequenc…

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.

Re: Poor in Tech

#554

Post by throwawaybbq1 »

Applejinx wrote: post #155

"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 a…

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.

Re: Poor in Tech

#555

Post by giantg2 »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #443
ryanbrunner wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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 p…

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.

Re: Poor in Tech

#556

Post by itsyaboi »

g_sch wrote: post #304
maury91 wrote: post #209

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 10€ for a bowl of salad, when I can go to the grocery store below the office and have the same for 1€", 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,…

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.

> 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.

Re: Poor in Tech

#557

Post by geodel »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #469
giantg2 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you make £100,000 then an hour of your time is worth ~£48. You can get lunch for £10 or less, and cooking at home doesn't cost £0, so unless you are replacing a fancy two course lunch with a made at home sandwith, I dont see you saving over £2k a year. Warren Buffet is cool and all, but he is not the world's lunch expert

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

Re: Poor in Tech

#558

Post by 2cb »

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.

Re: Poor in Tech

#559

Post by b3morales »

zozbot234 wrote: post #434
jmt_ wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 decade…

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, b…

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.

Re: Poor in Tech

#560

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

creshal wrote: post #29
ideamotor wrote: post #19

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.

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?

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.
Post reply on HN