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Poor in Tech

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Re: Poor in Tech

#601

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

cratermoon wrote: post #533
culturestate wrote: post #5

To me, this reads more as a list of "from outside the valley bubble" signifiers than it does as a list of things that people who've grown up in poverty might do, even if the former was a result of the latter. There are some exceptions - not noticing missed paychecks is the biggest - but most of it is just stuff that happens every day in other offices. Making your lunch at the office and not bringing Advil from home?…

There's a place somewhere between "making a lot of money" and "being truly wealthy" where a person can become obsessively frugal. Think of it as hoarders, but for money. They don't want to spend a penny more than they have to, because they have a kind of psychological investment in their net worth. Yes, they will spend a lot of money on some thing in order to be able to display their wealth as their class demands, bu…

Or maybe the office painkillers and office food are just plain convenient? Which is why the office supplies them in the first place? It has nothing to do with being "money obsessed." Maybe my office is some weird outlier, but nearly every one of these "i'm poor in tech because" examples apply to my office, despite us being wealthy in tech.

Re: Poor in Tech

#602

Post by bumby »

sol_invictus wrote: post #517
LucidLynx wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally seen this almost all the time at three different gym places... I went to the gym I was asked to come back "later" as "the gym is near full (50% full actually) and we prefer 'regulars' to come and train for something instead of... kind of you...". So, if I am like you - just seeing with my own eyes and not follow the feeling and facts from other persons - I would say that gym regulars are just full of s*** :…

I’ve been a gym rat for 15 years and the regulars I know will champion hardest for the people attempting a change. Sorry you had foul experiences, but I’ll stick to 2% of the people being in that bucket.

I’ve been working out regularly for 20+ years in a gym and have never seen it either. If anything, I’ve seen the opposite, the super-fit go out of their way to encourage those who are unfit or just starting because they know the difficulties. I’ve literally never even been given a weird look when asking if I can work in on equipment even with the most intimidating gym rats. And this includes me doing a number of gym faux pas early.

I’m sure legitimate bad experiences do happen, but I also think a lot of perception is based on the stories we make up in our own heads.

Re: Poor in Tech

#603

Post by redisman »

beforeolives wrote: post #6

This is different from being poor in the financial sense. It goes deep into the poor mindset and pscyhology and how it can stick around even after you're doing okay. My parents are working class, I'm an immigrant and I had a minimum wage job for a few years - I've never felt any of the things listed in this article, before or after I was doing okay financially, in or outside of tech.

I checked off the majority of the points the author mentioned but I never felt bad or alienated for it. Money can buy you things, most of them are a dumb waste. Why should I feel bad? They’re the idiots blowing their paychecks on trendy useless things.

I’m also an immigrant and have never seen such salaries in my life outside of executives so I’m just riding the gravy train. Again, I feel extremely lucky and great to be a part of it. Not beating myself up over having a bigger delta from my childhood than some of my coworkers. Isn’t that the American dream? I would also add that getting McDonalds was the summit of culinary experiences a few times a year when I was growing up. I’m sure people here would find that funny but I’m proud of my life and my background.

I do use an Uber for social calls as it buys me easily 2 hours of my life back as public transport kinda sucks

Re: Poor in Tech

#604

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: post #17
culturestate wrote: post #5

To me, this reads more as a list of "from outside the valley bubble" signifiers than it does as a list of things that people who've grown up in poverty might do, even if the former was a result of the latter. There are some exceptions - not noticing missed paychecks is the biggest - but most of it is just stuff that happens every day in other offices. Making your lunch at the office and not bringing Advil from home?…

I don't really see this as a valid criticism of the list though. A person identified a bunch of ways they are not like almost all of the rest of their coworkers. Do they have the information, experience, or responsibility to accurately categorize the specific cultural origin of every single one of those differences? Does it make the argument weaker if they miss a couple? Maybe a little but it's still strong.

> Does it make the argument weaker if they miss a couple? Maybe a little but it's still strong.

What if they miss almost every single one? That's how it reads to me, for almost every job I've had. That's why people are reacting like they are to the article.

Re: Poor in Tech

#605

Post by rcoveson »

Grustaf wrote: post #211
creshal wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Maybe from the US (unless you go to Cuba or the Caribbean). In Europe it makes total sense, even from far away Scandinavia. You can easily be in South of France before noon.

Yes, the difficulty of traveling "overseas" is closely correlated with the size of the seas over which one must travel.

Re: Poor in Tech

#606

Post by 2cb »

gonehome wrote: post #356
dcx wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to go for the throat there. And especially not when you're not totally correct. Paul Fussell's Class documents the exact phenomenon OP describes. Wealth is not class [1]; class is much more complex. For example, poor academics are higher class than rich blue-collar workers. Donald Trump is crazy rich but affects many of the working-class behaviours described in said book (technically "high prole"). Barack Oba…

Yeah - I agree with all of this. On a related note, I think the US approach to dismissing class is preferable to the UK where it’s very explicit. While both approaches have issues, when it’s explicit in the culture people seem to discriminate on it more (or even self-sort themselves based on identity). I think ideally it’s better for a culture to try to not do that, but pragmatically it’s good to be aware of its exis…

> On a related note, I think the US approach to dismissing class is preferable to the UK where it’s very explicit.

Huh. My perception has always been that America is far more obsessed with class and “keeping up with the Joneses” than Britain.

That said, I have in the past been called “rich” in a derogatory manner just for owning an iPad. But that’s more an amusing anecdote than social commentary. I find this type of thing to be the exception rather than the norm.

For context I’m a Brit with a decent job but my family is certainly not upper middle class or even middle class and all my friends are working class because those are the people I naturally get along with. For the most part the fact I make more money doesn’t cause any friction in those social circles. One of my mates even said to me if he didn’t know better he’d assume I lived on a council estate.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is the class lines are very blurred in modern day British society except for at the extremes. As such it’s not something people tend to obsess over.

On the other hand I’ve found that, in general, middle class Yanks tend to care more about being perceived a certain way so people know they’re middle class or upper middle class or whatever else. I’ve even seen them argue over exactly what constitutes “real” upper middle class compared to regular middle class. Not something I’ve ever seen Brits do.

Re: Poor in Tech

#607

Post by devchix »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #306
kardianos wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you live in a remote area or small town away from a large city, your access to fresh and non-processed foods is heavily reduced. Do you really think this? I know the sticks. You apparently don't. You can live off potatoes, eggs, and oatmeal and not be fat. Those are available anywhere. There is a "poor" culture, there is an "elite" culture, and then there is a "responsibility" culture. I grew up financially poor…

"The Road to Wigan Pier" had a great bit about this, which hits the nail on the head based on my experience being working class: The basis of their diet, therefore, is white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea and potatoes—an appalling diet. Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman…

Not irrational at all. I've often wondered at some ascetic values of the very rich: cold showers, building a cabin with your own hands, short duration of rough wilderness living, and in your quoted case, abstemious diet. Humanity spent generations trying to escape those conditions, poor people will never willingly engage in them. Is it because the rest of rich people's lives are elevated away from those conditions, so it's a choice to embrace it, and thereby redefining the thing's perceived values?

Yet another data point on why the poor are playing the lottery, eating crisps and not virtuously buying and cooking rice and lentil, there's a game-theory-ish idea that the poor understands that as much hard work and lentil they could shovel, they stand little chance of getting out. So with the money they have they buy the best value thing possible, discounted for future possibilities; and those best value things are junk food, lottery tickets, sometimes expensive (relative to their circumstance) and flashy things like clothes or phones.

Re: Poor in Tech

#608

Post by jschwartzi »

bluecalm wrote: post #522
elzbardico wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The author of the comment seems not the understand simple concepts like averages and normal distributions. Additionally, he/her seems to assume a causal relationship where if you're poor it is because you're dumb, and not the other way around, or even a mix of those two things. Yeah, on average, poor people score a few points low than the average for rich people. true. But this is not an absolute as the post's a…

The society would benefit the most from policies that encourage smart and successful people to have more children.

I can think of at least one society that formed in the 1930's for which this was an absolute mandate! But I don't recall reading much about them past about 1945, so perhaps you should do some further research.

Re: Poor in Tech

#609

Post by kixiQu »

sidlls wrote: post #260
giantg2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Making your lunch at the office and not bringing Advil from home? I know generationally wealthy investment bankers who do these things" Generally they don't like to waste money. That's part of how they stay rich for generations (as opposed to someone who hits the lottery and the next generation is basically back to where they started in many cases).

You think someone with generational wealth would stop to even consider the cost of advil or a lunch in FiDi? They don't. This little bit of mythology has always been amusing to me. They may make their own lunch out of habit or simply because they have a preference or whatever--but cost isn't a reason for people of that much wealth. They don't like wasting money, but what they consider "waste" is not the same thing as…

Fun anecdata from my own life: I grew up under varying amounts of poverty and now I make Big TechCo money. As I have gotten a lot better about shedding a certain kind of survival-hoarding-mindset "I don't need to keep because I can get a new one when I need one again", I have found myself developing new neuroses about "waste" of things that my old self would have considered insignificant: (personal) office supplies, succulent leaves that have fallen off but that I can propagate, 5-year-old magazines I haven't read yet. It's like I maintained some amount of the anxiety but in the absence of the pressure to direct it usefully, it's gone cuckoo.

Re: Poor in Tech

#610

Post by cratermoon »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #601
cratermoon wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a place somewhere between "making a lot of money" and "being truly wealthy" where a person can become obsessively frugal. Think of it as hoarders, but for money. They don't want to spend a penny more than they have to, because they have a kind of psychological investment in their net worth. Yes, they will spend a lot of money on some thing in order to be able to display their wealth as their class demands, bu…

Or maybe the office painkillers and office food are just plain convenient? Which is why the office supplies them in the first place? It has nothing to do with being "money obsessed." Maybe my office is some weird outlier, but nearly every one of these "i'm poor in tech because" examples apply to my office, despite us being wealthy in tech.

Well, yes, but are you the sort of independently generationally wealthy money-hoarder I'm referring to, or just one of the many folks who, while not poor, are still basically wage slaves who can't quit their jobs because they have a mortgage, kids, student loans, and need the health insurance? If you're the latter, the convenience factor is a money factor in disguise: you're so busy trying to maintain yourself and your family that you don't really have time to make your own lunch.
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