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Poor in Tech

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Re: Poor in Tech

#701

Post by pschuegr »

burntoutfire wrote: post #614
Tade0 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it was mostly not being able to afford school books and clothes, shoes other than Chinese supermarket stuff - so something that wouldn't last two seasons. Also five people living in a 45m2 apartment - thankfully only until I was twelve or so. We reached a low point as a family when I was in college and my father, who left a few years earlier, stopped supporting us. Fortunately by that time I had a part-time jo…

A family member has told me a story of her poor childhood in the thirties in rural Poland. During springs, their family had to steal rotten potatoes from other people's fields and eat weeds to survive. THAT's being poor. What the original article describes sounds more like a anxiety over a risk of falling into poverty, than actual poverty.

What you're describing sounds like "destitute", not poor.

Re: Poor in Tech

#702

Post by strken »

watwut wrote: post #542
bumby wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dont think this is true about article at all. Quite a few points are not complains about other peoples behavior nor do they contain anything bad. I do indoor climbing, it does cost money, we talked about climbing in the work a lot. I would really have to work hard to perceive myself being criticizes by that point. I did not read the article as commenting about what is "bad" about the tech industry but rather abou…

Did you read my comment and comment I was responding to before writing yours? The parent complains that article listed things "act like wankers". Which clearly means "bad". Second, I worked with people who had completely different hobbies and interests than I do. I am not always in dominant majority, with climbing in that team I was. As far as I know, people having hobbies I don't care about is completely normal.

The word wanker in Australian English denotes a specific kind of negativity, attached to egotism and acting as though you're better than others. I shouldn't have used it on HN, as it's a poor choice of phrasing for an international audience.

As per [0], "the socially leveling term wanker ridicules a person who is pretentious and arrogant, thereby suggesting that humility, solidarity and being down-to-earth are highly valued qualities in Australian society." Vocally complaining about unbleached tampons and flying to Greece for one weekend are textbook wanker behaviour. I'm not sure of a good American English word to substitute.

[0] http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2003/stollznow.pdf

Re: Poor in Tech

#703

Post by pnutjam »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #679
pnutjam wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed where the writer found out they were the lowest paid person. This is how the wealthy class really keep people from moving up. Your pay is forever tied to what you used to make. It's hard enough to break the circuit in your mind, it's near impossible to do so with your employer. At my current employer, they offered me a 10% paycut to convert from contract to FTE. I could not afford that, but I also can't aff…

Don’t ever tell a new company how much you currently make. And if you’re not looking for a new company, you’re selling yourself short. Of course the current company isn’t going to give much; why would they? Everyone here is talking about it like the company owes you something. They don’t owe you anything. And it goes both ways: you don’t owe them. So get out on the job market and get yourself what you’re worth.

Company doesn't owe me, but needs to meet my expectations of they want me to stick around. I'm always surprised when companies can't understand their high turnover.

Re: Poor in Tech

#704

Post by znpy »

kelnos wrote: post #660
burntoutfire wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A family member has told me a story of her poor childhood in the thirties in rural Poland. During springs, their family had to steal rotten potatoes from other people's fields and eat weeds to survive. THAT's being poor. What the original article describes sounds more like a anxiety over a risk of falling into poverty, than actual poverty.

I think a more precise term for it might be "financially insecure". You can make things work, it involves a bit of scraping here and there, but you are one bad-luck event (unexpected medical bill, car break-down, etc.) from being unable to pay your regular bills. Being in such extreme poverty that you need to eat stolen rotten food and weeds is another category entirely.

> I think a more precise term for it might be "financially insecure".

it really feels like you're sugarcoating it.

if having "to steal rotten potatoes from other people's fields and eat weeds to survive" is not being poor, then i don't know what is.

Re: Poor in Tech

#705

Post by nsxwolf »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #445
strken wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways it's a laundry list of ways rich people in the Bay Area act like wankers, which is interesting, but also quite irritatingly stereotypical. There are plenty who don't refuse to talk to the cleaning staff, lecture others on their choice of tampon, or snob fat people at the gym. I don't want people from outside the bubble (e.g. me, three years ago) to read this and think they'll be surrounded by wall-to-wal…

Not to detract from the broader point, which I completely agree with, but the gym example didn't strike me as a Valley-specific phenomenon. I could imagine something similar happening at a gym in a working class neighborhood, and I could also think of gyms which welcome all, regardless of being a beginner or not. People not near the median get critiqued often for their weight, and it happens to underweight people too…

She didn't really elaborate on why she didn't feel welcome in the gym. I've felt out of place and unwelcome in gyms - but it was all in my head. Nobody said or did anything to make me feel that way, they were all just in really great shape.

I've also had it made explicitly clear to me that I wasn't welcome in certain places.

Re: Poor in Tech

#706

Post by zxcero »

bumby wrote: post #661
lazide wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, you have to decide to either; 1) talk about what you like, even if other people don’t connect well (be yourself at work?) 2) only like things other people connect with (seems limiting, but probably good for the social interactions) 3) pretend to like things others do and don’t talk about what you like (pretty much the definition of the conversationalist, but doing that all the time seems fake and proba…

> Learning how to connect with them was a skill it took a lot of time and effort to hone This was my main issue with the article. The author seemed so hyper-focused on the differences she saw day-to-day that she seemed unable to overcome them to find common ground to connect. > You can’t be authentic AND make everyone happy. Literally impossible. If someone is alienated by someone talking about who they are This isn'…

> you can connect by being legitimately curious about differing interests as long as it's a culture that is open to different interests without using them as a defining characteristic.

100% agree with that. Differences shouldn't make you exclude other people. Like the example where people just ignore the cleaning staff. It just tells alot how the people there are privileged. I worked at an engineering firm and people generally do acknowledge the cleaning staff. They're people too regardless of their position or work.

Re: Poor in Tech

#707

Post by jkepler »

gammarator wrote: post #461
zozbot234 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I see anything wrong with not bothering the cleaning staff while they're at work. The whole reason they've been hired is to spare everyone else the time and effort involved in cleaning, so to have everyone waste time on greetings would just be demeaning their work.

There is a difference between “not bothering the cleaning staff” and not acknowledging that they exist and are human and are standing right in front of you. Author is describing the second, and it happens pervasively in the upper classes.

Sadly, this is true. Though it also leaves a huge opportunity for people to encourage cleaning staff (or drivers or any other manual labor in cultures that privilege intellectual work) with brief yet heartfelt greetings and genuine thanks for the valuable work they do.

Seeing and thanking overlooked people for the work they do takes almost no time if its habitual, yet can potentially brighten someone's day.

Re: Poor in Tech

#708

Post by isomorph »

dang wrote: post #689
dang wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a case of the contrarian dynamic: an initial wave of objections to the article, followed by a wave of objections to the objections. The latter get upvoted, and so we end up with a top comment saying "I can't believe the comments in this thread" or (as in the current example) "the comments here are so $bad_somehow". Recent explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27145616 . More: https://hn.algol…

Replies are welcome, but I've collapsed this subthread to prevent the page from going too far off topic. Sorry—I know that my comment is just as off topic. But it has an educational function (at least under optimistic assumptions) and that requires people seeing it.

Thanks for this. I didn't notice myself falling into this wider pattern of behaviour. Kind of uplifting!

Re: Poor in Tech

#709

Post by Twixes »

giantg2 wrote: post #309
dack wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't say there's no bias (I'm sure it exists everywhere), but I think it's not an "expensive image" that gets you promoted as much as confidence. Many people who grew up rich have a natural confidence to them (because they are protected if they lose their job, have been told they'll be someone important one day, given lots of help in life), and that helps a lot in giving a vibe that you'll succeed. The great thing…

I've gone the other direction. The company has screwed me over enough that I know life is shitty and all the stuff teachers and parents tell you growing up is a lie. The confidence didn't help me anyways (due to politics) as I'm 9 years in and only a midlevel dev, even though I've worked in roles above my current one (senior dev, tech lead, ASC). Most of the people in the office talk about fancy expensive things. If…

Okay, so really the question is, why are you still at that company and not looking around to switch to a better one?

Re: Poor in Tech

#710

Post by BeetleB »

buescher wrote: post #621
sokoloff wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cashflow differences between buying an $8K car for cash and a $40K car with 20% down are the entire monthly payment [plus the required collision insurance], not just the interest charge portion. I'd wager that poor people are generally running their lives on a cashflow basis, not on an accrual basis. When I was a near-broke college student, that's how I thought. With regard to the savings of paying cash being off…

Yes, that difference, as I pointed out, is one reason why sensible used cars are overpriced. (Another is the "market for lemons" effect) Now you're comparing a $40K new car to a $8K used car, which is not a reasonable comparison. Yes, used cars will save you some money, but they will generally cost you more money than driving a new Corolla or Civic. Poke around on Edmunds' TCO calculator. The problem with your argume…

> but they will generally cost you more money than driving a new Corolla or Civic

OK. Sorry. Your comment annoyed me enough to look up my actual expenses which I've been logging since late 2007, as opposed to hypotheticals.

Between then and now, I've spent $6247 on maintenance and repairs of my cars. Note this includes standard stuff like oil changes and tire replacements. That's about $480 a year. If I extrapolate and go back to when I bought the first car, the estimate would be $8649 since 2003.

How much did I pay for those two cars? $11200 total.

They were reliable. I did two cross country trips in them, without worrying a bit. I didn't rent cars for road trips.

So a total cost in the last 18 years of $19849. Had I bought new, and included standard maintenance[1], I surely would have paid a lot more. A new Camry in those days would already be over $20K. A Civic around $14K.

And of course, insurance on old cars is cheaper. You'd think it's the other way round, but it isn't.

Obligatory disclaimer: Research your used car models before you buy. If you don't, it will cost a lot more.

[1] As a reference, my wife's almost new car has cost $3500 in repairs/maintenance in only 4 years. Yes - even new cars can end up being costly to maintain in just a few years.

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