Poor in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Poor in Tech

#731

Post by roryokane » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:44 AM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #253

throwaway713 wrote: post #97

A lot of this list just reads that they have coworkers who are jerks. Not interacting with cleaning staff? That seems like a personal problem. And I’ve seen plenty of frugal VPs that drive 15 year old cars and make their own lunch. That said, I was also pretty horrified once when I was waiting in the lunch line and heard the person in front of me complaining that their six month $100k bonus wasn’t as high as they tho…

You shouldn't be horrified at that complaint. If a company hints that it's going to be 150k when they hire you and it ends up being 100k that is a valid complaint. You are just perpetuating the don't talk about pay rule which benefits the company over the workers.

I agree that one shouldn’t discourage one’s coworkers from making such complaints.

I think the person you replied to was not necessarily horrified at the complaint to a fellow engineer. They were horrified that the complaint was made within earshot of a cafeteria server, who might envy the engineer for even having the chance to make that much money. I think the principle behind that horror is “it’s rude to avoidably inspire envy in others”.

Re: Poor in Tech

#732

Post by rebelos » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:46 AM UTC

As I've grown older, I've become more acutely aware of the tremendously unfair and largely indelible disparity that's inherent to being human.

I seems like, controlling for epoch, one's parents essentially determine the vast majority of a life outcome: some weighted combination of where they live, how wealthy they are, what genes they pass on to you, and how they raise you. Just about everyone in tech is the beneficiary of an insanely lucky dice roll.

Reflecting on that makes me deeply uncomfortable. The idea that my position in this world really boils down to a stroke cosmic fortune.

But it's also a source of deep empathy, and I try my best to carry that with me into any interaction with someone occupying a different rung on the socioeconomic ladder. Mostly I find it's about treating people with dignity and working to build them up in whatever small way you can. That might be as simple as a "thank you" or as involved as a conversation in which you listen to someone's story. There's much to be gained from practicing compassion.

Re: Poor in Tech

#733

Post by ashneo76 » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:47 AM UTC

I am in board with this lady. Flaming Cheetos are awesome. I would take one or two for the road from work. I realized I should take whatever is on the party table if I am hungry. Unless it is named. Great job for putting in the hard work to show up at the gym. You can't say, oh she is fat and exclude her when she is putting in the effort. The 3 day trip to Greece, sailing as a hobby, I can go on. Kudos to her and doing the hard job is carrying on and pushing through.

A case proving her point is the negative comments in this thread.

Re: Poor in Tech

#734

Post by proxyon » Thu, May 20, 2021, 6:20 AM UTC

kls wrote: post #395

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great story, helps me see the profound effect that such stresses put on a person. I got another clue out of it. That 'personal friend' was a user, a manipulator, a predator, and preyed upon folks like us. She must have felt something personal toward you else she'd never have said what she did and given up the raw deal she pushed over on you. To threaten to quit and get offered double - that's a situation to run from…

I don't see it that way, she was a friend, she built a company from the ground up and she took care of people. At that time (2002ish IIRC) she was paying me fair market rate which in full disclosure was about $150k USD a year. She knew my worth, she was trying to teach it to me. She saw me build the other company and she saw that I did not extract my value from that deal. She paid me what I asked for when she called…

I'm trying to understand this. The part where you were saying that you were underpaid and being paid a pittance of what you were worth, that was making $150k in 2002? My understanding is that this is a strong mid-high salary for an engineer even today 19 years of inflation later. Could you clarify what you mean by all of this?

Re: Poor in Tech

#735

Post by Grustaf » Thu, May 20, 2021, 6:42 AM UTC

webmaven wrote: post #714

username90 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She is a writer and not a software engineer. Comparing her salary to software engineer interns therefore isn't fair.

> She is a writer and not a software engineer. Comparing her salary to software engineer interns therefore isn't fair. I'm going to call BS on that. Written communication is a high-leverage activity that if you are going to the trouble of having a dedicated position for it, paying that person well is a pretty good idea. Perhaps not as well as an engineering role of similar seniority, but about as well as a design or…

The question is not if writing is important. It's very easy to argue that a nurse is more important than any engineer, but they are never paid as well, people have more or less accepted that.

Re: Poor in Tech

#736

Post by imtringued » Thu, May 20, 2021, 7:16 AM UTC

proxyon wrote: post #508

periya wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intelligence is not completely due to genetics as you are suggesting and has to do more with socio-economic conditions. Read “guns germs and steel” for why human development through the ages has a lot do with just being at the right place at the right time.

> Intelligence is not completely due to genetics as you are suggesting and has to do more with socio-economic conditions This goes against all of the scientific literature we have. Intelligence is determined by genetics. It can be artificially lowered via poor socio-economic conditions, but it mostly cannot be lifted by higher socio economic conditions. In laymans terms, a traumatic life can make a child who was othe…

If everyone could reach their genetic limits we'd run into a lot less problems.

Re: Poor in Tech

#737

Post by ebcode » Thu, May 20, 2021, 7:31 AM UTC

SkipperCat wrote: post #187

Tade0 wrote: post #106

I read the whole thing trying to find something I could relate to, as I grew up in a place that was a proper third world country as recently as in the 90s. This appears to be American poor - which I think is in its own category, because comparing to American rich it's just so much worse off. It's not that she's necessarily materially poor. It's just that there's no one around who can even begin to understand her pred…

What I find so fascinating about this article is how it conveys the anxiety of being poor in America. How you're always one "bad luck" event from falling down a socio-economic peg, and recovering from that is so hard. Other places around the world, you're poor, but so's everyone else and you're all in it together.

"What's more, the poor in other countries know that they are living in poor countries. They know that not only they but just about everyone is on the edge of starvation. The poor in the United States, on the other hand, are daily told on all sides that the United States is rich and wonderful. Movies and television constantly show them what happy lives other people are leading. The poor and hopeless are made to feel alone and imprisoned by misery in the midst of a victorious and wealthy and endlessly self-congratulating society." -- Isaac Asimov, "Just Say 'No'?"

Re: Poor in Tech

#738

Post by imtringued » Thu, May 20, 2021, 7:35 AM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #414

username90 wrote: post #290

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.

> Europe assumes poor people are dumb. This is one of the many drawbacks of socialism, even the "socialism with Scandinavian characteristics" that everyone seems to be obsessed with lately in the U.S. It assumes government paper-pushers are the smartest people around with the highest I.Q. ever, and everyone else is just a dumb lightweight. It's all about that soft bigotry of low expectations.

I don't get it. People form societies because we are better off collectively. We run into problems where some people manage to rig society in a way that some people are consistently worse off and others are consistently better off.

Society as a whole is better off => every single member is better of.

There is no such relationship. However, since every individual directly contributes to the total productivity of society, we want every member to reach their maximum potential and one way to achieve that is to introduce welfare so that people at the bottom don't have to be homeless or starve because we want them to have a second chance at life.

Re: Poor in Tech

#739

Post by imtringued » Thu, May 20, 2021, 7:51 AM UTC

buescher wrote: post #571

sokoloff wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people wildly over-estimate the costs of driving an older (say 5-15 years old) car and so are prone to over-pay for a new or newer car, believing they're making a good choice based on flawed data. (They remember the time they had to dump $1200 into repairs into some old heap that isn't even shiny anymore. They don't remember that for the last 24 months in a row, they saved $450 in payments, $200 in depreciati…

Your math is off - for TCO you should be counting financing costs, not the payment itself. You don't really get away from financing costs by buying cash, incidentally: then they become the opportunity cost of not having the cash invested. I think people wildly overestimate how much you can save by driving a used car. Used cars are frequently overpriced due to demand for lower up-front costs and lower payments. Edmund…

> You don't really get away from financing costs by buying cash, incidentally: then they become the opportunity cost of not having the cash invested.

I will never understand this logic. You do realize that this is investing on margin just with better conditions? At this point we are assuming that you already have an emergency buffer and no financial difficulty whatsoever.

The reason why you should always finance your car even if your income is low is that you can build an emergency buffer that you can use on anything. If you have $30k in your bank account and buy a $27k car then you are only left with 3k. Any potential financial problems will force you to find a loan that very day. If your monthly payment is $500 your emergency buffer will last for years. If you invest that money you will have to compensate for any losses during that time frame by having enough income, it's as if you had $0 savings to begin with.

Re: Poor in Tech

#740

Post by Mauricebranagh » Thu, May 20, 2021, 8:21 AM UTC

kixiQu wrote: post #563

Mauricebranagh wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also surprising the author did not experience it at Uni where even well off middle class people, suddenly are mixing with much wealthier people. I remeber my cousin who went to UMIST saying this and that side of the family was well off. Its even more noticeable if you went to oxbridge and bumped into some one like Borris Johnson and his Bullingdon mates.

Not all of us went to schools that have "much wealthier people" attending, of course.

I find that hard to believe unless your country has a very stratified higher education system - which is a bad thing.