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Is success tied to having rich parents?

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Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?

#91

Post by sjg007 »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #27
m0llusk wrote: post #20

Money opens doors, but wealthy living also tends to teach bad habits that limit ambition and grit. Also, in that thread it was asserted that Steve Jobs did not have rich parents, but they were reasonably well off and lived in a leafy and pleasant neighborhood with excellent schools.

I would describe Steve Jobs as coming from a middle class background, but this was in boom time America, where middle class meant a relatively privileged upbringing.

The San Jose metro area has had the highest probability of economic mobility from being poor to being rich.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/the-pla...

Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?

#92

Post by aiyen »

I think it depends on how you measure success. Success doesn’t mean Elon Musk level for everyone. I grew up poor, not even middle class, my parents didn’t have a good education and making 50K after working for 10 years felt like success.

Growing up poor definitely held me back. I had to catch up financially, had zero safety net, zero money management skills, and all the other problems of being poor in the US like transportation, access to good education and healthcare, access to opportunities, etc.

Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?

#93

Post by jjj123 »

massinstall wrote: post #85
david38 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. A smart person can always get a well paying job and still be considered successful by his peers or family. The son of a wealthy family may think going to Google is the same as failure. He has the money to try over and over again and does so because working for someone else is like being a sheep.

You’re subtly implying that this smart person also has the resume to be allowed to be interviewed in the first place. (A common bias of thought by people working in tech, from my experience). There are people out there whose problem is not that they aren’t smart, but that they don’t have the resume that is aligned with HR filters. Their two biggest and relatively substantial hurdles are: 1) not getting a chance for e…

Agree with everything you said, but just want to add a couple additional hurdles to even being considered “smart”:

- going to a bad public school because you live in a poor area has ripple effects that may put you in a worse position than some private prep school kid

- if you grew up in poverty, your brain will literally grow differently due to chronic stress, environmental toxins, lack of stimulation, etc. [1].

We pretend like filtering for “smart” is fair, but the opportunity to be smart is heavily weighted by privilege.

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4811314/

Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?

#94

Post by 999900000999 »

notacoward wrote: post #87
999900000999 wrote: post #78

I'd say the more important part is a baseline of stability. I went through two evictions by the time I was 19, and I ultimately had to estrange myself from my family to avoid getting evicted for a third time. I'm very happy with my current level of success. I've made 6 figures for a good amount of time and have more than enough saved to take a long vacation. I can't stress enough how important it is to cut out toxic…

> I'd say the more important part is a baseline of stability. Hear, hear. I'm pretty sure I've seen studies that show the initial situation most likely to yield later success is the upper-middle class. Rich enough to have some resources and the stability you mention, but not so rich that "the pressure's off" and one is tempted to just rest on parents' laurels. I think stability is also part of the argument for UBI (o…

I'd be happy to just get rid of the FASA system which assumes family stability.

A good friend of mine has to estrange herself from her family since they were extremely abusive. If someone is mistreating you,the only real option is to leave.

But in America you basically can't get college aid if you don't talk to your parents until your 24.

We should give everyone aid for college regardless of income. Hell, this would even help intact middle class families.

Just because your household income is 200k doesn't mean you have a spare 30k per child to attend college. These middle class households are taxed to pay for everyone's else's education anyway.

Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?

#95

Post by jasonkester »

71a54xd wrote: post #68
jasonkester wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it was having that first $10k in the bank. That, combined with knowing I could pick up another dev gig quickly if needed, was my safety net, used in lieu of inherited wealth or whatever else. But you’re right, it takes a few years to get to that point. I was happy ditching work for a year at a time to travel by my late 20s, but I didn’t commit to relying on the product stuff to live on until most of the way t…

Agreed, I'm a solidly above average engineer. However, even as interview loops have been easier I still worry that for my age / YOE I'd be leaving valuable money on the table to go and try to start a business that at best would break even. Thinking about a 2-3 month interview loop is pretty dreadful. At some level I'd need quite a bit of confidence in my idea and more than decent seed funding to leave my job. Basical…

Yeah, I did it by working short contracts to sock away personal runway, then using that to sprint on product stuff for a while. (Which was an easy transition since I was already doing the same thing, just using the downtime to climb rocks in Thailand). I never fully stepped away from “work” to do a startup. I just built SaaS stuff while still keeping one foot in the corporate world.

There’s no rule that says you can’t come back, by the way. I took a 30hr/week contract for five years when my first kid was born to stash away an extra house and college education while the business ran itself in the background. You can keep that brass ring within reach, and even give it the occasional tug if you want.

All the best!

Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?

#96

Post by DoreenMichele »

jjj123 wrote: post #93
massinstall wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re subtly implying that this smart person also has the resume to be allowed to be interviewed in the first place. (A common bias of thought by people working in tech, from my experience). There are people out there whose problem is not that they aren’t smart, but that they don’t have the resume that is aligned with HR filters. Their two biggest and relatively substantial hurdles are: 1) not getting a chance for e…

Agree with everything you said, but just want to add a couple additional hurdles to even being considered “smart”: - going to a bad public school because you live in a poor area has ripple effects that may put you in a worse position than some private prep school kid - if you grew up in poverty, your brain will literally grow differently due to chronic stress, environmental toxins, lack of stimulation, etc. [1]. We p…

Years ago, I saw a study that said that there is as much child neglect and drug abuse in rich neighborhoods as in ghettos. Good parents tend to be middle class because, yes, you need to be able to feed the kids adequately etc but you also need to actually spend time with the kids and care about them.

Money can't buy you love.

Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?

#97

Post by fellowniusmonk »

moralestapia wrote: post #88
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, and obviously my history and K1's can make the case for a whole slew of other traits besides that one. By "who you are" do you mean a persons intrinsic traits? I think the fact that "who you are" in these cases implicitly includes a persons network, access to capital and other _extrinsic_ traits should be spoken aloud and acknowledged. There are a lot of poor, smart kids who feel _less than_ as a result. A tra…

By who you are I meant whether you come from a rich and privileged family or not. >I think the fact that "who you are" in these cases implicitly includes a persons network [...] Yes, you're right, in some sense a person with a good pedigree is bringing these implicit connections to the table, and that has value, for sure. But then that leaves outside the other 90% of people who do not pass that litmus test. And then,…

Yes, the problems continue to compound in this almost invisible way to people who haven't experienced it.

My luck of course is that my parents were brilliant observers and educators (just lacked any financial background.) Just unplugged from material humanity due to their respective upbringing. Which was lovely, and in many ways very wholesome, but killed them and devastated my family in the end, I still miss them dearly.

Can confirm the Michael O'Church quote.

Long before I had financial security I learned to code switch, to present that demurring, almost embarrassed and indifferent attitude towards money, if you met me in person I can come across as a pretty standard tech bro from a wealthy background. It helps immensely with the leverage imbalance, to appear as an almost gadfly, but it's all very complicated and there are trade offs and unlearned implicit things that I don't have an intuitive grasp on.

I don't really talk about poverty and climbing out of it except on HN, it's usually not personally fruitful and not part of my daily headspace. Everything is smoother when you focus on the similarities of your conversation partners and commonalities. We are all one humanity after all, even if not everyone grasps the depth of that truth.

Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?

#99

Post by notacoward »

999900000999 wrote: post #94
notacoward wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd say the more important part is a baseline of stability. Hear, hear. I'm pretty sure I've seen studies that show the initial situation most likely to yield later success is the upper-middle class. Rich enough to have some resources and the stability you mention, but not so rich that "the pressure's off" and one is tempted to just rest on parents' laurels. I think stability is also part of the argument for UBI (o…

I'd be happy to just get rid of the FASA system which assumes family stability. A good friend of mine has to estrange herself from her family since they were extremely abusive. If someone is mistreating you,the only real option is to leave. But in America you basically can't get college aid if you don't talk to your parents until your 24. We should give everyone aid for college regardless of income. Hell, this would…

I fell into exactly one of those traps because financial aid was predicated on a parental contribution that was not really possible (because my mother had to spend that money on her own uncovered medical expenses). I know many others who have also been denied the aid they needed, and no few who received aid they didn't need. Basically every system in the US - not just education and health care but also housing, transportation, 90% of the legal system, etc. - is set up to create an interlocking set of burdens and traps for those who don't already have the means to rise above them.

Re: Is success tied to having rich parents?

#100

Post by fellowniusmonk »

Entwickler wrote: post #17
lazypenguin wrote: post #10

Rich parents means you eat better, have access to higher quality resources, have more time for fitness, more time to go to the doctor for preventative issues. Rich parents means you don’t have to work two jobs or work while studying. Means you have free “consulting” on life decisions from the perspective of the upper class. Means you access to new things like computers, phones, cars, etc. It’s a huge advantage to com…

I would agree with a lot of this. On the flip side, there's the sayings "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times." and "Wealth does not last beyond three generations". I've anecdotally seen this where kids from rich parents take a lot of their wealth for granted and don't understand fully what it takes to build-up and retain wealth for the…

Wealth doesn't last beyond three generations?

Wasn't that debunked?

Outside of external cataclysm or far bell curve "bad luck" I don't think most born into wealth (defined lets say as the investor class that commands "decent" capital holdings) pass poverty on to their kids.

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