31–40 of 77 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If software isn't a trade what is it? Holy orders?
>If software isn't a trade what is it? A profession. Trades are things like electrician/plumbing/carpentry that you can typically become resonably competent in 2 or so years of training.
> My education taught me to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to, regardless of their class. I was given the unmistakable message that such people were beneath me. That's not an elite education, that's a bad education.
Sure, some of my classmates were snobs, and there was probably a higher concentration of them (snobs are drawn to prestige-granting institutions, after all), but I wouldn't blame the education for that.
You find the same kind of attitude with any exclusive groups, from employees of fancy tech companies to country clubs to religious & political organizations.
> There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. I'm a self-taught software developer w…
100%. The conversation opener is right there - baseball. Doesn't matter whether you follow baseball or not. If you do, have a back-and-forth and talk about your respective teams. If you don't, ask questions; fans love talking about their team. Ironically the ability to make small talk with anyone is considered a sign of good breeding. So this person's education may have failed them?
I think we're in a different world from twenty years ago. The upper-middle class kids I know understand that you can get your hands dirty and that a degree isn't a meal ticket to class security anymore. If you want to be a manager you have to understand the jobs of people you manage.
What? No you don’t. You have to know how to identify people you can trust, how to establish and grow that trust with them, and how to maintain that trust.
If you have bidirectional trust, then you can successfully manage people who do things you don’t understand.
Edit: read my reply to surgical_fire below
this is just neuroticism, and isn't really related to the ivys. it's a very common human dynamic, just follow etiquette when crossing class boundaries. the fact that the author makes it into the particular plight of the ivy grad (oh if only they had kept us humble, woe me!) speaks more to his own insecurities than to anything relating to the nature of elite education.
I've heard people be completely open about only wanting to mingle and network with "peers", where they'll immediately ditch people at networking events / parties / etc. if they're not up to the snuff. They'll ask what school you went to, or where you work(ed), and bow out if its not a target school or top-tier firm.
But people like that are a minority in my experience. I went to a good business school, and many people there had the same background stories - especially the type of undergrad schools they went to.
(With that said, I'm pushing 40, and every now and then I do meet new people that within 2 mins will ask or probe what school I went to. Always feels a bit weird to me to bring up alma mater when it's almost half a lifetime ago...especially if those asking are even older than me.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If software isn't a trade what is it? A profession. Trades are things like electrician/plumbing/carpentry that you can typically become resonably competent in 2 or so years of training.
You can't in software development?
I think we're in a different world from twenty years ago. The upper-middle class kids I know understand that you can get your hands dirty and that a degree isn't a meal ticket to class security anymore. If you want to be a manager you have to understand the jobs of people you manage.
> If you want to be a manager you have to understand the jobs of people you manage. What? No you don’t. You have to know how to identify people you can trust, how to establish and grow that trust with them, and how to maintain that trust. If you have bidirectional trust, then you can successfully manage people who do things you don’t understand. Edit: read my reply to surgical_fire below
It was alright if they didn't knew as much as I did. They just needed to know enough that I could have a meaningful conversation about what was going on in the projects they were trying to manage.
you dont need to have a conversation with your plumber. be polite, say something inane about the weather, listen to their advice on plumbing, that's it. no tradesperson is aching to have a conversation with the resident nuclear physicist or whatever. leave them alone to their work, pay promptly, thank them for their time. this is just neuroticism, and isn't really related to the ivys. it's a very common human dynamic…
The ability to make small talk effortlessly with anyone is a hallmark of good breeding, education, and manners. Maybe this guy is just bad at being an elite.