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The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

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Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#61

Post by potatolicious »

kirpekar wrote: post #10

I read the whole article and do not agree. Here in Silicon Valley the importance of appearances has become marginal. Yes, you have to be clean, presentable, but that's it. After that you need the skills, talent, knowledge and aptitude to perform your job. And you need that everyday, to keep your job, in this hyper-competitive environment. I was a poor starving immigrant student at one point. I did fine without even m…

Disagree entirely. Silicon Valley is just as superficial as the rest of them, except the points your'e being judged from are a somewhat different set from mainstream society.

In the Valley tech scene (and all tech scenes everywhere) the respect we afford people is heavily influenced by a lot of cultural markers. Access to newfangled gadgetry, neighborhoods we live in, even freaking toe shoes. Don't have the spare time or money to hobnob with other startup types at an expensive trendy bar? Whoops.

We may hire you without these signals, we may be happy with your work. But all else being equal someone as good as you, who presents the correct cultural markers, is going to be afforded a lot more respect and leeway.

The Silicon Valley "meritocracy" is largely a myth. The subculture rejects a lot of mainstream ways of brutally judging people, which is often interpreted as our culture being less judgmental. On the contrary, we simply have formed different ways of brutally judging people. Appearance is everything, tech or otherwise.

Hell, just look at the threads on hiring every time they show up on HN. Lots of people insisting that a candidate must have a fleshed out Github account to qualify - as if activity on Github is the same thing as programming aptitude. Lots of people insisting that side projects are necessary, or participation in open source - as if those things indicate or guarantee aptitude. The brutal ageism we suffer from in this industry is also an indication of just how superficially judgmental we are.

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#62

Post by cobrausn »

sveron wrote: post #29

Beautiful analysis of privilege, class signifiers and race. Technology culture and employment in the United States is dominated by straight white males, usually with some form of class and economic privilege--people who haven't had to navigate within their society with an extreme outsider status--but there are welcome signs of a growing critical self awareness. Over the years on HN, I've seen many posts questioning t…

And yet she shows the barrier to entry for a woman to be other women in HR who were of the same race. How is 'critical self awareness' of straight white males going to help that?

I've talked about this before at length, but assigning the term 'privilege' exclusively to 'straight white males' is fairly intellectually dishonest. The problem is bigger than that - our culture values behaving like a 'normal person', our definition of 'normal' just happens to have a lot of white people in it. Some poor white people living in trailers with heavy accents and unkempt clothes would have had (and do have) similar problems.

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#63

Post by Swizec »

maxerickson wrote: post #45
Qom wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the colloquial use of the term "average" actually means the median. That's how I have seen it used, anyway.

No, people usually have the arithmetic mean in mind.

People have the arithmetic mean in mind, but their intuition of "average" is actually the median, or even more commonly the modus.

When somebody says "Average people are X", they usually mean "Most people I've encountered are X", which is the modus. Hell, I just did that in this exact sentence!

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#64

Post by Qom »

wavefunction wrote: post #36
jessaustin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...why to [sic] poor people vote republican? Why does anyone vote republican, or democrat? Because those are the two choices on the ballot.

You need to keep reading the ballot! There are usually at least one "alternative" candidate who doesn't represent the Democrats or Republicans. I didn't even agree with the Libertarian candidate on many things but I voted for them to satisfy my right and responsibility to vote while not endorsing the Single Party we have here in the US.

We are watching you.

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#65

Post by IanCal »

balabaster wrote: post #44
vinhboy wrote: post #20

While I agree with the sentiment, I don't think her arguments are very strong. I personally think people make bad decisions to buy things or do things not on the premise of it being an "investment", but because most of us are very weak. We do the things we do because we are victims to advertising and peer pressure. You think they spend billions on advertising for nothing? If you read this and you are thinking, "No I…

Er yeah, averages aren't made by half and half, they're made by dividing the sum by the count. It's quite possible to have 90% of the population be below average if the 10% is significantly above the average.

Depends on the average (good lord I can't believe I'm posting this on hacker news). You're talking about the mean, there's also the median which would fit the definition pretty well.

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#66

Post by encoderer »

lmg643 wrote: post #53

I will agree the value of a put-together appearance is valid, in many contexts. and i wouldn't take from that at all. However ... it's ridiculous to use this to defend a $2,500 handbag purchase. the purchase was inadvisable at best. marshall's, target, JCP etc have a massive business strategy around making sophisticated looks available on a low budget. so there are plenty of ways to accomplish the objective of self r…

Certainly true. There are very nice designer handbags for a fraction. Even if you think the $300-500 brands aren't good enough (Coach, Marc, Kate Spade, etc), there are even more in the $800-1200 range (Louis Vuitton, for one..)

I know this because I have a wife with tastes for such things :)

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#67

Post by DanielStraight »

MattGrommes wrote: post #49

One of the hard parts for me to understand about articles like this is the addition of race into a social calculation that may not have included race. If I see somebody I'm hiring has a clean car (one of the examples in the article), I'm not thinking "Great, a black person acting white by having a clean car, I'm hiring her", I'm thinking "Great, a tidy person with a clean car". I see this a lot. Obviously there are p…

Please understand I am just trying to explain a viewpoint, not necessarily state my personal beliefs.

I think the argument is that you won't notice when a white male is tidy. You notice a black person with a clean car because subconsciously you don't expect it. So even a positive thought or comment (a tidy person with a clean car) becomes racial because it would never have come up with a white male.

See also: "articulate"

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#68

Post by potatolicious »

slg wrote: post #32
kirpekar wrote: post #10

I read the whole article and do not agree. Here in Silicon Valley the importance of appearances has become marginal. Yes, you have to be clean, presentable, but that's it. After that you need the skills, talent, knowledge and aptitude to perform your job. And you need that everyday, to keep your job, in this hyper-competitive environment. I was a poor starving immigrant student at one point. I did fine without even m…

Silicon Valley is still somewhat an exception to the rule about appearances. In what other area do the rich people dress exactly like the poorest? Remember the hubbub when Zuckerberg wore a hoodie to a meeting regarding the Facebook IPO. That might be laughed off in Silicon Valley but I know many people in other parts of the country that would view it as insulting for someone to show up to a business meeting wearing…

I don't think we're an exception at all. If anything we just flipped it upside down and called it a day.

In other industries you'd be mocked for wearing a hoodie to work. In this industry we mock you for wearing a suit to work. Hell, show up at most software shops in a pressed shirt and slacks and see what happens. Wear a tie non-ironically and we start assigning labels to you - "MBA", "suit", etc etc.

We've traded one superficial signal for another superficial signal, have no illusions about it. We've spent so long trying to be the anti-mainstream-business that it's no longer about letting people do what they want, and about conforming to the "cool software shop" cultural meme.

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#69

Post by makerops »

ddoolin wrote: post #57
makerops wrote: post #12

Anyone who wants to "belong" to a league of people who would waste 2500$ on a handbag IS stupid. Whether they are poor or not is immaterial. It is also a huge leap to say that being "presentable" is the same as wasting money you do not have on status symbols. They aren't the same thing.

You're assuming there's no derived benefit from belonging to that league of people, but she makes the case that there is a benefit (or benefits) to it, despite admitting it's kind of lame. It's not the strongest argument, I'll give you that, but I wouldn't know.

I am not making that assumption really; people that are able to really provide someone with benefits, whether it is knowledge, capital, power etc, would scoff at, and see right through the 2500$ handbag. My point being, either 1. you think you can access a level of person that will help you out by owning a 2500$ handbag (stupid) or 2. That there is a group of people that will allow you into their social sphere because you own a 2500$ hand bag, in the end people who think like this in that social sphere, will not be able to do anything for you.
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