351–360 of 817 posts
The trick to being the only poor person is to not let on. Once people know, they exploit the hell out of you. They don't seem to do it consciously; somehow it just happens. I made that mistake a few times during my time in SF.
People inherently trust more the judgement of people they think are rich. If you avoid looking obviously poor, you'll find out that you'd be given better assignments, more freedom, that your mistakes won't be scrutinized as much.
The day you find this out and act accordingly, it is like as if you were black and them suddenly find out you woke white one day. All the invisible barriers, the glass ceiling, are subtly not there anymore.
Yes, like racism, classism sucks. But you have only one life, your time is short, and while we must fight to try to change things, you'd also better be smart and try to work around classism just by not giving obvious clues about you have ever been poor.
> I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I was the only person who would say hello to the cleaning lady as she meekly made her rounds around us when we worked late. Everyone else had a long habit of ignoring anyone like her. That's IMO the worst behaviour of the rich listed in this article. I've heard stories that at Google, the non-engineering workers at campus may not socialize with engineers…
I'm definitely not poor, and I've always greeted the cleaning staff. That's not a sign of being poor, it's a sign of not being an ass.
I'm not going to post my credentials on HN but I have it on good authority that these jobs suck enough without having to pretend to relate to your customer. Hello is fine but beyond that and the janitor probably has their shields up lest they say something stupid the same way a white collar professional would be very careful talking to Bill Gates.
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I seem to run into more and more responses like this these days. Instead of responding to any specific comment a person has written, it attempts to paint any differing opinion as being somehow immoral. I can't say that this type of approach is conducive to open discussion.
I summarised a bunch of comments. If you have an issue with my summary you can critique it directly, just like you wanted me to do. To me they don’t look like differing opinions that have been thought through. They seem like kneejerk dismissals, which are against the HN rules.
> Many of the comments on this article are so cold. I can’t believe it. When I read the original article I was imagining all the constructive ways HN readers would interpret it and hold a mirror up to their own behaviour. Some commenters are doing this. But it surprises and depresses me how many people are commenting saying “no, this list isn’t what it says it is, it’s a list showing the author has a negative mindset / is not from the Valley bubble, and that problem can be fixed by just getting over it.”. We can do better than that.
I don't see any engagement (in the first paragraph or subsequent ones) with the opinions of the comments (and if I missed them, feel free to point them out), or any effort to entertain the notion that they could have a point.
There used to be a big problem online where people wouldn't consider other people's opposing views. But we seem to have reached the point where people are upset that people even have views that are different from our own.
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This comment cannot be saying what it seems to be saying, can you clarify what you mean? Maybe it was worded oddly.
First point: I live in Scandinavia. Poor people are just as dumb here as in USA, but we take better care of them. USA assumes that poor people should be able to take care of themselves, which doesn't work. Taking care of them doesn't make them smarter, but it makes their lives better which is the point.
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> You can be poor and still act more “upper class” and you can be rich and still act “working class”. You are stunningly naive if you think that a poor person acting more "upper class" isn't reminded that they're "out of their lane" more than someone rich acting "working class".
No need to go for the throat there. And especially not when you're not totally correct. Paul Fussell's Class documents the exact phenomenon OP describes. Wealth is not class [1]; class is much more complex. For example, poor academics are higher class than rich blue-collar workers. Donald Trump is crazy rich but affects many of the working-class behaviours described in said book (technically "high prole"). Barack Oba…
On a related note, I think the US approach to dismissing class is preferable to the UK where it’s very explicit.
While both approaches have issues, when it’s explicit in the culture people seem to discriminate on it more (or even self-sort themselves based on identity).
I think ideally it’s better for a culture to try to not do that, but pragmatically it’s good to be aware of its existence in order to be successful. I mostly chalk it up to social skills.
On specifically being told to “stay in your lane” my point was more that if you’re behaving a certain way you won’t be told that, because the other people will assume you’re like them. It’s not only about wealth (though as in the article, the behavior is often related).
(moving down to SF in a month or two, so just starting to get a feel for east bay ;) )
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"Making your lunch at the office and not bringing Advil from home? I know generationally wealthy investment bankers who do these things" Generally they don't like to waste money. That's part of how they stay rich for generations (as opposed to someone who hits the lottery and the next generation is basically back to where they started in many cases).
Yeah if we are talking about lunches and people on 6 figure salary this is a fairytale
You might want to correct Warren Buffett since he recommends packing your lunch at least 3 days per week.
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Being HN, people love to debate, and god forbid you give an in for moral high-grounding. My student loans were crushing at one point. Now I require my friends and family to remind me the weight of a 'few thousands'. I feel drawn towards a bubble where I can do opulent activities without guilt. I've heard people say to me "yeah, eventually you just cut off those friends still working at McDonald's". I've never agreed…
> yeah, eventually you just cut off those friends still working at McDonald's That's profound. As "the friend in tech", I've never had this said to my face, but have definitely felt it. There's an us-versus-them mentality when it comes to dealing with those who aren't also in tech; that, somehow, there's no reason to be friends with those who aren't also white-collar professionals. What's more, my own tendency to be…
So I opened the About on the website and I can't quite put my finger on it, but the author is exactly who I imagined her to be after finishing the article. I agree that her coworkers are mostly jerks, but it sounds like she too may not be the most pleasant person to keep around.
For those of you too lazy to click through to it here is the text (followed by a bunch of photos of her in different fancy outfits/settings):
Meg Elison: Author & Essayist Meg Elison is a California Bay Area author and essayist. She writes science fiction and horror, as well as feminist essays and cultural criticism. She is a Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards finalist. Her work has been on the Otherwise (formerly Tiptree) longlist, nominated for the Audie Award, and won the Philip K. Dick Award. She has also been published in McSweeney’s, Shimmer, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Catapult, Terraform, and many other places.
She is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) and the National Writers Union (@paythewriter).
Her debut novel, "The Book of the Unnamed Midwife" won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award. She has been an Otherwise Award honoree twice. Her YA debut, “Find Layla” was published in fall 2020 by Skyscape. It was one of Vanity Fair's Best 15 Books of 2020.
Elison is a high school dropout, a graduate of UC Berkeley, and writes like she’s running out of time.