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John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

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Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#81

Post by uiri »

chasing wrote: post #59
gragas wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Being rich is risking losing your job in order to negotiate a better contract with your boss If you have a 9-to-5, you're probably not rich.

The average household income in the US -- one of the wealthiest countries in the world -- is, like, $55k/yr. If you've got some 9-to-5 job pulling down $80k/yr with no kids or dependencies, you're rich to a lot of people.

Being rich is having enough capital to escape the trap of wage slavery that is a 9-to-5. It is really hard to fathom the idea of money working for you instead of you working for money when $15/hour sounds like a lot of money though so I understand where "a lot of people" are coming from. However, raising the highest marginal income tax rates isn't raising taxes on the rich. It is raising taxes on the upper middle class - the most highly paid of the wage slaves.

The Micawber principle (from David Copperfield) comes to mind here: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery." 20 shillings to a pound, 12 pence to a shilling, so the difference between happiness and misery is a single shilling (or 1/20 of a pound).

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#82

Post by 35bge57dtjku »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #80

I grew up in poverty and am legally blind. It was incredibly difficult to find any way of making any money at all. Seriously, it was very difficult just to get a $5.15/hr minimum wage job in Montana. The strongest emotion I have felt to this day is the feeling that I would never get out of being poor. To this day my nightmares are about losing my job, blowing through my emergency fund and not being able to find anoth…

Don't you get SSI or something for being blind?

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#83

Post by camgunz »

jachee wrote: post #73
fixxer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being poor is 2 nights in jail because of a clerical error Tell us more

Speed trap as fund-raiser > clerical error lost paid ticket > license suspended > road block as fund-raiser > zero-tolerance "suspended license == go to jail" > impounded car, $1200 bond, and jail time "waiting on the judge to post bond."

This is way more common than people realize. Simple traffic violations spiral out of control for a lot of lower income people and they end up with felonies. It's a huge criminal justice issue.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#84

Post by saalweachter »

amagumori wrote: post #57

for anyone who has grown up poor or working class, how do i claw my way out of this? i come from a single parent household, my mom is an elementary school teacher with 4 kids in an expensive city. she barely makes ends meet and cannot support me. i was homeless and addicted to drugs for most of my teenage years, before getting sober and going to college, but dropping out after 2 years - my mom's child support put me…

My main advice would be to caution that most of the advice you're going to get is pretty hit-and-miss; even if some of us have done smart things to improve our life, we usually also got lucky along the way, which can be hard to replicate.

A critical turning point in my life was joining a web comic's forum in '01, which led to an IRC chat room which was eventually distilled down to a dozen-ish people around my age who were all interested in programming, among other things. I got an interview for my first real job through a friend made in that chat room.

Which is why my other advice is to "network", by which I mean, "make friends on the internet". The sad truth is that knowing the right people matters. Some people inherit a great network, the people their parents know, some people get a network by going to college or joining a fraternity. Not having a good network is something that really holds you back, way more than not having a perfect resume. But the internet gives you at least a chance to find some people you would otherwise never meet, make friends, and if you're lucky, they're good programmers at companies that are hiring, and they'll feel comfortable saying, "Hey, I know this person, they're not an asshole and they seem to know their stuff", and you'll have a shot. Not having a degree or an impressive resume will hurt you, but a lot of start ups have trouble finding good programmers and won't care as long as you can do the work.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#86

Post by candiodari »

Being poor is reading about this James Damore Google issue and realizing:

> They fired the guy so everyone would feel better. And then of course they're making it worse by kicking the guy when he's down.

Yep, had that done to me. I HATE EVERY ONE OF YOU !

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#87

Post by camgunz »

amagumori wrote: post #57

for anyone who has grown up poor or working class, how do i claw my way out of this? i come from a single parent household, my mom is an elementary school teacher with 4 kids in an expensive city. she barely makes ends meet and cannot support me. i was homeless and addicted to drugs for most of my teenage years, before getting sober and going to college, but dropping out after 2 years - my mom's child support put me…

Hey, I come from a similar background.

> i'm mentally and physically exhausted after work.

Most people would say "then get a different job", and I think they're not wrong, but I also think you can cheat. I don't know shit about being a bike messenger, but maybe you can grab an hour or two a day to build a sample website or a mobile app. Pretty much everything I learned I learned while I was supposed to be doing something else.

Also practice interviewing and coding interview tests. If you're good at those you'll get a job in a couple months, if you're bad it might take years.

> i feel like a simple CRUD app is too easy of a project to show my skill to an employer, so i try to work on things like a compiler and a real-time rendering engine, but these are huge projects, and i don't have enough free time to finish them in any reasonable time frame.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that you're on one side of the wall and you need to prove yourself, and that on the other side of the wall are a lot of people doing serious software engineering. The majority of people I've worked with are self taught -- as in they don't have a CS degree and figured it out on their own in one way or another. Exactly zero of them have written compilers or rendering engines, and I'd be surprised if they would even know where to start.

This is not to say they're shitty software engineers at all; I've worked with some terrifyingly smart people. But we're all just making it up.

That's the most important advice I can give to you, and it took me a long time to learn it. You're already good enough; put in the time, cheat and lie or whatever if you have to, and get what's yours.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#88

Post by digikata »

amagumori wrote: post #57

for anyone who has grown up poor or working class, how do i claw my way out of this? i come from a single parent household, my mom is an elementary school teacher with 4 kids in an expensive city. she barely makes ends meet and cannot support me. i was homeless and addicted to drugs for most of my teenage years, before getting sober and going to college, but dropping out after 2 years - my mom's child support put me…

Do a CRUD app. Try to make few features, but finish it. If you want to do more later or other projects thats fine, but finish something because it's good for you and for potential employers. Be able to talk about at least one 'thoughful' interaction in the app. If you have interest in the other areas you mentioned, keep learning about those too - they're worth it, but likely small investments over a longer time period of pay off (they will likely pay off if you keep at it).

I'll mention this as a long shot too, the machine shops and courier companies give you an interesting exposure to something that many direct-to-college software engineers may rarely see. Talk about programming to people there too, you may find out there is software you could write to solve problems for those types of shops.

The important thing is not the odds of any one thing, it's that you keep rolling the dice on things that can improve your lot. So good luck and keep your chin up!

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#89

Post by aptwebapps »

amagumori wrote: post #57

for anyone who has grown up poor or working class, how do i claw my way out of this? i come from a single parent household, my mom is an elementary school teacher with 4 kids in an expensive city. she barely makes ends meet and cannot support me. i was homeless and addicted to drugs for most of my teenage years, before getting sober and going to college, but dropping out after 2 years - my mom's child support put me…

You can perhaps bridge the gap between courier and salaried software developer by freelancing. I'd be happy to help you get started. My email is in my profile.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#90

Post by michaelmrose »

truxus wrote: post #44
merpnderp wrote: post #9

Being poor must in part be not knowing how not to be poor or having felonies or depression holding you back. I failed out of college and barely scraped one month of rent for an apartment. I got a shit job working the dock in a light bulb warehouse. I made friends with the truck driver who picked up orders who told me about an opening on their better paying dock. After half a year my hard work caught the eye of HR who…

Your success touched a nerve. Lots of people making excuses for how lucky you are, and how lucky others aren't. It's been known for millennia that "luck" is actually being ready for opportunity and then acting decisively when presented with opportunities. Preparation and action is what seperates winners from losers. You cant help losers win, you can only buy them time. My parents were small farmers in the 80s when it…

Some land of opportunity. You can help people win. Your distinction between winners and losers is arbitrary. At a different degree of adversity the line falls at a different point in the population. If you turn up the heat you would eventually fall on the losers side of the line. If you extend a hand and help your fellow man a lot more of them will end up on the right side of the line. Open your mind instead of your mouth.
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