Poor in Tech
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Poor in Tech
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Re: Poor in Tech
#2I've seen this before. Not often, because the companies I have worked at have rarely hired someone from this social strata. But in the cases where we have, I have seen the alienation.
Aside from the obvious "be genuinely friendly", does anyone have suggestions of what to do as a coworker to support someone suffering from this cultural barrier?
Re: Poor in Tech
#3I've seen this before. Not often, because the companies I have worked at have rarely hired someone from this social strata. But in the cases where we have, I have seen the alienation. Aside from the obvious "be genuinely friendly", does anyone have suggestions of what to do as a coworker to support someone suffering from this cultural barrier?
> I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I made more there than I’d ever made before; a daring amount I had been afraid to ask for during the offer process. I discovered through misadventure that I still made less than any of the executive assistants, or the receptionist. I was, in fact, the lowest-paid person in the building including the interns. I hadn’t known what was possible, so I couldn’t even think to ask for what I was worth to them.
One of the largest issues which would have caused many of the others on the list seems to be that they were absurdly underpaid. So make sure your co-workers aren't making peanuts compared to you?
Re: Poor in Tech
#4> once I realized they would keep restocking the tampons in the ladies’ room, I stopped bringing any from home. I said as much in a fit of daring to a woman with whom I thought I would become friends. She admonished me for using bleached cotton products in my vagina. We are not friends.
More evidence that the "sisterhood" is a total myth.
What an awful environment to have to work in :(
Re: Poor in Tech
#5To me, this reads more as a list of "from outside the valley bubble" signifiers than it does as a list of things that people who've grown up in poverty might do, even if the former was a result of the latter.
There are some exceptions - not noticing missed paychecks is the biggest - but most of it is just stuff that happens every day in other offices.
Making your lunch at the office and not bringing Advil from home? I know generationally wealthy investment bankers who do these things, and they're the kind of people who spent their childhood summering at Fishers Island.
Re: Poor in Tech
#6This is different from being poor in the financial sense. It goes deep into the poor mindset and pscyhology and how it can stick around even after you're doing okay. My parents are working class, I'm an immigrant and I had a minimum wage job for a few years - I've never felt any of the things listed in this article, before or after I was doing okay financially, in or outside of tech.
Re: Poor in Tech
#7Instead of seeing the bright side of life, in which this person clearly vastly improved their situation in life, all they can see is what they don’t have.
“I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I had the only fat body in the building.”
I’m sorry, but no, being poor doesn’t make you fat. Your eating choices make you fat. Poor people have agency too. Agency is not something you buy. This is coming from someone who probably makes half of what you make in a year.
Re: Poor in Tech
#8Embarrassing. My heart is supposed to break for you because nobody else wanted to eat your kind of Cheetos? One of the most materially fortunate people who ever lived, richer than pharaohs and emperors of the past, still finds some way to write this tedious thing about being poor... at a startup... probably in California. Could you at least go visit rural areas of Cambodia or Nepal or something to get some vague notion of what being poor is like? Hint: it means you can't buy anything because you don't have any money, and there's hardly any way to get any.
Re: Poor in Tech
#9I've seen this before. Not often, because the companies I have worked at have rarely hired someone from this social strata. But in the cases where we have, I have seen the alienation. Aside from the obvious "be genuinely friendly", does anyone have suggestions of what to do as a coworker to support someone suffering from this cultural barrier?
> I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I made more there than I’d ever made before; a daring amount I had been afraid to ask for during the offer process. I discovered through misadventure that I still made less than any of the executive assistants, or the receptionist. I was, in fact, the lowest-paid person in the building including the interns. I hadn’t known what was possible, so I couldn’t…
Yeah, it clearly made all involved people uncomfortable. If I knew this I would have serious questions for my next HR one-on-one: "I am not going to work next to an exploited person - are you going to pay up or should I take the next recruiter call I get today?"
Re: Poor in Tech
#10> 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 at all. What kind of society is this that Google is building? Aren't you even allowed to acknowledge someone else's humanity?