The traditional American dream is that you change your status through making friends and simple hard work. If you're the hardest working and most dedicated Walmart sales associate, you'll quickly become a manager, and you can iterate on that at least until you're a regional director or something.

From that perspective, it's weird to look in on a typical Silicon Valley company, where it's understood that only people with specific technical knowledge are qualified to make important decisions. And it's downright scary to look at Uber, where the drivers have no internal mobility even in theory.

I’ve worked exclusively in tech for the past 30 years for 10 orgs or so. I learned new skills through formal and informal training. Not your Walmart example but I both progressed organically and joined company teams. Nowhere was there a static tech team without mobility. Maybe I’m just lucky but even giant banks and Gov orgs had career ladders.

If anything this is less of an issue in tech than other industries.

Tech knowledge isn’t innate, no one is born with it. So it’s good that decisions are made with people who have specific tech knowledge. It’s also good that tech knowledge is one of the most democratic, accessible, and learnable knowledges out there. I know dozens of high level tech leaders who have no degree at all, a couple with no high school diploma and one who dropped out of middle school.

> “An Outer Party member could reach the Inner Party by chancing into an early job at a lottery-ticket company (such as Facebook or Google) or by becoming a successful entrepreneur. But that’s rare; most of the Outer Party prefers working for the Inner Party, gradually accumulating equity through stock grants and appreciating real estate.” -If you look at the bios of VC “inner party” people, very few were born VC. Many became VC based on their work experience. The quote calls this a “lottery-ticket” experience implying that there’s no free will involved with the shift between statuses.

What the author is saying is "most people in the Outer Party will not join the Inner Party", not "most people in the Inner Party started in the Inner Party". Similarly, you could say it's rare for a US citizen to become President, even though all Presidents were US citizens.

But of course that’s true. It’s also inconsequntial that most people in the outer party will not join the inner party (or that it’s rare for a US citizen to become President).

That’s perfectly fine as there are way more engineers than VCs. This is only a problem when there is low mobility, like on caste systems.

While it’s impossible for someone to change castes and they are born into it, it is possible for mobility between engineer and VC.

Thus my complaint that the author’s piece isn’t logically sound as a mobile system with inequality isn’t a problem as long as there is efficiency and low barriers to access.

Inequality isn’t bad inherently. It’s bad when corrupt. For example, it’s not bad that 1 out of 1M wins the lotto and now has way more. It’s bad if the lotto is rigged.

But I suppose if the author believes that it’s bad that not everyone gets a trophy, then that should be a different argument. And a different piece. And not incorrectly refer to castes.

That's a decent point. I want to be clear that I'm open to the thesis here, that the class system in Silicon Valley has caste like elements to it. However, this particular article doesn't investigate this thesis. Instead it appears, at least in part, to be grabbing the emotional impact of a "caste" system while discussing what is a class system.

Right, I agree with this. There are certainly classes in the sense that some people make $250k and there are certainly homeless people and baristas.

And there may be some inequities and inefficiencies in the merit of people at classes. But my experience (and the data in general) shows that there is low inequality and my personal experience shows more mobility that other professions that require a lot more certification and training.

I believe if you’re a great programmer, you can make a great product, and make lots of money and stay in the outer party or join the inner party. Or, even better, not recognize these artificial classifications and do whatever you want.

Social mobility in the US is far lower than most of its peer nations in the developed world.