The real scary truth is that people probably don't care as much about you as you might think they do. The way you frame the problem, assigning envy of your success to acquaintances by default, worrying about negative attention, reiterating how hard you've worked, leads me to believe that self-importance might be the underlying issue that saps your enjoyment of life. I say this not as a personal attack, but as a cautionary observation.

I know it's hard to deal with a fear just with rational discourse. But if you have a good salary and work in tech, you are probably getting more out of the dystopia than the dystopia is getting out of you. So just learn to enjoy life without worrying about hypothetical events that remain statistically unlikely even by the most conservative estimation in a world of billions. Anything else is self-indulgent.

I appreciate the comment, and you're right. It doesn't make any sense for me to worry about this type of stuff, and it does likely spring from my own self-centeredness. It's certainly easy to get caught up in the negative headlines these days, which is why I try to stick to HN - every once in a while, an article like this slips through and triggers me, I guess. Maybe step one towards changing my outlook would be changing my HN username...

I've unfortunately have discovered that the people who I thought to be friends (smart, funny, kind) have completely changed their attitude once they found out my employer. Now I have to watch out everything I say around them because it's all assumed to come from a place of evil intent and interpreted in the worst case possible.

Lesson learned: do not share your work place with anyone you want to keep being friends with, at least not people that aren't similarly employed/earn similarly.

Do you work at Palantir or the GOPs social media department or something? Because that sounds extreme and can’t be just about income levels

BTW it’s freeing coming from a country where discussing income and money is taboo. I don’t even know what my parents earn. It has its downsides as well, but it’s nice not even being able to judge.

It happens on HN as well, if you work for Google or FB.

Never seen that. Lots of skepticism and animosity to the companies themselves, which is at it should given their position. Never seen it directed at individuals just for being employed at either of those, though.

Don’t be surprised if no one appreciates or even cares about your work besides your employer. It’s part of the package.