This is a case of the contrarian dynamic: an initial wave of objections to the article, followed by a wave of objections to the objections. The latter get upvoted, and so we end up with a top comment saying "I can't believe the comments in this thread" or (as in the current example) "the comments here are so $bad_somehow". Recent explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27145616. More: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

It's important to be aware that this is a mechanical process. The first comments to appear in a thread are there because they're the fastest to write, not because they come from "the average HN commenter". Another way of putting this is that the initial comments tend to be reflexive rather than reflective: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... (Objecting to objections can be reflexive also, but at least the second wave tends to be more substantive and charitable.)

Replies are welcome, but I've collapsed this subthread to prevent the page from going too far off topic. Sorry—I know that my comment is just as off topic. But it has an educational function (at least under optimistic assumptions) and that requires people seeing it.

Let's clone dang and employ the clones as moderators for all forms of social media. We will of course pre-program them for compliance.

We can replace one moral quandary with another, much darker, one, which is a boon because it is something to talk about. And we've solved twitter.

I loved your aphorism in the linked thread about "Negativity about negativity is not positive. It's an idempotent operation."

It's gone straight to my anki quotes collection. :)

Many of the "initial" comments here are at least as deliberate and thoughtful as the ensuing "objection" comments, including the one you replied to.

I agree that such a contrarian dynamic likely exists on HN, but you're not quite being fair in this illustration of it.

That's possible. I haven't read the whole thread, and am taking the GP's word for how they perceived it, since it's the perception that creates the reaction anyhow.

"reflexive rather than reflective". Thanks. I learned something very useful. I'll always try to recall it when I can't understand why I am having an argument at all.

What if we shadowbanned all comments for half an hour, or an hour?

I think this could be useful. Or maybe something like suppress the first half hour of comments and then show them all at once but in reverse chronological order.

It’s possible that the current system is fine as it is, and that Dan is simply explaining how it is. Suppressing comments is an interesting idea, but there are all kinds of second order effects — if it’s a disaster story, people need to communicate. If it’s not, the ranking algorithm would need to be adjusted, since the suppressed comments have an unfair time penalty. And so on.

Thanks for this. I didn't notice myself falling into this wider pattern of behaviour. Kind of uplifting!

In some ways it's a laundry list of ways rich people in the Bay Area act like wankers, which is interesting, but also quite irritatingly stereotypical. There are plenty who don't refuse to talk to the cleaning staff, lecture others on their choice of tampon, or snob fat people at the gym.

I don't want people from outside the bubble (e.g. me, three years ago) to read this and think they'll be surrounded by wall-to-wall wankery and class prejudice if they take a job at a SF startup, because it's not wholly representative of all employees at all startups. Most of them are nice. Most people everywhere are nice.

I came from a family of coal miners and moved to the bay for a tech job. The second paragraph is more of the truth than I think people want to admit. People are nice, but they are also wankers. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them a lot of the time, it’s just they are extremely, extremely naive and sometimes in their naive ness and lack of perspective say incredibly offensive things. You have to shrug it off like you are part of the in group even though they just insulted your family. No one told me about this part of the job in college.

Much of this comes down to 'theory of mind' though. I wouldn't be surprised if someone in that group misguidedly said the same about you, and that you'd be utterly shocked to hear it. At the end of the day, I feel a good number of these problems have more to do with poor communication rather than tribalism.

And as Scott Adams likes to say, you can't fix what you don't talk about. So perhaps shrugging things off is not as noble as you think it is, because that makes you complicit in perpetuating that problem.

One of my most mature and eye-opening moments was when I realised that if someone mistreats you, but they seem unaware of it, and you don't tell them this is the case, then when they do it a second time and you get pissed off, you are in fact the asshole in this scenario, not them. Because if you implode a year later when it has happend for the Nth time, and you call them an asshole for having done it N times, they will very reasonably be upset you didn't trust them enough to set that boundary from day 1 when it first happened, but simply assumed they were naturally an asshole and not worth your time. Whereas if you immediate point your boundaries as soon as they're crossed, this leads to respect and mutual understanding, because you care enough about the engagement to set respectful rules for it. I have never met anyone since who didn't appreciate me setting clear, reasonable, respectful boundaries as soon as they crossed a line. Not only that, this tends to lead to people feeling more comfortable to share their own boundaries, which has more than once shown me my own stupidity when dealing with people, and I was more than grateful for them letting me know in a respectful manner.

I also do not read this article that way. I think she does not complain about them. Most of them are most likely nice people (ignoring the gym paragraph). She reflect that "she realizes" that she is "poor compared to them". She does not imply that they are bad people or that she feels miserable about her "poorness" (she seems to earn much more than before .. and quit ... and probably got something better ... and ... seems to write a successful novelthingy)

The only other implicit criticism toward her coworkers was ignoring and not greeting the cleaning staff. For the most part, her coworkers come across as privileged, rather than mean or otherwise morally deficient.

> her coworkers come across as privileged, rather than mean or otherwise morally deficient.

Yes, I find a parallel with the representation of the rich/privileged on the movie Parasite.

I'm not sure I see anything wrong with not bothering the cleaning staff while they're at work. The whole reason they've been hired is to spare everyone else the time and effort involved in cleaning, so to have everyone waste time on greetings would just be demeaning their work.

Not even a "good evening" for your fellow human?

I usually nod or say a quick greeting in passing as I head out for the evening. I've also thanked the guy who refills the soda can dispenser, pointing out that the company runs on caffeine. Each of these interactions takes less than 30 seconds and reminds us of our shared experience on this planet.

A nod. But if I know them, a greeting.

I just don't want to disrupt their work or impose that they have to respond back.

There is a difference between “not bothering the cleaning staff” and not acknowledging that they exist and are human and are standing right in front of you.

Author is describing the second, and it happens pervasively in the upper classes.

Sadly, this is true. Though it also leaves a huge opportunity for people to encourage cleaning staff (or drivers or any other manual labor in cultures that privilege intellectual work) with brief yet heartfelt greetings and genuine thanks for the valuable work they do.

Seeing and thanking overlooked people for the work they do takes almost no time if its habitual, yet can potentially brighten someone's day.

>The whole reason they've been hired is to spare everyone else the time

Do you extend this to other jobs as well? Is it demeaning to say hello to your boss because she's been hired to spare you the time of managerial decisions? What about the QA folks who've been hired to save you the time of executing tests?

Do you never say hi to a contractor ever in the workplace? Dude, that's cold.

Shame on you for telling the truth. You have a right not to speak to anyone you don't want to speak to. You are probably smart as shit and make close to a million a year. Hell, I'd be a dick if I made that kind of cheese.

Not to detract from the broader point, which I completely agree with, but the gym example didn't strike me as a Valley-specific phenomenon. I could imagine something similar happening at a gym in a working class neighborhood, and I could also think of gyms which welcome all, regardless of being a beginner or not.

People not near the median get critiqued often for their weight, and it happens to underweight people too.

She didn't really elaborate on why she didn't feel welcome in the gym. I've felt out of place and unwelcome in gyms - but it was all in my head. Nobody said or did anything to make me feel that way, they were all just in really great shape.

I've also had it made explicitly clear to me that I wasn't welcome in certain places.

> In some ways it's a laundry list of ways rich people in the Bay Area act like wankers, which is interesting, but also quite irritatingly stereotypical.

I dont think this is true about article at all. Quite a few points are not complains about other peoples behavior nor do they contain anything bad. I do indoor climbing, it does cost money, we talked about climbing in the work a lot. I would really have to work hard to perceive myself being criticizes by that point.

Many are about authors own behavior.

The thing with tampons was that rich person would not think of that tampon as "save me money" resource the way poor person did. Telling you not to use this or that for bogus health reasons is not something exlusive to rich people and author does not claim so. It just made the encounter more annoying.

>Quite a few points are not complains about other peoples behavior nor do they contain anything bad. I do indoor climbing, it does cost money, we talked about climbing in the work a lot. I would really have to work hard to perceive myself being criticizes by that point.

I find myself in that situation quite frequently when it comes to sports cars. They are easily my biggest passion, but unfortunately it's not a cheap hobby. Even though I'm not struggling financially nor am I rolling in piles of cash, I'm certain that I'm far more comfortable spending a much higher percentage of my income towards them than other people. If the subject of cars comes up I often find myself talking about cars that are 2-3x more expensive than most other people in my income bracket are willing to spend, and I've realized how that makes me look to someone who only views cars as appliances and knows nothing of my personal finances. I've tried to bite my tongue and limit the amount of car related discussions I have with people who aren't auto enthusiasts. It makes me look like an out of touch person much wealthier than I really am, bragging about something they couldn't care less about.

>I dont think this is true about article at all. Quite a few points are not complains about other peoples behavior nor do they contain anything bad. I do indoor climbing, it does cost money, we talked about climbing in the work a lot. I would really have to work hard to perceive myself being criticizes by that point.

I did not read the article as commenting about what is "bad" about the tech industry but rather about how the homogeneity of the culture can make people feel alienated. Imagine your statement written by someone else read:

"I dont think this is true about article at all. Quite a few points are not complains about other peoples behavior nor do they contain anything bad. I have a super yacht, it does cost money, we talked about the best places to take our super-yachts at work a lot. I would really have to work hard to perceive myself being criticizes by that point."

Can you see how that would cause some people to feel alienated? Just because something is normative to you and your peer group does not mean it's normative across the board. It also doesn't mean it's automatically good or bad.

Climbing is something that basically anyone can do, it improves your fitness and reduces the load on the healthcare system. Super yachts are something that almost no one can have, probably causes some pollution and otherwise doesn't really do anything useful? How can you compare the two?

The author looks like she has to pass through doors sideways, so I can see how she might feel alienated by an activity that requires one to pull their own weight. I am quite sure that making people that are unhealthy by choice feel alienated is a good thing, all in all.

Did you read my comment and comment I was responding to before writing yours? The parent complains that article listed things "act like wankers". Which clearly means "bad".

Second, I worked with people who had completely different hobbies and interests than I do. I am not always in dominant majority, with climbing in that team I was.

As far as I know, people having hobbies I don't care about is completely normal.

Yes, I read the parent comment. I originally typed out in my previous post that I felt you may have missed the point of the article, but I felt that was too harsh. I don't think the main takeaway from the article should be certain things commonplace in tech culture are "bad" but how it can be alienating. To that point, both yours and the parent post seem overly concerned with the "bad vs. good" distinction. I do have some issues with the article, but I think alienating certain people (whether conscious or not) is something we should be concerned about.

Edit: it looks like you've edited your comment quite a bit since I first replied but I think there's another important clarification:

>As far as I know, people having hobbies I don't care about is completely normal.

I'm not using "normative" to define "weird or not-weird" but rather commonplace. So regarding the article and your example, indoor climbing may be commonplace in your peer-group while still being non-normative in someone like the author's peer-group. Pile enough of these together and it's easy to see how one may begin to feel alienated.

At some point, you have to decide to either;

1) talk about what you like, even if other people don’t connect well (be yourself at work?) 2) only like things other people connect with (seems limiting, but probably good for the social interactions) 3) pretend to like things others do and don’t talk about what you like (pretty much the definition of the conversationalist, but doing that all the time seems fake and probably unhealthy mentally for too long?) 4) never talk about anything controversial at all - aka the big Corp, how’s the weather answer.

You can’t be authentic AND make everyone happy. Literally impossible. If someone is alienated by someone talking about who they are, whose responsibility is that anyway?

I certainly wasn’t wealthy when I was growing up (or frankly had anything but hand me downs 90% of the time), but I still found ways to get out and do stuff I liked - salvaged old computers, went exploring in the desert, etc. it often meant not really connecting with mainstream folks (who were more interested in sports or the like), and I found it pretty alienating trying to have ‘small talk’ with 99% of the folks around me frankly.

Learning how to connect with them was a skill it took a lot of time and effort to hone - it would not have helped them or me to think they had a duty to not be who there were or care about anything but what they cared about IMO. Anymore than me any my stuff.

>Learning how to connect with them was a skill it took a lot of time and effort to hone

This was my main issue with the article. The author seemed so hyper-focused on the differences she saw day-to-day that she seemed unable to overcome them to find common ground to connect.

>You can’t be authentic AND make everyone happy. Literally impossible. If someone is alienated by someone talking about who they are

This isn't really what I was getting at though. To me, the issue isn't whether or not we can talk about or be our authentic selves, but more about creating a monolithic culture that has in-groups and out-groups. You can have a culture that is homogenous but still accepts those from the outside as equals. In that context, I don't think your assertions hold; you don't have to have the same interests to connect with people. For example, you can connect by being legitimately curious about differing interests as long as it's a culture that is open to different interests without using them as a defining characteristic. From the author's perspective, it seems like she still felt like an outsider. How much of that was in her own head stemming from insecurities about being poor, I don't know.

> you can connect by being legitimately curious about differing interests as long as it's a culture that is open to different interests without using them as a defining characteristic.

100% agree with that. Differences shouldn't make you exclude other people. Like the example where people just ignore the cleaning staff. It just tells alot how the people there are privileged. I worked at an engineering firm and people generally do acknowledge the cleaning staff. They're people too regardless of their position or work.

Sure, but expecting others to go out of that way to do that for you just doesn’t work in my experience. This seems pretty mellow frankly.

If anything, complaining about it just seems to make it worse?

That’s because she WAS an outsider? Being welcomed doesn’t change that. The only thing that can change that is assimilation on a persons side combined with a willingness from the surrounding body to assimilate.

Even then, it’s usually easy to find areas where there are gaps, if you look.

People can, have, and will continue to form in and out groups. Calling out particularly problematic instances can help (and be necessary) but it’s never actually going away, anymore than crime, poverty, success, failure, etc. It’s a fundamental human (and other species) survival strategy required by and a byproduct of the world we are in.

This is true everywhere, about pretty much everything, and has pros and cons.

It doesn’t sound like they were doing anything particularly obnoxious, just not particularly awesome.

If you look for problems, you’ll find them. Most environments in my experience are a lot less welcoming than what she was describing. Each of these places I’ll note were very welcoming, and for every one of these items I’ve got 10 of people inviting me into their homes or spending time to get to know me and what my circumstances were like.

when I lived in Singapore for a bit, pretty much anyone over 30ish years old would stop and stare at me for minutes if I was outside a financial center. Any sort of discussion with older Chinese folks would inevitably end up with the word ‘Gwailo’ mixed in there somewhere. My first name was hard to pronounce for folks who speak Cantonese in particular, which didn’t help.

India, I’d get random scams directed my way because it seemed like they assumed I was a soft in the head westerner. Everything had a huge markup associated with it (white guy tax I heard a local friend call it). At least I knew enough to not push the cow away when I visited a local temple and one came up and started to sneeze on myself and a friend.

Munich Germany, while on a walk some folks got visibly angry (and one couple yelled at me) when they stopped me to ask me directions and I didn’t know German. I guess wearing a black t-shirt and jeans made them think I was lying to them or something? I don’t know enough German to know for sure what they said, but boy were they not happy.

Japan, I was always welcomed and everyone was very friendly - and very clear that I was not Japanese and needed my hand held at every step. Getting picked out of lines I was doing perfectly fine in so someone could give me hands on personal care was sometimes convenient, but it was clear that I was getting singled out. A friend of mine who lived there for many years and is married to a Japanese woman describes it as ‘you’ll always be treated like a drunk guest that drank too much, and needs help getting home safely’. He speaks fluent Japanese, is very familiar with all the customs, and has been married to his wife for over a decade and still gets the treatment.

Are these problems? I mean, I could write a book on each of those places and many more if that’s what I wanted to focus on. I could also write 10 on the positives each culture had, how much they welcomed me and supported me and others.

You’ve hit on my main qualms with the article that I’ve elaborated on elsewhere in this thread, namely that I think she came in with a self-fulfilling prophesy about being an outsider.

>That’s because she WAS an outsider

This is a bit in line with that same problem. Is she an outsider because she’s “poor”? Because she likes different hobbies? I’d like to think we should aspire to define our in-groups by less superficial means. I’m sure she could have been an “insider” if she (and others) didn’t define their tribes this way

Nod, for sure. Though I suspect not defining it this way is also a bit of a ‘don’t think of the purple elephant’ problem - just not how most (all?) people work.

We can aspire to do better, but that doesn’t mean others will agree that it is useful for them or a goal for them either.

> So regarding the article and your example, indoor climbing may be commonplace in your peer-group while still being non-normative in someone like the author's peer-group.

It was normative in that one team and is not normative in other groups I am member of. You seem to assume I am perfect social fit in all teams and groups I am member off.

That is just not the case. Climbing made me normative in that place. We talked about it a lot, note past tense. And in other places they talked about stuff that profoundly is not interesting or available ro me.

It is super odd to me that you assume that normal state is to be perfect fit for working group you are in.

>You seem to assume I am perfect social fit in all teams and groups I am member off.

I made no such claims. I literally only used the sole example you used.

>It is super odd to me that you assume that normal state is to be perfect fit for working group you are in.

Again, you are putting words in my mouth. All I am stating is that if you find yourself in a fairly homogenous group that you don't necessarily fit in, it can be an alienating experience. My only other claim is that point seemed to fly by you because you were more concerned with things you're interested in, like indoor rock climbing, being painted as "bad".

>It is super odd to me that you assume that normal state is to be perfect fit for working group you are in.

I’m not sure how you can have this takeaway. My point is literally the exact opposite idea about how homogeneous cultures can be alienating if we aren’t careful.

> because you were more concerned with things you're interested in, like indoor rock climbing, being painted as "bad"

I was literally primary concerned opposing the original message I responded to - the one that claimed article says those hobbies are bad. It does not sound terribly difficult to understand to me. I opposed characterization of article itself.

You are trying to explain to me something about alienation when people in the room dont have the same hobbies, which has nothing to do with my point.

>I was literally primary concerned opposing the original message I responded to

I know, and what I'm trying to point out is that it misses what I consider the larger point. Your point above is tantamount to a "they started it" defense. Both you and the person you are responding to can be simultaneously missing the bigger picture. I was deliberately responding to the child comment because it would address both the child and the parent. My point is that your comment (and the one you responded towards) is wrongly focused, which has very much to do with your point. The fact that you seem unwilling or unable to see that perspective, even just to refute it, makes this dialogue tiresome. It would be like somebody writing an article about how a politician's rhetoric is divisive and somebody constantly defends it by saying it's eloquent...you can be "not-wrong" and still miss the point.

The word wanker in Australian English denotes a specific kind of negativity, attached to egotism and acting as though you're better than others. I shouldn't have used it on HN, as it's a poor choice of phrasing for an international audience.

As per [0], "the socially leveling term wanker ridicules a person who is pretentious and arrogant, thereby suggesting that humility, solidarity and being down-to-earth are highly valued qualities in Australian society." Vocally complaining about unbleached tampons and flying to Greece for one weekend are textbook wanker behaviour. I'm not sure of a good American English word to substitute.

[0] http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2003/stollznow.pdf

"douchey" is probably the closest I can immediately think of for American English

"They are nice because they are rich" - Parasite

>In some ways it's a laundry list of ways rich people in the Bay Area act like wankers, which is interesting, but also quite irritatingly stereotypical.

People have a tendency to act irritatingly stereotypical too.

> Most people everywhere are nice.

While true, places earn their reputations for a reason.

Even without the race element - there’s definitely a class thing.

I noticed it when I moved to the Bay Area after growing up in western New York. The types of foods people ate or didn’t eat, the restaurants people would or would not go to.

The shows people would or would not watch, even the way people talked. I think I hadn’t really seen the difference in class behavior before in America. Now it’s easy to see it.

A lot of it is tightly correlated to wealth and a lot of it reminds me of things the author describes (fear of not being able to find a job, fear of just “taking a year off” because it sounds financially crazy), but it’s not only about wealth really.

You can be poor and still act more “upper class” and you can be rich and still act “working class”. It’s a lot of little things people do in preferences and how they talk/behave.

Much racism in America is actually classism. That's why something like Henry Louis Gates being profiled by a neighbor and a policeman as he was trying to get back to his Harvard home makes the news: Gates is an educated upper-class black man, and in this case he was treated as the latter rather than the former.

I think you could argue that the opposite is true. Much classism in America is actually racism. For example, opposition to welfare programs have often been motivated by racist tropes like welfare queens. The truth is that racism and classism in America are deeply intertwined.

We have the same discourse around welfare in the UK, where the stereotypical poor person is white. I'll bet you a bag of Hot Cheetos they have it in Hungary, Japan, and other ethnically homogeneous countries.

Welfare may be a bad example because I think there are more white people on welfare in general? Would potentially be evidence of class divide.

I think there’s truth in what you’re saying though - single family zoning is an easy example. Also when they talk about welfare on the news and only show black people (even though more white people are on welfare iirc) - or how the sister reply to your comment gets indignant demanding you “explain how opposition to welfare is racism” and in the next sentence complains about minority communities. So there’s definitely a racial component.

I guess I mostly agree, we just see race more easily than class because of arbitrary skin color categorization. I hope in the future both are irrelevant.

Explain how opposition to welfare programs is racism. Also, please explain why impoverished minority communities have not vastly improved regardless of the constantly increasing money tossed into welfare programs.

The comment wasn't that opposition to welfare programs was solely caused by racism, just that it was one motivation. It's easier to defend a racist policy if racism is never explicitly brought up, the policy just has a disparate impact along racial lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#%22Southern_strate...

>The comment wasn't that opposition to welfare programs was solely caused by racism, just that it was one motivation

Ok so how would one oppose welfare programs and not be labeled racist? Do you believe there are no individuals taking advantage of the welfare system and that pointing out anyone who is would be racist?

I think that the above was comment abour welfare queen discussion that actually happened in USA around 1980 in presidential campaign.

My point was to try and get the poster to tell us how we can be critical of welfare programs without being racist. Since they never answered I'm going to assume, like most people with this stance, they think ANY criticism against it is racism and no discussion should happen. Assuming that every black single woman is a 'welfare queen' would be racist but the idea that there are individuals who take advantage of the system is not, especially since it's true. Focusing on a term that some find offensive seems like a waste of time and a distraction from real discussion on the issue.

Opposition to welfare programs happens in countries without race related problems as well. How do you distinguish between such opposition if you're going along with "that affects particular race more that's why they oppose it" argument. You can paint everyone to be racist this way.

Opposition to welfare is not racist per se. But it has been used by politicians and pundits in the US as a dog whistle to drive a racial wedge between white and Black Americans. It's not explicit, and that's the point [0].

0. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...

Yeah, it has been used but the way the argument goes it's impossible to form an argument against a welfare program without being painted a racist.

What I mean is that a line of reasoning so often used these days: "this affects race X more therefore it's racist/racially motivated" is just incorrect thinking.

Have you heard of intergenerational wealth, which is one of the issues described in the OP article? Then, have you further heard of redlining, Jim Crow, slavery, sharecropping, lynchings, hiring discrimination, justice system discrimination, police discrimination, urban ghettoization, locally-funded school districts based on local property taxes, code switching speech, cultural discrimination on styles of dress and hair, and the digital divide?

Would you like to take any guesses of any of those issues not being involved in poor members of minority groups remaining poor?

What does that have to do with welfare being a good idea? You're straw-manning.

There are no straw men here and it's insulting that you'd accuse a stranger acting in good faith of that.

It's a direct answer to "Also, please explain why impoverished minority communities have not vastly improved regardless of the constantly increasing money tossed into welfare programs."

Food assistance, subsidized housing, and monthly cash payments are only really short-term stabilizing tools. For that they can be useful, but those systems are not designed or equipped to vastly improve the wealth and self-reliance of impoverished communities.

The key word in "impoverished minority communities" is "communities". Good schools, grocery stores, street maintenance, good transit, good jobs within driving distance, fair lending (and honestly lending practices designed to fix the damage of generations of unfair lending), vocational training, job placement assistance, enforcement of building codes on landlord-owned buildings, stable utility infrastructure including broadband Internet, and other things stable, wealthier communities take for granted are necessary to have a stable, flourishing community population.

> 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".

Spot on. Every time I wear "fancy" clothes I'm constantly worrying that everyone is pointing at me thinking "we know who you really are, you're poor and don't deserve to be acting this way". This is despite me moving away from my poor town years ago and establishing a solid job for myself. Nobody in my new town knows me at all yet I assume they know I came from a "less than" background. A poor person must undo decades of the effects poverty inflicts to truly appear "rich" where a rich person must simply "lower their standards" to act working class.

> must simply "lower their standards" to act working class.

You make that sound easy, but I see the situation as symmetric. For example, my wife grew up wealthier than I did - and when it came time for us to buy a car, her first question was "how big a car would we need to comfortably move our family around" while mine was "what's the most affordable?"

it's a completely different mindset - she is frustrated that I default to a poor mindset and I am frustrated that she defaults to a rich one. Neither one is easy to switch.

I'm talking about the case where a person doesn't get to "choose" to act poor. The poor person doesn't get to choose to think other than what is affordable, where someone with more money gets the choice to thinking of things other than affordability, like comfortably. The mindset that develops from a lack of agency in one's life is more traumatizing than one that does have that agency but must learn to change their mindset. Different people might not be as effected by poverty however.

You don't need anything even close to overly "fancy"; if you're the average poor person, you can vastly improve your image simply by wearing any sort of formal clothes, as in a suit and tie. Even if others "know who you really are" they'll still appreciate that you're making the effort to relate to them, and that's what matters. We tend to forget stuff like this as we lose sight of the value of enduring traditions, but if you look at visual records of how older generations behaved you'll see plenty of poorer folks looking quite comfortable in formal wear.

You're still not going to look right, though. You will have the "wrong" shoes, or you'll keep them so long from thrift that they'll go out of fashion. Your one set of nice clothes is precious to you in a way that the one-out-of-ten is not to someone in the upper class, and that will make you wear it differently.

But poor people hate feeling like they have to change their appearance to get the approval of the privileged classes. Feeling like you have to visually and verbally code switch to get "better" people to respect you just feels bad. Spending precious money on the cheapest formal wear you can find just so people will take you seriously further cements the divide poor people feel.

> But poor people hate feeling like they have to change their appearance to get the approval of the privileged classes.

You say that like everyone else isn't doing the exact same thing. Being privileged is all about playing the "get everyone else's approval" game. But coming from a different social context it's even more basically a way of showing others respect and earning their trust, so it's not without consequence.

It loops back around at the top. It’s why there’s an eccentric rich person trope and why it’s called “fuck you” money.

If you’re totally financially independent you’re more free to do what you want, independent of class behavior expectations (or even in contradiction of them). They no longer matter that much (unless you’re doing something that requires politics or people).

You're right, everyone is doing that to some degree at some point through out their life. But consider that there exists people who feel they need to dress better just to get the basic respect they deserve. In the case where someone cannot afford the appropriate clothing, it ostensibly seems they are unable to show the respect you speak of and are deemed "less than" because of that, but really their minds and character is the same regardless of clothing. Being privileged is having the agency to pay for the kinds of clothes that impress people and causes them to respect you, and in some cases, without having much other than a nice suit to justify such respect.

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 Obama has much less money but most would view him as upper-middle class. Nobody would accuse the above of being "out of their lane".

My very rough approximation: class is something like the integral of wealth over very long periods of time. Being rich and well-connected for long periods gives you a chance to accumulate high-status behaviours and preferences, which can persist even when the wealth doesn't, and continue to confer benefits. Preferring golf or tennis to say, bowling, doesn't necessarily come with a major difference in affordability. But being good at golf might help your career more than bowling. Reading more helps in tons of ways, and most people only pick up this habit if they grow up with access to good education and parental cognitive surplus.

[1] https://resourcegeneration.org/breakdown-of-class-characteri...

Yeah - I agree with all of this.

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).

> On a related note, I think the US approach to dismissing class is preferable to the UK where it’s very explicit.

Huh. My perception has always been that America is far more obsessed with class and “keeping up with the Joneses” than Britain.

That said, I have in the past been called “rich” in a derogatory manner just for owning an iPad. But that’s more an amusing anecdote than social commentary. I find this type of thing to be the exception rather than the norm.

For context I’m a Brit with a decent job but my family is certainly not upper middle class or even middle class and all my friends are working class because those are the people I naturally get along with. For the most part the fact I make more money doesn’t cause any friction in those social circles. One of my mates even said to me if he didn’t know better he’d assume I lived on a council estate.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is the class lines are very blurred in modern day British society except for at the extremes. As such it’s not something people tend to obsess over.

On the other hand I’ve found that, in general, middle class Yanks tend to care more about being perceived a certain way so people know they’re middle class or upper middle class or whatever else. I’ve even seen them argue over exactly what constitutes “real” upper middle class compared to regular middle class. Not something I’ve ever seen Brits do.

Cross-Atlantic class discourse is always somewhat tricky since a car factory assembly line worker would be considered middle class in the US (based on income) but working class in the UK (based on status.) As a Brit in the US I find it kinda fascinating.

> My perception has always been that America is far more obsessed with class and “keeping up with the Joneses” than Britain.

The US is obsessed with material consumption. As such it probably plays a bigger part in status here than in the UK.

> I guess the point I’m trying to make is the class lines are very blurred in modern day British society except for at the extremes.

Perhaps this is a reflection of increasing university education and the changing nature of work away from factory jobs. In a way it's a move to a more American view of class, where most people are considered 'middle class'.

> As such it’s not something people tend to obsess over. > I’ve even seen them argue over exactly what constitutes “real” upper middle class compared to regular middle class. Not something I’ve ever seen Brits do.

Brits regularly obsess over whether someone or some hob qualifies as working class or not though!

Donald Trump is as high class as it gets. From upbringing to the way his career developed. To the people he socializes with.

> Being rich and well-connected for long periods ... which can persist even when the wealth doesn't, and continue to confer benefits. Preferring golf or tennis to say, bowling, doesn't necessarily come with a major difference in affordability. But being good at golf might help your career more than bowling

He was literally rich from the day he was born to old age. He was getting those benefits whole his life. He plays golf.

What he is not, is not being good person.

I think this is wrong and misses the point.

A lot of his political popularity is because while he’s rich, the way he speaks is “working class”.

He’s a good example of the difference we’re talking about.

My point is, he speaks exactly how he learned to speak in environment of rich people.

He is not all that much how actual working class behaves. Instead, he is his how middle class imagines working class. And people who vote him are economically not the poorest either. And he is also what poor people imagine super rich to be.

Eh - I don’t agree, his rhetoric and the macho over confidence is similar to a lot of people I grew up with that support him (that are working class).

Since when has a reality-tv career been considered high class.

It’s high status in some circles that equate celebrity with prestige

That’s kind of case-in-point - it’s high status in low class circles.

Is this confusing wealth and class?

Your statement, worded differently, seems to read "it's high class in low class circles". Are you implying class is only appropriately defined only by those in high-class? I guess I was looking at it as social prestige regardless of who in the social strata assigns it. In other words, if enough 'low-class' people think you're high-class, you're by definition high-class.

Class is defined by the members of each group. Non-members are by definition mostly ignorant of the groups' culture that they are not a part of. So they can recognize people are different from them, but not which group they belong to.

"low-class" people would not determine who is "high-class" any more than the "high-class" people determine who is "low-class".

And also surprising the author did not experience it at Uni where even well off middle class people, suddenly are mixing with much wealthier people.

I remeber my cousin who went to UMIST saying this and that side of the family was well off.

Its even more noticeable if you went to oxbridge and bumped into some one like Borris Johnson and his Bullingdon mates.

I think this is school dependent. In my experience, many wealthy kids will hide behaviors they know are associated with being wealthy / hide their backgrounds in order to better fit in. The awkwardness goes both ways.

Middle class kids might, not upper class wealthy ones not so much.

This is highly dependent on university - I didn’t notice it much where I went (RPI), but it’s a lot more obvious at Stanford.

Not all of us went to schools that have "much wealthier people" attending, of course.

I find that hard to believe unless your country has a very stratified higher education system - which is a bad thing.

Well, my country is the US, and I am speaking from experience. I'm definitely not saying it's a good thing. It's just important to acknowledge that "the college experience" of elites and the elite-adjacent doesn't represent the common post-secondary case here.

Class[0] by Paul Fussell is a great book on this topic. The back of the book has a test to identify your class.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class:_A_Guide_Through_the_Ame...

> Many of the comments on this article are so cold.

I mean, the tone of the article is pretty much "me vs them", so is really any surprise that some people would take offense?

The anecdotes range anywhere from caricatures (hot cheetos) to gaffes (cheering over a bonus cheque). What you're implying is that one ought to be empathetic about the OP's struggles w/ "rich person etiquette". But that in itself is a bit tone deaf: it comes across as "first world problems" to those who aren't in the "silicon valley bubble" and it comes across as elitism strawmen to those whose entire careers are in Bay Area tech.

It's kinda like listening to Justin Bieber sing about how lonely he is. It might strictly be true that he struggles w/ loneliness, and it might strictly be true that empathizing with him is "the right thing to do", but it's also strictly true that everyone has a right to not give a rats ass.

The "poor" mindset varies from person to person. Sure there are people that struggle w/ ghetto mindset, but I've had conversations with many people who self-identified as "cheap bastards" (in their own words) who would talk about slowly coming to terms with the fact that they now had decent incomes and disposable money.

This has been my experience too. My mum grew up poor but you’d never guess it now. Knows all about etiquette and wears fancy designer clothing etc.

I’m sure it’s true many do have trouble adjusting after growing up poor but it’s hardly as universal as some here are making out.

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 - it takes an arrogant self-realization to agree with such a statement - but I've felt the gradual drift. The article is a good reminder in humility.

> 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 friends with non-professionals has in some cases alienated me - who wants to go to a housewarming where half of the people bring Bud Light and tell inappropriate jokes?

This split is something I've personally had a lot of trouble rationalizing.

This hits home with me as well. My spouse and I live a “DINK” lifestyle - dual income, no kids. He works from home for an established (not a startup) multi-billion dollar multinational in the Valley, so we live on the East Coast. He is well compensated enough that I don’t have to work, but I do run our investment property and a small business we founded.

The problems we have now are ones most of my own family can’t relate to, so I just don’t share them. His parents used to run an extremely lucrative firm, but that was after they raised him in much less lavish circumstances. So I can talk to them about some of these parts of life, and he and his parents know the value of a dollar.

It can be isolating to know how “both halves” live, and I definitely feel a sense of guilt as to the amount of privilege I have and how radically more easy we have it.

It does start to become hard to relate to people who don’t have this kind of socioeconomic standing because so much of life is built on how many assets you do or don’t have. Last year we were at Home Depot buying a new, rather pricey appliance for our new home and I realized in talking to the sales lady exactly how out of touch I had become. She had never had what we were purchasing and we were buying a high end model from a high end brand. I was trying to make small talk and I’m sure I sounded like a classist asshole, but I was trying not to.

I’m trying really hard to cling to a realistic relationship to money and class.

I didn't hear it from someone in tech; in fact they are now doing house flipping. However, they embodied this 'success personality' quite explicitly. I can definitely relate to hosting parties with mixed moods. Over time you realize you have to host multiple kinds of events - this is more maintainable for having multiple kinds of friendships. I have friends who can be comfortable in any event I might have, but it is best to find those naturally rather than during awkward parties

Yeah me too, my childhood friends are all still struggling financially (early 30s now). After a few years in tech I can finally afford vacations like Europe or lazing in Hawaii. My friends still view a vacation as driving to another friends house in a different state and crashing on their couch for a couple days. I don't want my vacation to be sleeping on a couch in a room with 3 other people.

> but I've felt the gradual drift

I'm not sure why there would even be a gradual drift? My friends who aren't in tech are generally my most fun and interesting friends. We play D&D, we have dinner or drinks at each other's houses, we talk about anime and music and video games, we play with each other's dogs.

The only version of this I have experienced is the one where my non-tech friends are being forced out of my city via skyrocketing housing prices, which are largely due to - you guessed it - tech. It's upsetting, but there's little I can do about it except trying to keep in touch over distance.

Do you own a house in that city? If so, you would suddenly have a ton of house ownership problems your friends can't relate to. It is those sorts of things I am referring to

I can't help that one of my most active chats right now is speculative investing, and it simply is not a game for e.g. people with high rate debt

Then what about making someone feel shitty for describing your day? That you took a day off due to stress, and you remind them of their unchecked mental health crisis? I'm not saying you can't be a good friend through this, but that you need to be a good friend through this. This makes it much more doable with long-time friends rather than new people who you subconsciously pick as being like you

Sure, I guess those things just don't come up as much (and I will admit I intentionally avoid talking about certain subjects). But I wouldn't say that gradually erodes the friendship; we just relate over different things.

I don't actually have that much overlap with my friends in the first place.

We just have a select few common interests and enjoy each other's company.

I have a different circle of friends for most interests, there's not even any overlap between the ones I online game with or dirtbike with. Hell there's not even overlap between the dirtbike friends and street riding friends. I have interests that aren't shared with any of them.

Buying a house in the city is just adding another interest to the pile of interests that only apply randomly to a small fraction of my friends.

It doesn't have to be a problem, however sharing fewer interests is what I meant by 'gradual drift'. Someone I share 0 interests with that also doesn't just enjoy my company I will eventually interact less and less with. If you keep multiple diverse friend groups, you're definitely less prone to this issue

Personally, I'm reacting negatively because it feels like she says she does all these things that I do, and that nearly everyone in nearly every office I've worked in does. And she uses it to draw a contrast between herself and us. So to me all but a couple items read as "I knew I was different because I do this thing that nearly everyone does."

Maybe I'm in a weird lucky tech bubble where I've gotten to have a whole career that's mostly devoid of the people she's drawing a contrast against, but I've worked at a pretty disparate variety of jobs, and my experience seems to ring true with a lot of other commenters too.

Maybe I'm just having a kneejerk reaction because the last articles I read this morning were "silicon valley and californians are bad/clueless," and I'm reading that into this when it's not intended subtext.

Some people enjoy having their heartstrings tugged. Others don’t. What causes people to feel sympathy differs from person to person. I remember reading some tweet from Chrissy Teigen before she stopped tweeting complaining about a restaurant serving her a $10,000 bottle of wine without mentioning the price when she asked for something that went well with her dish. Not my kind of problem but it annoyed her. No doubt there are Americans from generational wealth who could write about their discomfort dealing with Brits of similar status in Britain, not knowing all the correct shibboleths. People feel alienated all the time, everywhere. I felt alienated from my classmates all through primary and secondary school. I got to university and found my people. Not fitting in and figuring out how to fit in is a really common experience. Right now there’s some black kid who’s really, really into metal going to his first live gig and he’s feeling awkward because he doesn’t know anyone and when he does he’ll pronounce something wrong or say cool instead of based or something. There’s an American kid at his first day at a school in Britain who’s going to get called a Yank. There’s a leftist kid going to his first demonstration who’s going to get called a TERF. This is a thing that happens.

I would go so far as to say that some people have learned to think of having their heartstrings tugged as a prelude to attempted exploitation. I know that years in the Bay taught me that.

You're absolutely right. People are not reacting the way you had hoped. They are reacting by questioning the assertions in the article in ways that don't engage with the author's fundamental humanity. They are treating it like an alien artifact reflecting on a far-off culture.

What if readers came in, reacted with warmth and kindness and empathy and compassion, and engaged with the article in a way that validated the author's experiences while perhaps gently questioning the article's conclusions? Would that be cold?

Or would the abject failure to reflect when confronted with key truths from the life of a real person make you sick to your stomach?

Thanks for the considered reply. I don’t think it would be cold and I don’t think I would have such a visceral reaction. I think the offhand tone implies a kind of misplaced confidence and shutting down of conversation - almost contempt - which is not a good way to start a conversation.

You're completely right. The offhand tone many have adopted is how they might react to a purely technical piece, rather than someone's genuine pain exposed to their view. It would, after all, not be wildly out of place to react to a technically detailed root cause analysis document by questioning some of its assertions that struck readers as overreaching.

For my own part, when I find myself reacting to someone's tone I sometimes find it valuable to pause and consider why they would adopt it. It can help me separate the other person's tone from the real, valid, lived experience that is my internal emotional reaction.

Empathy cannot just be a thing I demand of others.

That makes sense. Regarding your final sentence - I guess I felt that for me it’s been the other way round. I feel that in most HN discussions I had silently been empathetic and not demanded any level of empathy from anyone, and clearly that was not going to work in this instance.

My key has been to engage my empathy for everyone concerned. To read an article and engage my empathy for the author and the pain some know all too well is a necessary step. Yet to assume that all other readers will do the same is perhaps a opportunity to engage in empathy for them and how different their lives might have been.

I find I'm often surprised by the actions and reactions of people I have put minimal effort into empathizing with. Sometimes I find their unexpected warmth welcoming, or their callous coldness a sickening contrast.

Some - like myself - have a learned aversion to anything that tries too hard and too overtly to tug on my heartstrings.

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.

Sure, if you want me to got into more detail, I'm happy to oblige. To me the whole first paragraph seems to be simply dismissive, painting different opinions as incorrect and immoral, talking about how surprised you are that the comments are so cold, that people aren't holding a mirror up to their own behavior, that this depresses you and that "we can do better":

> 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.

I don't think it's "immoral" [your word] or "incorrect" [your word] to have a knee-jerk reaction. It's a fact of life. I see that my statement has landed on you as a critique of morality or some kind of discussion-suppressing wokeness, but that's really not what I wanted, so I apologise.

The phrase I used - "we can do better" - was not meant to mean "I think these replies are incorrect [your word] and immoral [your word]" but that we can do a better analysis. A DEEPER analysis which requires BOTH the knee-jerk dismissal and the interrogation of that dismissal. I don't think it's morally wrong but yes, it is depressing TO ME. I'm not saying other opinions should be banned. I'm not even saying those comments shouldn't have been posted. I guess I'm saying they should have been longer and more considered and frankly less rude!

OK, let me write up my engagement with the other comments. I do agree with the possibility of cultural differences being responsible for some of the things in the post. I also agree that to some extent the "negative mindset" criticism is in some way valid, because growing up poor DOES give you a negative mindset. But the essence of my comment was that really the substance of those comments was missing the main point. There's a 1500 word article there with someone's actual experiences - a valuable outside perspective on part of tech and corporate culture. Even if one doesn't relate to the article and think it's wrong, one can say "Hmm... this doesn't fit with my experience." leaving the door open to the fact that one hasn't experienced that particular life, rather than just further marginalising the author by acting as if they have just magically generated 1500 words of "wrong".

It's one of those articles you either relate to or don't and if you don't, you're going to pick up on the flaws. Not everyone that fails to relate will complain about those flaws, but any article designed to evoke emotions - as this one is - will inevitably stir up irritation in some, and those so stirred will complain about them.

Written differently, but with the same message, it would carry more people with it, but then maybe those that related would relate less well, so maybe that would be a net loss.

I CAN relate because I grew up poor, have a GED, have student loans because my parents didn't pay for my education, live in a poorer area than my coworkers, have a really old phone, worried about bothering potential mentors, don't fit in at the gym, relish bonuses, overeat free food because it's free (pre-covid), talk to janitors, was paid less than colleagues, etc. and yet I still find her sentiment negative, classist, self-victimizing, and unhelpful.

In my opinion, this comes off as shaming privileged people for their privilege. She could probably say a lot about the hard work and lucky breaks she's had that have helped her advance in spite of her challenges, but instead she focuses exclusively on her disadvantages.

I attribute most of my social mobility to a ton of lucky breaks. Some people aren't as fortunate, and there's a lot to be said about that, but I don't think this article advances that conversation.

Why do you think it's negative? It isn't a piece diagnosing the roots of inequality, and it doesn't pretend to be. It isn't a piece about "how I got here", and it shouldn't have to be. It's a piece about the weird aspects of not having a very, very specific background in tech, and her internal experience of those. It's not "here let me lay out the Nature Of The Thing Universally". I don't understand why you're holding it accountable to "advancing the conversation" about social mobility.

I think it's negative because I think it focuses on the negative. It's just my opinion and my opinion can be like the author's—my interpretation of something based on my experiences. And it certainly doesn't have to advance the conversation or be about how "she got here", but I wish it would have because I think that would've been more useful. I'm OK if we disagree.

I was primarily responding to the parent who intimated those irritated by it can't relate. I was irritated and CAN relate. That was my primary point.

> In my opinion, this comes off as shaming privileged people for their privilege.

I don't understand where do you see shaming. Even in points I think fit me, where I am rich person, I did not felt shamed at all. In points where I could relate to her, I did not perceived myself as victim.

> she focuses exclusively on her disadvantages.

Most of points don't compare her to others in a sense of gaining advantages or disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage was salary one and there the complain is mixed with her own behavior that helped situation to happen.

> She could probably say a lot about the hard work and lucky breaks she's had that have helped her advance in spite of her challenges

She could also write about drawing or socializing with buddies. Not everything have to be forced into "how I succeeded admire me" framework. Sometimes people write about other things.

Yep, she can write about whatever she wants. Some people like it, I thought it was unhelpful. I wish it were something else and you're glad it isn't. Cool.

I mostly wanted to say I can relate AND didn't like it, responding to the parent.

This doesn't surprise me one bit. Tech is just another white collar country club. The rules are just slightly different than the bankers country club and the surgeons country club and the lawyer's country club.

If you're not one of the people who typically joins that kind of club you can hack it but you won't feel like you belong or you might but it will take you many years.

Definitely not my experience, if for no other reason than the overwhelming portion that I know or have worked with is not white, was not born in this country (regardless of which country we’re talking about/in at the time), and I only know 1-2 with any sort of real social connections in the area they now live and work in. They haven’t done as well over the years as most, but there are outliers of course (Bill G being one prominent one of course).

Also no real generational tendencies (I only know 1 or 2 folks with parents in any sort of engineering or computer discipline), unlike doctors or the like.

One counter point, which is the defining feature of tech imho, is you don't need to be born into it. Its difficult to become a doctor without prepping years or more ahead of even applying. You can break into tech at basically any point in your life, it just takes time (as you said) and effort. And of course, interest will make it more enjoyable / tolerable. Its not a perfectly egalitarian club, but it is certainly _more_ so than any of those other professions, by a few orders of magnitude.

Tech might be like that.

The SV startup bubble is not.

Soooooo much of this article is relatable to me. I remember my first office job, I couldn't snap myself out of the habit of asking my boss for a break to go to the bathroom. He finally said "You don't need to ask me, just go, jeez." I was just so used to jobs where you had to ask.

The time clock thing too! To this day, the back of my mind still wonders if I punched in and whether all my hours are being counted. Can't just walk away from those habits once internalized.

The culture difference is so real. I remember sitting in a meeting with a bunch of managers just a little higher on the totem pole than me. Not executives by any stretch. And they were all complaining about their taxes, the cost of private school for their kids, and the fact that they can't find a good second nanny. I'm just sitting there thinking "If I lose this job, I'm living in my car." Really hard to consider these guys my peers, and I know that affects my work and my working relationship with them.

So the article resounded with me, because being raised by my grandparents on a family citrus farm during the transition thru the NAFTA years and watching my family loose what little land wealth they had. It left an indelible mark, a mark of insecurity and fear and it lead to behavior like this.

I remember one time, when I just started out in tech, I went to an interview for a group that was contracting for NASA, the interview went very well, they loved me, the team loved me. I pretty much had the job. The team liked me so much that they invited me to lunch. I declined, you could tell the temperature changed at that very moment that I did. I did not get the job, and in retrospect I should have just told them I am not in the position to pay for a meal out at this time. I had literally put my last pennies into the tank of my car to get to that interview.

Anyways, I back story that, to say this; I did well in the industry, I have exited a few companies and I have held some pretty impressive titles at some pretty big orgs but I never got rich. Some of that had to do with dragging my family out of poverty but some of it had to do with something else. I helped build a startup and we sold that startup for a good deal of money. I received a pittance because I did not know my value. It was enough to take off some of life's stresses but it was not FU money. I went to work for one of the companies that we had a B2B relationship with that was a downstream provider to the company we sold. Anyways it was here that things changed for me, and it was not because of me or my work. It was because the CEO of that company became my personal friend. Her name was Sheila and she told me something that I had never heard before and that was this.

She told me that I was what she calls institutionally poor. That I had been conditioned thru my childhood to think like a poor person and in doing so you send out unconscious signals to others. She told me this because she came up similar. She told me that it causes you to over analyze and over estimate risk and therefore you will not take the bold moves that people that don't have to worry do. That while you can change the world and everyone see it. If you hold onto the fear on needing your safety net under you, that you will never extract your true value from other. So I said, so you are going to pay me my fair value, she laughed and said no, I got you for a very good deal. 3 Days latter I walked into her office, with my resignation letter and told her I had an offer from another company. She said, now you get it, how much did they offer. I told her, and she said I will double that if you stay. That was when I learned a tangential lesson, and that is sometimes hard ass, ball busters are the best people.

Point being there is a piece of this, that the person that grew up poor has to break themselves free of and many times they don't even know what they need to free themselves of and that is thinking like a poor person.

Great story, helps me see the profound effect that such stresses put on a person.

I got another clue out of it. That 'personal friend' was a user, a manipulator, a predator, and preyed upon folks like us. She must have felt something personal toward you else she'd never have said what she did and given up the raw deal she pushed over on you. To threaten to quit and get offered double - that's a situation to run from as fast as you can. Get double from the next person, but never, ever work for such a person as that again. That's my take anyway.

I don't see it that way, she was a friend, she built a company from the ground up and she took care of people. At that time (2002ish IIRC) she was paying me fair market rate which in full disclosure was about $150k USD a year. She knew my worth, she was trying to teach it to me. She saw me build the other company and she saw that I did not extract my value from that deal. She paid me what I asked for when she called me after the exit of the other company and that is the point, I did not ask for more. She needed me to fix her companies technical problems, she knew I could do it and I did, she knew my value, I did not. She came to me in need, and "I" asked for market rate, because I was not working due to the exit and was worried about burning up the small safety net I had just acquired. She was a friend in tilting her hand. Had she just told me you don't make enough here, here is some money. I would not have learned the lesson that she wanted me to learn as a friend.

When that happened I was annoyed, I went and interviewed and I asked for as much as I thought I could get. I had never interviewed when I did not need a job, it was the first time I has ever interviewed without a sword over my head and I had to do that to learn the lesson that she knew she could not teach me, but was in the position to nudge me into. She was stupid rich, it did not hurt her one bit to pay me double, the key was I never asked for it, because I thought like a poor man. Money was very valuable to me, to her it was an afterthought as compared to the important things she needed accomplished.

When you are poor, money and the retention of it, is the bottom line. When you are rich it is not. It is a factor, a rich person is not going to go into a bad deal and loose money intentionally but in her case she was loosing millions in lost opportunity. Had I asked for $500k, her mind would have still been on the Millions is lost opportunity, not the $500k it will take to pursue it. It is as simple as that.

I'm trying to understand this. The part where you were saying that you were underpaid and being paid a pittance of what you were worth, that was making $150k in 2002? My understanding is that this is a strong mid-high salary for an engineer even today 19 years of inflation later. Could you clarify what you mean by all of this?

I was brought on to the other company as a CTO, they where a profitable startup but had used contractors and had a bad tech stack due to no internal technical direction. I entered her company as a consultant and interim CTO. While I did do hands on development work, I had a track record of rescuing companies with good business models, but where hampered by their technology and technical debt.

Her entire company was running on a legacy system that the vendor who was a small custom software shop, had abandoned and who was not interested in selling the source code to anyone (think Computer Associates on a small scale), The owner had done well and was just bleeding the contracts he had until they ran out. While he sailed around the world.

So she was locked into a system that had no path to add features. I had to reverse engineer this system to get to the data, get it out of the underlining datastore it was using and into a proper DBMS, as well as architect a solution to synchronize data between the two while we implemented critical features they needed in a new system, while strangling out functionality of the old system. Then hire pretty mush an entire development team from the ground up to do this (fortunately I knew a few developers that had just lost their job due to their company selling). She was looking to sell her company at top dollar and this system was costing her opportunity on that front.

So while I was doing development, I was not just a engineer I was 27 years old, I was in charge of and navigating the technical direction of a multi-million dollar company.

The reality was the other company was an exit north of $50 million dollars. I got a check for $125k and told to have a nice life. Because I did not negotiate an exit package in the event of a sale. I believed the VC's when they said this was a long haul venture, they where not looking to take it public and where not looking to exit. They where not silicon valley VC's and had more of a background in large real estate deals. So most of their ventures where long hold investments. There is a lot more to that story. 911 happened and hit the industry it was in hard and I think they changed that viewpoint at that time, but I did not shield myself from that reality.

The point is, the sale would have never happened had I not joined the company. Had I extracted my real worth I would have walked out of that exit with about 2 million dollars. Like the COO and the VP of Sales did. She saw all of that happen and she knew the reason I did not and it was because even though I was doing well, I still thought like a poor person.

The bottom line is that neither company would have sold for the sticker prices that they did, had I not entered those companies and navigated them out of their bad technical direction. There are certainly other people that could have done it, but I had a proven track record of doing it. I was a sure bet, thinking like a poor man made me price myself on the market by what my hands can do in an hour and not see myself as a product, a product that reduces risk and risk reduction has value.

To get deeper into the story, this company was involved in hotel allotments and was a central hub for them. Think of something akin to a commodities market for hotel rooms. One of the things that they really needed to be able to do was provide their allotments in real time to online vendors, something that they could not do. So they where basically packaging up an ETL every day and sending it to them. Within a month of me being with the company we had the data sync up and running and had web services on top of the new DB to provide real-time allotment. We brought Travelocity and Expedia online first and our revenues skyrocketed. When I signed on with the company she made me an offer that I could get a take of every booking that was done thru the web services we where going to build, if I could get this system up and running, but that would be my compensation. No base salary, just a take of every booking. I declined because I was risk adverse and wanted to hold on to what I had. She said this was the moment she knew that I was holding myself back.

Think of it this way, imagine that I came up with an algorithm that could predict the next lottery numbers. I was calculating my labor of how long it took to create the algorithm as it's value and not the fact that it could net millions in winnings. If I had that magical algorithm I could certainly sell it for 50% of the next purse. I was selling it for the man hours I put into making it and when she said, hey I will buy the ticket and give you a cut, I was like no, I want money now and that is how a poor person thinks.

You are right, I was making great money for my age and the era but even with all that and even though I was doing great my earning potential was being hampered by the the way I thought.

Finally I will leave you with this. I grew up not far from Palm Beach. Many places have the other side of the tracks we have the other side of the bridge. I had very rich friends in High School and I remember they would take me to dinner with their family at really nice restaurants. I remember being at those dinners and thinking one day, I swear I am going to earn enough to take my grandparents to dinners like this because it was so nice. No one having to serve, everybody just getting to sit there and talk and enjoy each others company. That was literally my only goal of wealth in life and that is how a poor person thinks. That was the good life to me, going to a restaurant. That was my measure of made it.

Who do you think would NOT be a ‘predator’ in that situation exactly?

Sounds like she offered insight and a 2nd chance to someone she thought would benefit from it, and then helped them build on it in a way that stuck.

Should she have been offering more than they thought they were worth? Who would that benefit? It would likely just cause anxiety and imposter syndrome.

That’s avoiding the whole issue of someone who knows what they’re worth and is able to stand up and ask for it is worth more than someone who does not or will not. To everyone.

You have a much more sunny view of HN readers than I do; I was expecting to see a whole bunch of victim-blaming and complete lack of understanding of what it's like to be broke. I was delightedly surprised to see your comment as the top one when I looked.

Introspection is expensive, and recognizing that behaviors that benefit you personally cause undesirable damage in someone else can be the most expensive of all.

Most people will actively avoid it, it just makes their existence harder for no concrete benefit to them.

Food for thought.

As someone who was very por growing up and worked their ass off to become who I am today, everything she said is 100% true of being poor and not an artifact of a bad attitude. If anything, the fact she sees the opportunities for free lunches and tampons shows she's actaulyl got a GOOD attitude and is resourceful. All of those things are indicative of an observant, hard worker.

> you can't buy your way out of the mindset, or snap your fingers / empty the cache / cycle the power the way the average HN commenter seems to think you can.

Reading the list, most of them are pretty harmless if not annoying. But one struck me as something completely different:

> I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I was afraid to seek mentorship from anyone above me, convinced that even asking would seem like bothersome begging. I watched the people around me network effortlessly, assured of favors and good words put in. I could only think in terms of what I could offer and how I could survive; they were thinking on the next level where they never had to wonder if they were good enough. They were to the business-class manner born, at least.

Seaweed Snack vs Cheetos is a class thing, and maybe cultural (I could see people of East-Asians origins reaching for the seaweed more than the Cheetos).

But not being able to get help or mentoring and to network is an enormous barrier to career progression.

But I don’t see what insecurity around asking for help or mentoring has to do with wealth or lack thereof?

This to me sounds more like an issue of shyness or low self-esteem than anything to do with money or class.

I think the same of a fair few other items on that list as well.

I don't know I'm not thrilled to be this negative or correct about this but it's been pretty much exactly what I expected.

I was more naive ;)

The author is complaining of being poor and talking about a lifestyle that her coworkers enjoy that I, who am quite well off, can't afford either. That doesn't make her poor, it makes her not wealthy.

While I'm sure if I met her in person I'd feel very sympathetic, it is difficult to read about someone being unhappy because they can't take a 3-day holiday in Greece; can't collect antiquities or be driven to work by a chauffeur every day. These are not goals I'm sympathetic with either.

I honestly don't care if someone is poor in relative terms to their co-workers either. I'm only interested in what my coworkers earn in the first place because it strengthens my bargaining position.

I guess the unfortunate reality is that many of the people who engage in the behaviors that make people feel isolated go on the defensive when the harmfulness of their behavior is highlighted.

I completely agree with you. I was also shocked about this disconnect and explain-it-away statements. Very disappointing.

>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.

Why expect that though? Many of the HN readers are exactly the out-of-touch persons criticized in the article.

Expecting HN commenters not to behave like the vapid nuts they're they're mocked as on n-gate is a big ask ;-)

It unfortunately seems that many people in the tech world are very pro-capitalism and defensive of their own wealth. The attitude seems to boil down to "I got mine" with little to no consideration of others. Specifically, as regulation begins to intensify in the tech sphere, there's this feeling of people coming for their piece of the pie.

Which seems pretty far from the point, but those people could view this as just another attack on their estate. They might feel like they deserve it, and deserve to act that way. This article highlights the ugly side, where someone who isn't already indoctrinated into that elitism is rubbing shoulders with the type who are used to the privilege available to those of us with longer running tech careers. And it looks bad. So in response, I suppose it inspires those people to circle the wagons and just accuse the author or not getting theirs effectively enough.

You’re the top comment on HN right now. What are you exactly complaining about?

I'm complaining about what I wrote in the comment. It wasn't the top comment when I wrote it. That happened after I wrote it. It got a lot of upvotes so I guess people who agree with me were more comfortable upvoting/replying after I wrote it than commenting before me. Maybe because they knew that the comment would attract criticism like yours

Is the complain still relevant now that you have the most votes? To me it seems like HN loves to agree with people whom it thinks are shunned by HN, but in reality you are the voice of HN. Again, as evidenced here after a few minutes of posting your comment.

I suppose it's become an unfortunate header for any comments agreeing with the article. I've never had a comment "succeed" in this fashion before so I wasn't prepared for the decontextualisation. If I could write it again, I would simply write how my experience seems to back up the experience in the article, and miss out my angry meta-commentary.

I've noticed this trend lately on HN of people digging through user history to make some meta commentary about the poster. It's weird. This isn't reddit. Let the statement speak on its' own regardless of who posted it or why.

This is literally evident in the same thread. Just scroll to the top of the page to see the commenter?