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Poll: working class or professional?

2 points by yycom ↗ HN
Perhaps (probably) it's my personal bias, but it seems to me one predictor of "success" is one's family background.

Statements such as "My father was an anesthesiologist"[0] put me off reading narratives of a person's success, because my family background is borderline working/welfare class so I feel pretty much doomed to mediocrity at best.

So, what's your background?

[0] http://www.jeanhsu.com/?p=132

6 comments

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btilly
HN has a method to create polls. It isn't the transparent request for votes of having 3 comments which you are supposed to upvote.

Also categorizing people's backgrounds is often trickier than you would think. For instance what impression do you get from each of the following statements?

  - I grew up in poverty.
  - I have movie star sisters. 
  - My grandfather co-founded a successful civil engineering firm and died rich.
  - I was kidnapped by a crazy man before I was 5.
Each statement contains a life story behind it. None of this complexity is captured in Welfare/Working/Professional.
jonhendry
Working class. My parents both grew up poor and left school at 15 - my father lied about his age to join the Navy. He later worked for an elevator company, and during my lifetime was in supervising maintenance through most of Connecticut, with some number of people working under him. He retired from the elevator company in 1996 after 45 years.