I've seen this before. Not often, because the companies I have worked at have rarely hired someone from this social strata. But in the cases where we have, I have seen the alienation.
Aside from the obvious "be genuinely friendly", does anyone have suggestions of what to do as a coworker to support someone suffering from this cultural barrier?
> I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I made more there than I’d ever made before; a daring amount I had been afraid to ask for during the offer process. I discovered through misadventure that I still made less than any of the executive assistants, or the receptionist. I was, in fact, the lowest-paid person in the building including the interns. I hadn’t known what was possible, so I couldn’t even think to ask for what I was worth to them.
One of the largest issues which would have caused many of the others on the list seems to be that they were absurdly underpaid. So make sure your co-workers aren't making peanuts compared to you?
Yeah, it clearly made all involved people uncomfortable. If I knew this I would have serious questions for my next HR one-on-one: "I am not going to work next to an exploited person - are you going to pay up or should I take the next recruiter call I get today?"
Other then underpaid like in the other comment another way is to expose yourself out of the bubble. Volunteering if done right can expose you out of it.
Adopt a mentee. They need a teacher. Remember that when you offer guidance, it needs to be comprehensible and actionable and directed towards a coherent goal.
Telling someone to reflect, for example, is none of those. Instead, tell someone to remember that what people show and what people feel can be different when they assume about another's mental state based on appearances.
Advocate for open salaries in your company. Everyone should know what everyone else makes, or at the very least, what the bands for every position / level of seniority make. Information asymmetry in pay is never to the benefit of the employees, only the employers - so why have it?
Sure. First thank you for the honest question. I was poor growing up. Many things on this list resonate with me, but I'll add a few others.
> During middle school, I would often skip lunch altogether.
> The first time I went on an out-of-state trip was during college.
> I went snowboarding (for the first time) with some friends a few years ago (age 24) and they didn't even balk at the $500 / night room prices for the all inclusive resort.
> I now feel rich because my car's check engine light is not on.
Ways you can help with this:
* Understand that your coworkers may not have the same experiences as you. If someone tells a joke ("Summering in the Cayman islands" [referencing tax evasion or similar]), perhaps pull them aside later, one on one, and explain why the particular thing was funny.
* Talk about the last book you read. Why was it interesting to you? Poor people and rich people read very different books. Offering insight into whatever issues you read through books might help them have easier conversations with others. For example I'm currently reading "An American sickness" which discusses the rising cost of health care in America. A poor person would focus on why *their* individual healthcare is so expensive, but a rich person looks at the whole system. And that is what this book more or less discusses.
It's not unlike learning a foreign language. Even if you memorize the words and phrases, there's all sorts of ways they are used that can make it difficult to use as a communication tool. Try to identify those odd words or phrases and explain those to others. However this can apply to any company / culture, its not necessarily a rich / poor thing.
Include them. Invite them to lunch, introduce them to other coworkers, make sure they know about happy hour events or other after-work activities. A few people doing this for me in my early 20s made the world of difference in my life.
I don't have much in the way of general advice other than "try to be inclusive toward people whose experiences and circumstances may not be like yours", in much the same way as male allies should be aware of things that can make women feel unsafe, omnivores should be aware that some folks have dietary restrictions, and so on.
Money can pop up as an excluding factor pretty easily. So, for example, insist on a hard (and low, ideally ridiculously low) upper bound on any expenses associated with optional-but-not-really events like gift exchanges or potluck meals. A company-culture norm of spending higher amounts on such things can cause a lot of stress, even if the amounts are still affordable: ie. figuring out a $25 Secret Santa gift is easier than a $50, much less $75, one.
> once I realized they would keep restocking the tampons in the ladies’ room, I stopped bringing any from home. I said as much in a fit of daring to a woman with whom I thought I would become friends. She admonished me for using bleached cotton products in my vagina. We are not friends.
More evidence that the "sisterhood" is a total myth.
To me, this reads more as a list of "from outside the valley bubble" signifiers than it does as a list of things that people who've grown up in poverty might do, even if the former was a result of the latter.
There are some exceptions - not noticing missed paychecks is the biggest - but most of it is just stuff that happens every day in other offices.
Making your lunch at the office and not bringing Advil from home? I know generationally wealthy investment bankers who do these things, and they're the kind of people who spent their childhood summering at Fishers Island.
I don't really see this as a valid criticism of the list though. A person identified a bunch of ways they are not like almost all of the rest of their coworkers.
Do they have the information, experience, or responsibility to accurately categorize the specific cultural origin of every single one of those differences? Does it make the argument weaker if they miss a couple? Maybe a little but it's still strong.
I don't want to trivialize what the author is feeling, but when the conclusion they draw is...
> Because they have never been poor, they had no idea what I might do. Why would I steal, when everyone clearly has enough? What even is scarcity? Why drink yourself to death tonight when there’s another sponsored event a week from now? Why eat like there will never be enough, when there has always been more than enough?
...I think it's worth discussing whether they may have misidentified the real root cause.
Do you think it might be possible to appreciate the reality and sincerity of someone's experiences while also questioning the validity of their interpretations? Would this be a form of substantive engagement on the merits of the piece?
Personally, I see someone describing a number of points of cultural difference and an author who wholeheartedly believes they have identified the root of all of them. Is it worth discussing that the real, indisputably valid lived experience of the author, might also be linked to other things?
Yeah I think I've been pretty clear that I think that conversation is possible and also that I think that is not the conversation that is happening in this thread.
> Does it make the argument weaker if they miss a couple? Maybe a little but it's still strong.
What if they miss almost every single one? That's how it reads to me, for almost every job I've had. That's why people are reacting like they are to the article.
I brought my lunch to the office for many years but then I went in consulting and had to work from home and live in hotels and then its quite hard to prepare lunch or bring leftovers to work. If you stay in hotels
"Making your lunch at the office and not bringing Advil from home? I know generationally wealthy investment bankers who do these things"
Generally they don't like to waste money. That's part of how they stay rich for generations (as opposed to someone who hits the lottery and the next generation is basically back to where they started in many cases).
If you make £100,000 then an hour of your time is worth ~£48.
You can get lunch for £10 or less, and cooking at home doesn't cost £0, so unless you are replacing a fancy two course lunch with a made at home sandwith, I dont see you saving over £2k a year.
Warren Buffet is cool and all, but he is not the world's lunch expert
If you like going to the cafeteria or out to lunch, by all means you should do so if you can afford it. But it's also entirely reasonable not to spend money out of habit. For example, while I may do so when traveling, I have zero interest in getting a daily Starbucks fix.
(I often drive by a local Starbucks which usually has a line of cars around the block getting to go. I have to wonder who these people are who want to wait for 20 minutes or whatever to get their $5 latte at all hours of the day.)
You think someone with generational wealth would stop to even consider the cost of advil or a lunch in FiDi? They don't. This little bit of mythology has always been amusing to me. They may make their own lunch out of habit or simply because they have a preference or whatever--but cost isn't a reason for people of that much wealth.
They don't like wasting money, but what they consider "waste" is not the same thing as what someone who isn't wealthy would consider waste.
Fun anecdata from my own life:
I grew up under varying amounts of poverty and now I make Big TechCo money. As I have gotten a lot better about shedding a certain kind of survival-hoarding-mindset "I don't need to keep <this half-broken thing> because I can get a new one when I need one again", I have found myself developing new neuroses about "waste" of things that my old self would have considered insignificant: (personal) office supplies, succulent leaves that have fallen off but that I can propagate, 5-year-old magazines I haven't read yet. It's like I maintained some amount of the anxiety but in the absence of the pressure to direct it usefully, it's gone cuckoo.
Yea I mostly agree. For example not greeting cleaning lady has nothing to do with being rich or poor. It is just manners and some of us do it and some don't.
Sorry to say, but you’re being extremely naive if you think you’re right. People are awful to supporting staff and show them no respect on the regular.
It happens across class lines _but_ I find that it's not the same degree. I find that the more used you are to people cleaning up after you the less that you thank them/acknowledge them for doing so. The teenage "I can leave my trash here - they have cleaning staff to clean it up!" mentality seems to be more prevalent the higher income your background is.
I say hello to the cleaning staff, security staff, delivery drivers, food service workers, etc at work. I can't get my job done unless they're there, and I am acutely aware that our professional experience and treatment by management is significantly different.
Manners? I don't say hi to the cleaning staff for the same reason I don't say hi to most people I see in the office: I don't know them. If I did, then I would say hi.
Do others greet every single person they see in the building?
Yes. You are working late, someone comes by your desk to empty your trash. You say hi and thank you. Especially once to realize you see the same person every night.
> Do others greet every single person they see in the building?
Yes I always did. Would get into some long chats with one of the cleaning ladies actually. And if someone came into my office to do maintenance on the aircon unit I'd of course greet them.
I actually greet every person I see. This means waving at people driving by, and walking by. Very strange that this is not seen as a normal custom it seems. I wonder when did this change.
30 years ago the cleaning lady was staff and had a very small number of stock options and had time to chat with the people pulling all-nighters at work. I even dated her daughter a couple of times.
Today the cleaning person works for an agency, is a different person every night and has 4 hours to do 8 hours worth of work.
this actually reminds me of an article i read on nyt some time ago, about poor college students or first gen students in top colleges.
the parents were invited to the school to meet the faculty and the parents who were college educated or those went to the same type of schools understood the song and dance - the mingling with the adminstrative staff, the dean of students, the professors and lecturers - and the parents who were not educated or were part of the lower class didn't know what to do, so they hung out with the cafeteria staff, asked the cafeteria staff to take care of their kids. those were the people their families and relatives knew and understood.
and the first gen students also understood that they belonged to the same social strata as the cafeteria staff, and things like office hours or asking for help from the professors or the TAs were something that they could not possibly be entitled to.
I grew up very wealthy and it is what it is. I read that list and some parts of it make me sad and some make me laugh. There's been times I've been that asshole, and times I've not been. Some of the things are very American - like the teeth thing which is basically the ultimate American neurosis. We were rich but I didn't want someone messing with my perfectly useful teeth.
There's no point being overly defensive about these things. People with all kinds of life experience can learn from each other.
> There's no point being overly defensive about these things. People with all kinds of life experience can learn from each other.
I don’t think this is the fault of the author. When you’ve never had the chance or experience or bank account to dream of doing something that many people take for granted it’s easy to sort of clam up or realize your different and that you have to try harder to fit in.
But wealthy people should be defensive about it. Or at least acknowledge the fact that we have severe and increasing income disparity in America and a lot of people are suffering with anxiety and other ills because we let so many people expose themselves to massive risk by being poor.
In Europe, you don't go bankrupt when you get sick. Health care is one of the top causes of bankruptcy in America. In more socialized countries, you don't lose your housing when you lose your job. You don't need to struggle to keep a car (which you need for a job) because there is public transit and you're almost guaranteed access to higher education.
The upper middle class and higher need to realize this is a big systematic risk for the country.
"Being defensive about it," would be getting offended and denying that others have these sorts of experiences. That is what the other commenter was suggesting wealthy people should not do.
I work as a consultant and I regularly forget to send invoices for a month (sometimes two). It's been years since I was living from paycheck to paycheck, I can afford to skip out on months of income and not notice for day-to-day expenses. And I'm lazy about creating invoices (I should automate this and keep a regular activity log instead of pulling stuff from git and emails but yeah).
More importantly I've worked with other consultants and I got the impression that people from finance are used to chasing them for invoices, so I don't think it's that rare.
There's a place somewhere between "making a lot of money" and "being truly wealthy" where a person can become obsessively frugal. Think of it as hoarders, but for money. They don't want to spend a penny more than they have to, because they have a kind of psychological investment in their net worth. Yes, they will spend a lot of money on some thing in order to be able to display their wealth as their class demands, but they'll pinch every penny in other ways. Think of the guy who tries to stiff a contractor, or never tips for service.
So for your generationally wealthy investment bankers, summering at Fishers Island is a necessary conspicuous display of wealth as well a as networking and social process. Eating the office food and using the office pain killers are largely invisible, but to a person obsessed with having money, the costs are accounted for in their personal ledger.
Or maybe the office painkillers and office food are just plain convenient? Which is why the office supplies them in the first place? It has nothing to do with being "money obsessed." Maybe my office is some weird outlier, but nearly every one of these "i'm poor in tech because" examples apply to my office, despite us being wealthy in tech.
Well, yes, but are you the sort of independently generationally wealthy money-hoarder I'm referring to, or just one of the many folks who, while not poor, are still basically wage slaves who can't quit their jobs because they have a mortgage, kids, student loans, and need the health insurance? If you're the latter, the convenience factor is a money factor in disguise: you're so busy trying to maintain yourself and your family that you don't really have time to make your own lunch.
Yep this was my impression too. I'm from a professional class family in the rural part of the midwest now living in a cosmopolitan "crunchy" wealthy town. A lot of the stuff in here (like the stuff about food choices and tampons) is similar to things that set my teeth on edge just a bit in my town (and also, but not exclusively, at my office). I don't interpret it as stemming from wealth disparity but rather cultural and class disparity, which is related but not identical. For instance, people at the same wealth level as my family are much more likely to eschew fast food here and generally form more of their identity around their food choices. It's cultural.
But a lot of the article does strike me as stemming from wealth disparity, and is very interesting. Indeed, another thing to add to the list is being unable to distinguish between behaviors that are different because of culture vs. because of wealth.
This is different from being poor in the financial sense. It goes deep into the poor mindset and pscyhology and how it can stick around even after you're doing okay. My parents are working class, I'm an immigrant and I had a minimum wage job for a few years - I've never felt any of the things listed in this article, before or after I was doing okay financially, in or outside of tech.
Absolutely this. My wife and I both grew up very poor and even though we've worked up to being relatively well off in adulthood, we both still have a mindset in certain contexts that's very similar to this article.
It's very scavenger-like and I suppose we may lose it if we manage to stay well off long enough, but it definitely colours our decision making even in little things. Being poor definitely stretches beyond the literally financial.
I checked off the majority of the points the author mentioned but I never felt bad or alienated for it. Money can buy you things, most of them are a dumb waste. Why should I feel bad? They’re the idiots blowing their paychecks on trendy useless things.
I’m also an immigrant and have never seen such salaries in my life outside of executives so I’m just riding the gravy train. Again, I feel extremely lucky and great to be a part of it. Not beating myself up over having a bigger delta from my childhood than some of my coworkers. Isn’t that the American dream? I would also add that getting McDonalds was the summit of culinary experiences a few times a year when I was growing up. I’m sure people here would find that funny but I’m proud of my life and my background.
I do use an Uber for social calls as it buys me easily 2 hours of my life back as public transport kinda sucks
Instead of seeing the bright side of life, in which this person clearly vastly improved their situation in life, all they can see is what they don’t have.
“I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I had the only fat body in the building.”
I’m sorry, but no, being poor doesn’t make you fat. Your eating choices make you fat. Poor people have agency too. Agency is not something you buy. This is coming from someone who probably makes half of what you make in a year.
It's normal and cool actually that we can take something that affects a MAJORITY of Americans and is tightly correlated to poverty and make it a matter of individual responsibility and moral weakness.
It is correlated, not caused by poverty. Rich people are often fat too, and the reason is poor education (not even rich people schools teach this) and poor self-control.
It’s not just food education. If you’re poor in the US you’re much less likely to live near a source of fresh meat and produce, which makes calorie-rich fast food more tempting. You’re more at the mercy of many multi-billion-dollar industries that serve unhealthy food to the masses.
Or your assumption wrong. Here is a reasonable explanation: People are poor since they got bad self control, which also makes them fat. People who lack self control are easily tempted with shitty fast food, so their areas mostly serves it rather than real food creating these "food deserts".
If there was demand for food in those areas people would sell it, but there isn't.
Edit: A strong piece of evidence is that people aren't getting poorer, but they sure are getting fatter.
If we're talking about the obesity rate, statistics make it clear that it's easy to be obese when poor, not that it's not easy to not be obese for the poor.
Or are you talking about statistics that asked if poor people tried to not be overweight but couldn't do it? If so, could you please send link to that - as I'm not aware of any such large-scale study and quick search didn't reveal anything significant?
I'm not particularly interested in some "studies" that come out with statistics saying its hard not to be obese when poor. The fact of the matter is that it's possible to eat relatively healthy affordably (e.g. rice, potatoes, food on sale/discount), and that if you were truly poor you should be saving money by eating less food.
If it's not hard to avoid being overweight when poor, and most poor people are overweight... what is happening? Do you see the obvious conclusion here? Do you endorse it?
People are getting fatter and fatter. It is much worse now than 20 years ago, and even much much worse than 40 years ago. Any explanation you can come up with needs to be able to explain this as well. Does poor people have worse access to food today? Do they have less money for food today?
If we put poor people in the same conditions they had 40 years ago they would be slimmer than rich people today.
Over the past 30 years, grocery store prices have risen 4.5 percent above economy-wide prices, indicating that food has become relatively more expensive than some other consumer goods... Real prices for fresh fruits and vegetables grew the most among all major food categories, increasing just over 40 percent... Over the same time period, real prices for fats and oils, sugar and sweets, and nonalcoholic beverages grew less than overall inflation.
Yes I know where you stand on this, I don't need more information about your opinion.
I asked if you see the conclusion of this view, and if you endorse it.
To be very very clear it goes like this: if poor are fat because they make bad choices and for no other reasons, then you can reasonably conclude that that is also why they are poor. That they deserve to be poor for that reason.
I'm from a developing country where these things are affordable and less wealthy people spend money on cigarettes rather than salads. Here it definitely isn't about money but about having proper food culture
There's an opportunity cost and a time cost (and an attention cost) to making food properly and eating right.
Opportunity: if your area cannot give you produce (raw materials to cook with) that's pretty direct. Time: I'm fortunate enough that I can blow at least an hour a day just cutting up meat for stir-fry or preparing my omelet and oatmeal, and a lot of this is really time-optimized but it's still way more than the microwave-box lifestyle. That hour (at least, and distributed among all my meals for the day) is also an attention sink that I can't skip, even though I make the same stuff over and over. If I couldn't do that, I'd have to not only be getting different foodstuffs, but also figuring out different recipes every time I got bored.
You can let corporate America do that stuff for you and just pick different enticing boxes of microwaveable stuff, but you will get bombed with combinations of sugar and salt because competing in the supermarket aisle is serious business and those who fail are lost. They'd be putting fentanyl in the Hot Pockets if they dared. Anything to make the sale, it's that or perish.
Then, that's what you eat, if you're poor and can't spend hours doing it yourself and doing it right. And if you're poor enough… the selection at Cumberland Farms is going to be strictly kept to whatever the other poor people in your neighborhood are addicted to, because that's what will sell.
As someone who does not live in the US, it is often discussed in my social circles. To us, it appears that this cultural propaganda is a political necessity to stay far from communism. The cultural conception of the extent of the free-will impacts notably justice (individual responsability vs. psy impact of the environment) and wealth redistribution (welfare vs. meritocracy).
The conception that most of the bad things that happen to an individual is because of poor choices makes perpetuating inequalities easier. Notably thoses that stem from free market capitalism.
In France we have a strong cultural awareness of our low/inexsitent free-will. This translates readily into state welfare.
It only counts as moral weakness if you're blaming your own obesity on somebody other than yourself. Most people people who are fat are quite happy with eating a bunch of junk food, so they just have different priorities.
If you have have access to $1 frozen veggie bags, $2/lb chicken thighs, and assortment of different legumes, you have it better food options than the majority of the world. You can certainly achieve a healthy diet if you really want to.
The last 20 years has probably made (much) less difference than you appear to think.
From Wikipedia: "The rate of increase in the incidence of obesity began to slow in the 2000s".
But, to attempt to answer your question:
e.g., the expectation that both adults in a household will work means that people/parents are more likely to be time-poor and not able to cook. Cooking skills have been lost.
> Instead of seeing the bright side of life, in which this person clearly vastly improved their situation in life, all they can see is what they don’t have.
First, I dont think this accurately describes the list at all. Second, it is ok for people to express negative feelings or observations. Forced positivity is toxic.
Obesity is significantly correlated with lower income. However, in an individual case it is not sufficient to draw conclusions.
Edit: also you seem to present the author's formulation as meaning that they believe poverty caused them to be fat. As far as I can tell she is merely pointing out a series of correlations to both prove that she, in fact, stood out as poor, and to show how this distinction affected her furthermore. Btw I'd say the only actively harmful behaviour from the company she pointed out was making her suggest a salary rather than them making an offering.
There are food deserts in the USA, where you literally can't buy high quality food like vegetables in a large area, and have to resort to only eating the highly processed and highly unhealthy food. These food deserts usually are located in the poorer neighbourhoods.
But junk food is less filling and satiating than real food and much more dense calorically. You can eat lettuce all day and never consume the number of calories in a fast food burger.
> Being 'underweight' is associated with significant excess death; being 'overweight' is associated with a lower death rate than 'normal' BMI:
This is nonsense. In many medical deaths such as cancer (and especially since euthanasia isn't available) the person dies by slowly withering away. One of the first things that happens is that they become skinny and frail. That doesn't associate underweightedness with mortality. It intentionally draws a false correlation.
However, it doesn't explain why being 'overweight' BMI consistently proves to be protective against death, despite it being so stigmatised that it affects quality of medical care.
> However, it doesn't explain why being 'overweight' BMI consistently proves to be protective against death
I don't see how the "protective of death" conclusion is able to be maintained when it was determined by comparing the mortality of overweight people to frail and dying old people and cancer patients. The reality is that it's the opposite. It's well known that being overweight damages the organs and makes a person more susceptible to dozens of diseases.
I said "relatively slim". I actually meant by that a bit of a tummy, but not morbidly obese. I'm not recommending six packs for all. God knows I don't have one.
Also, being "overweight" could be for a variety of reasons, including excess muscle. I'd be interested to see mortality correlated with % body fat.
Food deserts are a big problem. Most of the urban food deserts developed after major riots burned down existing grocery stores in the late 60s (and then again in the 80s in LA).
New food deserts now exist in Minneapolis (and likely other cities as well) after the recent rioting and burning there:
Ironically, in the most recent riots, many - perhaps most - of the destructive rioters were middle-class "activist" kids who don't have to live with the results of their actions.
Which supermarket chains in the US do not provide vegetables, fruit, meat and only offer processed food? Please find us a 'food desert' where there are no supermarkets nearby.
This is a myth that's easily refuted. There's an argument to be made that poorer people aren't educated on healthy food choices but the idea that they don't have access to anything but processed food is just silly.
There are quite a few papers out there on the subject. As someone who has studied a little bit of sociology, I can tell you there are numerous sociological factors which basically determine that wealthier people have access to better food, better medical care and live healthier lives in comparison to lower-socioeconomic people. Where you live alone determines your health equity, if you live in a remote area or small town away from a large city, your access to fresh and non-processed foods is heavily reduced.
It is also worth noting that it's not necessarily how much money you have that is the contributing factor, it can be other factors. The lack of green areas or pathways to walk/exercise (especially prevalent in remote Australian communities), the number of hospitals or doctors close by. But, ultimately, lack of health services and fresh food are correlated to obesity both of which are determined by your location which, in turn, is determined by your financial status.
"if you live in a remote area or small town away from a large city, your access to fresh and non-processed foods is heavily reduced."
This simply isn't true. Most food deserts are in the poorer areas of the cities because nobody is bringing fresh produce in there to sell. If you live in the country or small town, many of these places have farm stands, farmers markets, and local farmers providing seasonal produce to the local stores.
Not to mention, lower density housing generally means that there is enough land to have a veggie garden, depending on the specific circumstances.
Rural areas being chock full of farmers markets is mostly nostalgia, anyone I know who lives in the country is far more likely to shop exclusively at Walmart than anyone in the city, and likely to prefer more non-perishable food (i.e. processed) because daily or multiple times a week shopping trips are infeasible.
The farms in rural areas are generally focused on growing a single thing (either one type of livestock, or all corn, etc.), entirely for wholesale, farmers markets are a distraction for most of them, outside of smaller farms that are more of a lifestyle / hobby thing a lot of the time.
Farm stands sometimes exist, but they're an exception rather than the rule in most places, and unless you're in an area known for growing fruit or something like that (and primarily selling to tourists driving by) it'll be one-off things like sweet corn in season or eggs.
"because daily or multiple times a week shopping trips are infeasible."
Do they not have a refrigerator? Once per week trips (maybe even less) were the norm for me growing up, and I had plenty of fresh fruits and veggies.
I've lived in multiple rural areas. Yes, many people do get food from Walmart. I can see some of the more remote people preferring some processed food. I can also see those remote people growing and processing their own (canning, like I do). Many people use frozen veggies, which I don't consider processed and are nearly as good as fresh. Most of the "fresh" stuff you see is actually months old due to the way the supply chain works. It arguably loses as much or more nutritional value than the frozen stuff. This situation is completely different from the actual food deserts you get in the city. The rural people have the option to buy fresh but may choose not to. These people living in food deserts in the city don't have the option of fresh produce in the stores they go to. They generally don't have space to grow their own either. This lack of choice is the big issue.
Every area I've lived in has had farm stands and farmers markets. It has also had local stores that contract with local farmers for seasonal produce. Individual vendors/farmers do tend to have limited selection by focusing on one or two crops. But there are usually multiple farmers focusing on different things (and coordinating through the local grange). Yes, the majority of farms are monoculture soy or corn. These other farms are usually 90% that but maybe 10% other crops, like pumpkin, corn, watermelon, tomato, cantaloupe, onion, potato, honey, hops, etc. There are also CSAs that you can join for a variety of produce, including meat and dairy. My parents live in an area where the local dairy still has delivery service - that's right a good old fashioned milk man.
> Do they not have a refrigerator? Once per week trips (maybe even less) were the norm for me growing up, and I had plenty of fresh fruits and veggies.
Yeah, I think we're agreeing - I'm saying that going to the grocery store once a week or less is probably going to result in purchasing a smaller percentage of fresh produce (certainly not none, but for meats in particular any less than once a week is starting to get sketchy in terms of keeping things fresh when refridgerated.)
CSAs for sure exist, but I see way more usage of them in urban areas. You're certainly not prevented from using them in rural areas (although delivery might not be available and pickup might be far less convienent than it would be in an urban environment).
This might be a function of where we're from, but in the countryside here hobby side farms by actual farmers are relatively rare and usually aren't producing enough to be considered much more than an in-season treat. I've never heard of milk delivery still being a thing (despite knowing a bunch of people living on farms), so I suspect you just have a different regional experience.
You're both kind of right here. The farmers market stuff is mostly BS.
In the rural areas the weekly/biweekly shopping routine involves everyone (rich and poor alike) dragging their butts to the one strip mall in a 1-2hr radius and that strip mall will have at the bare minimum a super-walmart with a good fresh produce section or a Walmart with a grocery store beside it because that's the place where rich middle and poor from the entire area shop and it needs to cater to them all in order to get them to drag their butts there and do business. The poor will buy less and fill in the gaps with Dollar General food (which is bad food at a bad price).
The poor urban areas which can't economically support supermarkets and who's residents can't economically justify traveling the range they'd need to travel to get to those supermarkets (because the run down not always running cars that underpin the transportation of the rural poor are not as economically viable in cities) so they're stuck buying food at CVS, the bodega or whatever convenience store is accessible.
If you draw the food desert line at "no Whole Foods and no farmers market" then they both suck. But if you zoom in on the area below that the rural areas have a slight edge.
The idea that farmers markets are commonplace in rural areas is mostly BS. They exist in cities for sure, but you pretty much need an urban population (and probably a fairly well-off population) to really support a farmers market.
Just because farms exist in an area doesn't generally mean the people in that area are getting their food from those farmers (at least directly). That's mostly a relic of an old vision of farms that grew every type of produce and had a variety of livestock instead of the corporate monoculture farms that dominate today.
Sure, the truly rural people aren't going to farmers markets, but the people in small towns and suburban areas do (this is in contrast to the "big city" in the original comment). Most rural people use a store for most stuff and then go to farm stores/stands/neighbors for other things.
There are still farms that produce a variety of produce. Many of them only produce them as a small percentage of their operation. For example, the dairy farm down the road plants sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, watermelon, cantaloupe, and (not food, but) manure. I know of several other farms that do similar things.
> The farms in rural areas are generally focused on growing a single thing (either one type of livestock, or all corn, etc.), entirely for wholesale,
And most of the farms are not only going to be growing just one thing, but the same one thing as other nearby farms (of which there won't be very many, since farms have been consolidating into ever larger operations for many decades).
I grew up in a rural area and I think I can count on 1 hand how many times I saw a farm stand. People do not shop at farm stands and farmers markets in rural areas that often.
I'm in a very small town right now and it's a reasonable driving distance from farms. It looks to me like the average farm stand is simply some clever person buying crates of produce at the wholesaler.
No shortage of healthy food at the local grocery stores of course.
I expect that people who wave their arms about 'food deserts' could probably stand to visit either small towns or urban areas and form an opinion based on actual experience.
Conjecture here because I don't honestly know, but I think some of what you're observing might just be that food deserts are very regional. If you look at this image [1] you can see that it's basically just the Southeast/Appalachia. Rural Midwest, West, etc don't seem to have this issue nearly as much.
>ost food deserts are in the poorer areas of the cities because nobody is bringing fresh produce in there to sell.
Talking about things that simply aren't true.... Every major city in the US has a large farmer's market present and typically more than one happening in neighborhoods all over the city. These cities also have free/cheap public transportation to get people to the farmer's market. Additionally, you don't need a farmer's market to obtain healthy food, supermarkets are just fine.
The is just trope along the same lines of black people can't get their own ID's or figure out the internet. It's an incredibly racist way of thinking. They're not stupid or incapable people. If they want to they can certainly obtain healthy food.
"The is just trope along the same lines of black people can't get their own ID's or figure out the internet. It's an incredibly racist way of thinking."
I never said black people. That's your own bias talking.
I agree that people can travel to a supermarket (and that supermarkets have healthy food). It's much more difficult to take a weekly trip for a family's needs in public transportation as opposed to loading up a car. More frequent trips tend to incur higher opportunity cost due to the commute times.
IDs are a completely different matter. The need for those trips are about once every 4-6 years and generally lower expense too.
>I never said black people. That's your own bias talking.
I made a comparison to it being similar, I did not say it exclusively affected black people and this is why I used the terms "along the same lines". Reading comprehension please.
>It's much more difficult to take a weekly trip for a family's needs in public transportation as opposed to loading up a car. More frequent trips tend to incur higher opportunity cost due to the commute times.
I disagree. All the elites and hipsters in big cities live this way on purpose so it can't be that hard. I find it ironic that the same people who push for more public affordable transportation will turn around and say it's too hard to use and personal transportation is better when it comes to minorities. Additionally, if we follow your logic then rural people are vastly more affected by this than anyone living in the inner-city since they have to travel much longer distances and don't even have public transportation available.
> if you live in a remote area or small town away from a large city, your access to fresh and non-processed foods is heavily reduced.
Do you really think this? I know the sticks. You apparently don't. You can live off potatoes, eggs, and oatmeal and not be fat. Those are available anywhere.
There is a "poor" culture, there is an "elite" culture, and then there is a "responsibility" culture. I grew up financially poor in a manufactured home in the sticks, but my culture of my parents was that of "responsibility". Know the difference.
"The Road to Wigan Pier" had a great bit about this, which hits the nail on the head based on my experience being working class:
The basis of their diet, therefore, is white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea and potatoes—an appalling diet. Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we'll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the PAC level. White bread-and-marg. and sugared tea don't nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the Englishman's opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.
>The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots.
The only people who think that have a very privileged upbringing. My SO worked in an archaeological site in central Asia, and the vast majority of the hosts meals were just raw onions and stale flatbread.
Not irrational at all. I've often wondered at some ascetic values of the very rich: cold showers, building a cabin with your own hands, short duration of rough wilderness living, and in your quoted case, abstemious diet. Humanity spent generations trying to escape those conditions, poor people will never willingly engage in them. Is it because the rest of rich people's lives are elevated away from those conditions, so it's a choice to embrace it, and thereby redefining the thing's perceived values?
Yet another data point on why the poor are playing the lottery, eating crisps and not virtuously buying and cooking rice and lentil, there's a game-theory-ish idea that the poor understands that as much hard work and lentil they could shovel, they stand little chance of getting out. So with the money they have they buy the best value thing possible, discounted for future possibilities; and those best value things are junk food, lottery tickets, sometimes expensive (relative to their circumstance) and flashy things like clothes or phones.
Being poor doesn't make you fat per se, but if you look at most stats, higher social levels(whatever that means in each country) usually means less obesity. When I worked in construction, most people were eating an absolute crap and were often overweight. Then I joined a professional services company and I literally walked into an office of 50 or so people, where everybody was slim and most people ate pretty healthy, home made food.
There are lots of factors why that's the case,but to say it's not happening like this wouldn't be right either.
This is true in a superficial sense. But healthy food is generally more expensive than junk food. Gym memberships, exercize equipment, personal trainers, and outdoor recreation costs time and money. It's hard to prioritize self-care when you're struggling with the day-to-day stresses of poverty, like how do I get to work after my car broke down for the third time this month. Poverty is stressful and stress-eating is a thing.
Sure, there is no law of physics that makes poor people overweight, but it is much easier to have a thin waistline when you have a fat bank account. And indeed we observe that in the US, poor people are heavier than wealthier people.
> Instead of seeing the bright side of life, in which this person clearly vastly improved their situation in life, all they can see is what they don’t have.
I think there is a self-deprecating humor to the article, and I enjoyed it. Life in tech world is strange sometimes.
Exactly my thoughts. This person just wants to make herself feel good about victimizing herself. Justifying unhealthy behaviour and habits by being poor earlier in her life? Come on. Yes, some of her colleagues seem to be on the other extremes, but many of her examples are just ridicolous. Eg: adult soccer leagues are one of the cheapest activities I can think of, besides running (which is also done by "rich" people).
I'm also coming from a poor family and area, and I also had a few revelations, but nothing like this. My very first of these experiences was at a company paid dinner, where the waiters rolled out a trolley of beverages next to our a table and went away for a couple of minutes. I joked to my colleagues at the table that we could just steal that trolley and nobody would notice it. Nobody laughed, of course and I realised that at that point in my life I could buy a truck of those beverages on my hourly wage. That was nearly 3 months into my career and I just moved on right away.
I must say I was rather triggered by that statement. I'm 100% sure that at one point my earnings were much lower than hers and I wasn't "a fat body". I had a second hand road bike that consisted of many different parts and I loved that thing, I've put thousands of kilometers on that old frame. And guess what, I still use it to this day, even though I could buy a fancy new one.
As a matter of fact, not having a lot of money only emphasizes the fact that your health is one of the things you can influence.
We never had much money, but we ate well. And I ate a lot, but I was also very active. Being active is free.
I know this will upset people, but if poor people are fat, food is not scarce. The quality of food may be low, but low food quality does not make one fat, a surplus of calories does.
To be absolutely clear, I know there is a strong correlation between socioeconomic status and obesity. It's much more complicated than "just eat less", many factors play into this. Including food IQ. It's much more easy to overeat on Cheetos than it is on potatoes and green beans. A persons social environment will have a big influence on how and what they eat, how much they will move, etc.
Low quality food absolutely can make you fat because it makes it harder to eat properly. Unhealthy food isn’t just “easier to overeat” but also messes with insulin to make you feel more hungry than you actually are.
Because statistically poor people who remain poor have poor impulse control, prioritize short term pleasure and make bad decisions. Like many people who escaped poverty, I am not poor because lacking these traits elevated me out of poverty.
Are you suggesting that she chose to be employed at a start up and is actively choosing to stay there because it's a worse situation than she had before?
The only difference is that if I’m wrong, some people got free stuff but if you’re wrong, people are languishing in despair with little to no lifeline. Are you willing to bet other peoples lives on the idea that your experience is truth? It’s not something I am willing to do; I value human life too much.
Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like
oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter
to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it
would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do
such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on
brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less
money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A
millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an
unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of
the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say
when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to
eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is
always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth
of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and
we'll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are
at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don't nourish you
to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than
brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery
that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the
English-man's opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a
temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.
Yes, but before that excerpt Orwell pointed out that the financial margins involved in eating healthily on the minimum income were much narrower than the "why don't they just" contingent knew or admitted. That doesn't carry over to the contemporary US as self-evidently as the psychological point does, but I suspect that it does carry over somewhat.
I do encourage anyone who hasn't already to read the whole chapter http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html : it's not really very long though I felt that the relevant parts were a bit too long, all together, to fit in a comment.
I'm glad I didn't read that book when I was still "poor", it's so relatable and hits hard. I recommend it for anyone kind of wondering (he's not exactly kind to the working class, but he does try hard to understand it all and does have insight).
Everyone replying is saying various things about how it's not the poors fault that they've been taken advantage of and have crappy food options and that's why they're fat.
They might be right about the bad food options but what these people don't get is that if you're poor you have a lot of bigger more time pressing, more tractable problems to solve than being fat. Most of these people would still be fat if they had more ready access to "good" food because good food wouldn't magically make being fat jump to the top of their priority list.
When you have little money you can very easily justify skipping lunch everyday or something like that. Skipping breakfast or lunch, having a very minimal meal for the one you don't skip (think PB&J, maybe with a fruit cup if you're feeling like a high roller) and then having your big meal at dinner so that your hunger is focused on the parts of the day when you're working and distracted and you go to sleep full is a very, very, tractable form of dieting and cost cutting rolled into one.
But if you have enough money to indulge in food/beer then why not do it, it's about the only luxury you can afford.
Embarrassing. My heart is supposed to break for you because nobody else wanted to eat your kind of Cheetos? One of the most materially fortunate people who ever lived, richer than pharaohs and emperors of the past, still finds some way to write this tedious thing about being poor... at a startup... probably in California. Could you at least go visit rural areas of Cambodia or Nepal or something to get some vague notion of what being poor is like? Hint: it means you can't buy anything because you don't have any money, and there's hardly any way to get any.
> I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I was the only person who would say hello to the cleaning lady as she meekly made her rounds around us when we worked late. Everyone else had a long habit of ignoring anyone like her.
That's IMO the worst behaviour of the rich listed in this article. I've heard stories that at Google, the non-engineering workers at campus may not socialize with engineers at all. What kind of society is this that Google is building? Aren't you even allowed to acknowledge someone else's humanity?
Oh ignoring the cleaning staff is utter kindness compared to what WeWork did: costumed them in outfits featuring slogans like “Do what you love” etc. while refusing them $10/hr pay.
I only got into tech a bit over five years ago and that was the first time in my entire life I had been above the (demonically low) US poverty level.
There is absolutely a difference in how rich and poor people treat poor service workers.
It's not that poor people treat them better per se but it's different. Poor people can be cruel to each other because they are all suffering, crab in a bucket shit.
Rich people mostly ignore poor people because visible poverty makes them uncomfortable so they look away. They hate themselves if they see our humanity so they try not to.
I've been on both sides of this and am speaking from painful experience in both cases.
"Rich people mostly ignore poor people because visible poverty makes them uncomfortable so they look away. They hate themselves if they see our humanity so they try not to."
It has to be amazing having such a simple world model. Or better yet, being able to know the deepest ideas and thoughts in other people's minds and to explain their behaviour.
Going back to seriousness, and leaving sit-com cliches aside, do you have any solid evidence about this? and when you say rich, could you give a ballpark of the money they have to have to be considered rich? Because poor people in US would have better living conditions than in other countries in Europe, for example.
No I'm not getting into this. I've done this so, so many times and there's no value for anyone.
You, or someone else, will move the goalposts, or find some hyper specific counterexample and claim it disproves the entire thing. Or claim that the poor aren't poor enough, or someone else somewhere has it worse so their misery can't be real.
It's based on my experiences and there's no bibliography for my life. I explained the experiences and why I think they're relevant. If it doesn't work for you then it doesn't.
From experience in similar conversations I expect this to be taken as a refusal to argue in good faith. The thing is though I don't want to argue. I said what I said and I stand by it. I have nothing to add.
The startup I worked for had Spanish speaking cleaning staff. I even brushed up my Spanish to greet them - the smiles on their faces are with me to this day. It wasn't what I was going for but I'm happy that it had this effect.
There’s a strong correlation, however, which I think comes down to whether you have either done or know someone in that kind of job. People who ignore the staff may not be intentionally mean about it - it’s just outside of their normal frame of reference and they haven’t been introspective about that.
We have cleaning during work hours, so the idea that someone wouldn't talk to the cleaning staff is absurd to me. Why wouldn't I talk to someone who moves around the office for most of the day.
Socially dominant cultures' mistreatment of others is always more visible to the others. You're one data point. People on the other side of the divide have many more data points from which to judge.
I worked in an Ivy League university while poor— and continued doing so for quite some time. I assure you that treating people in lower socioeconomic classes either as invisible or a mildly concerning presence, depending on the context, and coming from a wealthy, white background is closely correlated. Many of the wealthier students, faculty, and professional staff treated the cleaners, landscapers, catering staff and cafeteria workers like furniture. Of course, there were exceptions.
I saw a similar juxtaposition in tech, though the ratio of wealthy to non-wealthy wasn't as extreme as it was in an elite university.
There's another side of this which is that you and the janitor have very little common ground so while you can say hi to each other anything beyond the most basic small-talk is going to get very uncomfortable for both parties very fast.
I'm not going to post my credentials on HN but I have it on good authority that these jobs suck enough without having to pretend to relate to your customer. Hello is fine but beyond that and the janitor probably has their shields up lest they say something stupid the same way a white collar professional would be very careful talking to Bill Gates.
You share the same space. How distant are you with other people that you can't just say hi? Does it matter if you don't discuss politics after it?
When i was a kid, i had to take the bus and i forgot my bus ticket (a pupil, on one bus stop, everyday, the same bus stop the same bus driver on a school route...) and he put a lot of energy into telling me off.
A few days/weeks later i thought about it and i also thought about why i'm not greeting my bus driver when i enter. I started to say hi. I liked it. I liked saying hi to my bus driver.
I forgot my bus ticket again. No issues no worries. there was mutual respect and that mutual respect came to acknowleding him.
I like greeting my neigbhours as well. Somehow it makes a small connection between us.
and yes i read the part with the shield: The first step is a hi. Every other step is easier not harder. Finding out their names, a little bit of talking about family and friends etc.
If i would have worked close enough to Bill Gates i probably would have talked to him sooner or later. Why not? He is a human, not like Mark Zuckerburg.
I say hi only and came from a fairly well-off family.
Every additional complaints about my life or happenings in my life that I would have would be unrelatable to the maids and the drivers at our house and it might make them feel uncomfortable.
I know who they are, of course. And birthday and their sons and daughters birthdays. That's how we give gifts. We know who they are and where they are as well - we wouldn't hire them without knowing that.
They couldn't relate - my bad day would be related to losing a few points on a foreign exam or if my favorite restaurant was overbooked.
>That's not a sign of being poor, it's a sign of not being an ass.
Seriously, why wouldn't you talk to the janitor or anyone else? They're the reason you have a clean place to work. I never got the "nothing in common" routine either. They're people, with lives and families and wants and needs. Yeah, they're not spending their day banging their heads against their desks solving reference counting bugs, but they're working to support their lives as best they can.
>What kind of society is this that Google is building? Aren't you even allowed to acknowledge someone else's humanity?
The social interaction dynamics that happens at the Google building is a reflection of society at large. As another example, I've worked at the offices of charity institutions where the higher level white collar workers ignore the cleaning people. The common theme is that humans in general (and not Google employees specifically) like to stratify people.
I recently flipped through a high school yearbook (these books were more popular before the era of Facebook) and noticed that the cafeteria ladies were relegated to a tiny group photo. However, the teachers got individual portraits. So a public institution funded by taxpayer money implicitly stratified 2 different types of workers. Each page of printing a hardcopy yearbook costs money and the food workers are not the same value to the yearbook staff. See the common pattern across humanity?
I would say that having individual pictures of teachers make sense as those are the people students have most personal contact with. Now the other administrative staff and cafeteria ladies should be at same level.
Not saying hello is a bit extreme but I feel like often IT people just refrain from initiating conversation with people unrelated to their interests/work
Some of it is situational though. I only sometimes say hello. I also worked as a janitor before and have no problem with people not saying hello. The bigger issue is if they are ignoring you and messing up your work (getting in the way, ignoring you when you need to get their trashcan from their desk, being an excessive slob like I'm here to clean but you don't have to make my job harder just because you don't have to clean it up yourself).
This might be a learned defence mechanism against a general feeling of wearines with the state of the world. You might work a (relatively) well-paying job at a megacorp, but often you're confronted with colleagues that get promotions through what seems like bullshit projects, you see how useless your directors or even execs seem to be and how much cash they pocket, and you're forced to do some sham work yourself, maybe because whoever is leading your team wants to advance their career. So your everyday work experience is crap, and you have no agency over anything, and you feel miserable.
Then you see the cleaning staff, and you're confronted with their reality, the fact that they have to do work that is both harder and potentially more useful than what you're doing but they don't get any of the benefits, and they get paid a fraction of what you do, and that just makes you feel even worse, like this entire system is somehow fundamentally broken, which makes you want to trow your ergonomic chair out of the unopenable glass window of your open space.
This is probably a large part of it. The higher up the chain you go the more obvious it is - the system, the game, whatever you want to call it. Finally understanding what it means to sell your soul, and seeing that at least the janitor kept most of theirs.
I am shocked that more people dont acknowledge that the more you get paid the less "hard" the work you do is.
Like there's an entire well known meme about rest and vest at Google. (Amazon and Netflix will bounce you though if rumors are true)
It's been true my entire life that every bracket of pay raise increase i've gotten has had a commensurate decrease in the amount of physical labor and mental exhaustion i would suffer.
Going from minimum wage to 30k+ was a breath of fresh air. Going pass 100k was realizing you were living in a coal mine where everyone smoked and the 30k just meant you got to take clean air breaks every now and then. Of course then you have the attendant desperation in the US of "falling down" back to the level you were before and knowing the life style you live now can not possibly be sustained in those positions.
A simple mental exercise. When was the last time you had to ask permission to use the restroom at your place of employment?
One serious issue i've seen with alot of tech workers is that they have NO IDEA whats it's like to ever work minimum wage. They went from middle class existence to college to a tech job making more money than most people ever will. The minimum wage worker and even middle wage worker existence is invisible and nonsensical to them.
> I've heard stories that at Google, the non-engineering workers at campus may not socialize with engineers at all.
I worked at HQ as an engineer, and didn't notice any such thing.
Most of the time I probably didn't say hi to cleaning staff, for the same reason I wouldn't say hi to most of the people I pass by in the office: because they weren't someone I knew. Of course this might vary depending on context, but I was treating them the same way I treated everyone else, or at least trying to.
Do other people say hi to every single person you see in the building every day?
one thing that stood out to me when i was in Southampton in the UK was that every passenger on the bus would say some form of "thank you" on their way off the bus.
To me this sounds bizarre, like trying to greet every person you pass by in a city. I see dozens, if not hundreds of people in the office every day, if I said hi to everyone it would be really strange.
> I've heard stories that at Google, the non-engineering workers at campus may not socialize with engineers at all.
Googler for many years here. I've never heard of this kind of thing. One of the most prolific and loved content creators on the internal meme board is in sales. The closest thing I've ever heard like this in the entire valley is that at Apple they don't pay for the lunch bill of non-engineers, so having premium lunch options can feel exclusive to engineers.
One of the most widely praised decisions Google made during the pandemic was to continue to pay their vendor staff who maintain the buildings even though there was no work to be done. And they kept that promise (as far as I can tell) for the entire process even though the initial expectation was that WFH would last for a few months.
My personal experience at Google has been that people do chat with vendor staff like custodial workers and kitchen staff.
How about earlier this month when corporate asked child care workers to come back to the office to take care of your kids and refused to re instate their transportation benefits?
Last time I was there (which was admittedly like six years ago) the person I was visiting said they got some stipend to be used at the cafeteria. Entirely possible I've misremembered.
> > I've heard stories that at Google, the non-engineering workers at campus may not socialize with engineers at all.
> Googler for many years here. I've never heard of this kind of thing.
Not a Googler myself, but from what I heard the divide isn't between engineering and non-engineering roles, but between Google employees and contractors (and that you can tell who is which by their badges).
For me, and I suspect many others in tech, this has more to do with introversion than anything else. When I cleaned for a cafe, I just wanted to focus on my task on hand.
There's probably a handful of other people who would say hello to the cleaning lady but don't feel comfortable doing it because they're in the same position as the author but realized nobody says hello to the cleaning lady and decided they'll just do what everyone else is doing in order to fit in.
> I've heard stories that at Google, the non-engineering workers at campus may not socialize with engineers at all. What kind of society is this that Google is building?
I once read a AskReddit about people who worked for extremely rich people.
Many said that the old man and wife, who built the fortune, were nice humble people that understood that they are so lucky to have made it in life. Many comments also said that their children were absolute spoiled brats who were the exact opposite to humble.
To be fair, large tech companies have a lot of people, most people don't talk to most people in tech companies, even if they are the same 'position'. Much like you don't talk to most random students as you walk around at large university as a student at the university. You talk to your classmates and professors and if circumstance permits, you talk to random stranger students sometimes.
> Gym membership was included in my benefits. I went half a dozen times before it was made crystal clear to me that I did not belong.
I would be curious about this one. What did happened in the gym? Not really doubting, some people in gyms are quite unfriendly when you dont look fit. But I am still curious what happened there.
I would imagine you got it right with the "get out of the gym if you are not already fit". It's amazing how badly people act towards people starting out on their fitness.
Literally seen this almost all the time at three different gym places...
I went to the gym I was asked to come back "later" as "the gym is near full (50% full actually) and we prefer 'regulars' to come and train for something instead of... kind of you...".
So, if I am like you - just seeing with my own eyes and not follow the feeling and facts from other persons - I would say that gym regulars are just full of s*** :)
I’ve been working out regularly for 20+ years in a gym and have never seen it either. If anything, I’ve seen the opposite, the super-fit go out of their way to encourage those who are unfit or just starting because they know the difficulties. I’ve literally never even been given a weird look when asking if I can work in on equipment even with the most intimidating gym rats. And this includes me doing a number of gym faux pas early.
I’m sure legitimate bad experiences do happen, but I also think a lot of perception is based on the stories we make up in our own heads.
I've never seen it happen in person either. As someone who used to be terrified of going to the gym because I didn't want to look like the new person at the gym, I can say for myself that it was all in my head.
"..you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do." - David Foster Wallace
Was in a gym that put signs on the wall admonishing people from commenting on those trying to get in shape. They were not getting the new members they wanted.
Ironically (for this thread), all the private rich-person gyms I've been to have mostly been populated by people who were not in good shape, and everybody was very friendly.
But these were also "health clubs" in the old school sense, not a fancy gym like Equinox where I would never even set foot.
Edit: I also have heard enough gym bullying stories to believe that it can and does happen, but it seems maybe only under circumstances that I have never been in.
I have seen adults being hostile to fat people. Both in face and behind back. I don't think stigma is in obese persons head. I was curious about what went on in that gym specifically.
I used to be a "gym rat" but the general "guy culture" at most gyms is thinly veiled bully behavior. I can not count the number of times I interrupted normal, buff, and outright fat guys giving less-than-babe-status women grief. I finally found myself getting prepared for anger when going to the gym, and after switching gyms a number of times I gave up and now work out in parks and at home, away from the public assholes that ruin it for all but the beautiful.
The gym I went to had almost exclusively very fit people, who obviously exercised a lot.
When I started out I was fairly overweight and completely out of shape, could barely do a couple of pushups, and I felt very uncomfortable and out of place.
However the others just did their programs, and I never got any looks or comments. So after a while I managed to relax and just get on with my own stuff.
Just say no to the gym, go out to a nearby forest and exercise there. A friend of mine (who I used to go jogging with) did that. He always found a suitable tree branch and that's all he needed for pull-ups. All other exercises can be done in nature too. It's gonna be healthier and cheaper, I assure you.
in my experience at the gym, you don't need to communicate with anyone at all. you take the free equipment, you lift, you make sure to put everything in its place, you shower and go home. wtf?
Direct communication isn't required to create a hostile environment. Sly looks, offhand remarks overheard while trying to do an exercise, etc.--they pile up. And poor people especially are conditioned to be mindful of this sort of thing. It's often dangerous (as in, an altercation that can become physical might occur) not to be when in public.
poor people also tend to be accustomed to harsh environments (bad neighbourhood, bad school etc) so mindful, maybe yes, but actually stressed to the level that you leave and miss out on smth you have the right to, I don't know...
I don't know if is something about "small town" gyms. But in the gym I used to go when I was younger, the owner of the gym was also a global personal trainer, he will follow every person that joins the gym ( for free ), he will tell you what exercise do today and will follow you if the exercise is new or he notices you don't know how to do it properly, he will also help you with diet and everything in between. The other members of the gym were also very friendly and supportive, congratulating with you for every little advancement like "you look slimmer compared to a week ago"
When I moved to London I was never able to found a gym with that environment.
It's good to recognize that there is a monoculture in tech and that not all of us fit into that monoculture. We should strive to be more inclusive, and we can only do that if those who are marginalized or alienated can speak out and be heard.
The trick to being the only poor person is to not let on. Once people know, they exploit the hell out of you. They don't seem to do it consciously; somehow it just happens. I made that mistake a few times during my time in SF.
I'd say the difference is that Americans are obsessed with money, and they think you need to flaunt it just because you have it. The idea of having a rusty old beater car, let alone bike to work, if you're rich just baffles them.
Status and class here is much more subtle, you often can't tell from the way a person dresses (at least at first glance) and what he drives if he's a billionaire or secretary.
I'm guessing lower pay, larger workloads, etc. I'm not surprised that many managers/founders will exploit your fears to get more work out of you for less. Same way that those on an H1B get the short end of the stick.
Also, I think that most people have some unconscious bias that associate your apparent wealth level as a proxy for your competence level.
People inherently trust more the judgement of people they think are rich. If you avoid looking obviously poor, you'll find out that you'd be given better assignments, more freedom, that your mistakes won't be scrutinized as much.
The day you find this out and act accordingly, it is like as if you were black and them suddenly find out you woke white one day. All the invisible barriers, the glass ceiling, are subtly not there anymore.
Yes, like racism, classism sucks. But you have only one life, your time is short, and while we must fight to try to change things, you'd also better be smart and try to work around classism just by not giving obvious clues about you have ever been poor.
> > I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I made more there than I’d ever made before; a daring amount I had been afraid to ask for during the offer process. I discovered through misadventure that I still made less than any of the executive assistants, or the receptionist. I was, in fact, the lowest-paid person in the building including the interns. I hadn’t known what was possible, so I couldn’t even think to ask for what I was worth to them.
A lot of these issues would probably have been fixed if they just earned market rate. It seems that they were very underpaid. It is unsurprising that they felt poor when they earned the least of anyone in the company.
harder to negotiate a good deal for yourself when you are operating at an information disadvantage (e.g. not having friends/family/former classmates as peers in industry to give insider advice), if you don't have good alternative to employer lowball offer, or you are in poorer negotiating position due to having fewer resources (cash, time, higher expenses due to not having enough cash & stability to secure cheaper long term accommodation, etc).
This person is writing from a lifetime of being poor, not being cash poor in-the-moment because of a salary.
This article resonates strongly with me. I grew up poor, too, and even though I have a 7 figure net worth now one of the first things I consider for anything is the cost. I don't have to, but I still do. I eat the low rent snacks and I use the company's daily cafeteria allowance to eat a sensible lunch and then take the rest home to share with the family. Being poor in America isn't just about money--it's about the psychological barriers and oppression that are erected.
Yes, but the person I responded to never had to, except perhaps to consider how often rather than whether. Those with generational wealth never had to for any reason. Those are important differences in context.
Assuming the trip to Greece was a joke was pretty good, as was the comment about hearing other people’s hobbies and just thinking about the expense. There are definitely cultural signifiers from wealth. Discussing housing endlessly is the biggest one.
Taking a 3 day vacation overseas definitely is a joke. You'll spend as much time sitting in a plane or waiting at the airport as you'll spend at your destination, how's that supposed to be relaxing?
First/business class is not miserable, but it’s also not relaxing. For a three day trip, spending a whole day of it in airports or on a plane is not at all relaxing, no matter what class you’re flying. Personally, I draw the line at a week for non-business travel to Europe, and two weeks for Asia.
Since Concorde service was discontinued, business or first class passengers are not going to spend less time on board of the airplane than economy passengers.
12+ hours for each way quickly dampens the enthusiasm for the weekend.
You said that because you’re poor too. Rich people travel right into resorts, not specific places, because resorts sell you the dream directly.
I definitely saw the videos of those dreamy Greek hotels with in-room balcony pools and if I were rich I would know their names too. I’m sure that if you contact them you’ll just have to drive to SFO and the rest will be taken care of by them.
The rich people I know have their own vacation homes in nice places and/or make exotic travels where resorts are unusual and unneeded. Less rich people aren't usually interested in constrained luxury experiences like resorts and cruises; the closed environment doesn't compete well with freely experiencing a proper tourism hotspot and its varied attractions and extravagant luxury doesn't compete well with a better location or a longer stay with a cheaper, good enough accommodation.
Resorts are a specialty for amateurs or a resource for special cases (e.g. a safe environment in unfriendly locations like Egypt or Maldives).
Well you say that because you haven't visited greece ;). It's not the "spa" type of tourism, and those kind of luxuries are usually sought after by spoiled arabian princes. The aspirational SV person would choose one of the many hotels, book trips and food tours around the islands, or hit the beaches and the nightlife. In fact all-inclusive hotels are geared towards pensioners and budget-level UK teenagers.
But it's certainly not possible to do those in 3 days with jetlag.
The part that's the worst isn't being on the plane. It's going to and being at the airport. First class doesn't fix the god awful experience that is flying.
There are plenty of ways to make the airport part more pleasant with more money. Priority check-in desks and security mean you don't need to get to the airport as early just in case, it will be consistently fast. Priority boarding removes the need to queue. Leaving first probably means shorter queues at immigration. Lounges are much more pleasant to wait at than the general access areas. Does first class baggage also get offloaded first?
Bullshit. I know my share of wealthy people and nobody does that. Especially when you have plenty of vacation days to use anyway.
Las Vegas is 14-15h away from most European hubs. NYC is 8h. Even the best case scenario (first class and the airline staff walks you through immigration) means 10h door-to-door.
Bachelor parties or Boys weekends in Las Vegas is quite common for Londoners in some circles. Leave Friday and come back to work on Monday morning. It's not much different from a weekend Crete or Canary Islands or Weekend away in the Caribbean
Colleagues at work in the City didn't at least once or twice a month. Well not to Vegas/NYC (probably 2-3 a year) but Crete, Berlin, Ibiza for partying/clubbing many times etc. I can see it happening more now that companies are more open to remote work. You could work remotely from the place on Thursday/Friday and then party and come back on Monday morning
I have done it in the past went to Switzerland or Hong Kong for the weekend to buy things as it was cheaper to fly there then to buy the same product on the grey market in London (saved $3-5k).
Maybe from the US (unless you go to Cuba or the Caribbean). In Europe it makes total sense, even from far away Scandinavia. You can easily be in South of France before noon.
I just looked it up and flights from SF to athens and back are almost 35 hours. Add in a few hours at each airport, an hour to/from the airport on each side and you're talking 40-45 hours of door to door round trip transit. That's insane.
Found that bit surprising one. For European startup long weekend in Greece isn't that special. The flights can be quite cheap and Greece generally isn't that expensive country. A few hundred all together could probably be done.
I’ve always been surprised by the flight costs of some European airlines. It seems cheaper to fly around Europe than it is to fly within the US. I recall during the peak of the pandemic some people I know posting pictures of $5 flights while in the US they were they were still 10-11 times that for domestic flights.
Are indoor rock climbing and adult soccer known to be especially expensive activities? I haven't done much indoor rock climbing, but I've done a lot of adult soccer, mostly for free.
Indoor rock climbing for sure. A gym will cost you at least $50 a month (where I am, but I doubt it's that much different elsewhere), and the equipment costs aren't astronomical but do add up, especially compared to "cheap" sports (at least $200 for shoes / harness, and additional gear depending on what sort of climbing you want to do).
Right, but if they just started at that job, and they previously had worked for much lower pay, they wouldn't be exposed to indoor rock climbing much at all. I don't think the author is saying that they couldn't rock climb if they wanted to, it's just a very different context when people can suddenly have (relatively) expensive hobbies.
The indoor wall where I'm from was at a YMCA, which has financial assistance programs for people who qualify. On a tech salary the author would probably be looking at full price, but if she were still poor it'd be a cheaper option.
In my country the price to do adult soccer is "one soccer ball", many soccer fields are free, you just go and if no one is playing you can use it. The only problem is that you can't play at night because no one is going to turn on the light for you.
The fancier soccer fields with lights on cost 25€/hour, divided by 22 players it becomes just 1€ each ( and you still need to bring your ball )
> I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I was the only person who would say hello to the cleaning lady as she meekly made her rounds around us when we worked late. Everyone else had a long habit of ignoring anyone like her.
I hate people that do this. We’re all human and worthy of respect and decency. A simple hello goes a long way.
I definitely agree that being mean to the staff (be it cleaning lady, waiter, etc) is a very bad sign of someone's character.
That said, if I were cleaning an office building I don't think I would want everyone chatting me up - just kindly get out of my way when I'm trying to clean something but otherwise I don't see it as rude to not engage with me when I'm doing my job.
I happen to be that sort of people that ignores people at work (whenever possible). That has nothing to do with my attitude/sentiment towards them. It's that being at work, most of the time I'm just absorbed, having something on my mind that I want to pay attention to. In that state I'd rather ignore everything and everyone around me, but I can't. Not answering to greetings from my peers would damage relations with them in the long run (not to mention that that greeting may be just an opener to something actually work related), and not answering to people higher up the chain of management would definitely have negative consequences, so I'm kind of forced to react to them. But then if sometime late the cleaning personnel happen to pass by, looking less like wanting to socialize with those at desks and more like wishing to get their tasks done and be over with, should both of us attempt to pay the time and effort of maintaining a human connection just for the sake of it?
I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because everyone else had good teeth.
No joke. I grew up with free government dental, and it took years of earning to get at least presentable teeth. Not smiling for years doesn't help your work prospects.
Are you talking about alignment or whiteness here? I'm just confused as I thought even government dental would allow for braces, and it would be weird to whiten a child's teeth.
I'm not from America and lucked into never needing braces or any dental work at all other than cleanings so I don't know much about this.
Both, IHS had issues. One of those issues was a botched root canal that took three operations to fix. When you don't/ cannot fire incompetents and just move them to another site, it makes things less than optimal.
> 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.
This one resonates very strongly with me, not sure if it's a poor-people characteristic though. It's anxiety but it may come out of the "poor person" mindset, I don't know.
From elementary school to uni, I never asked anything any teacher, or had a tutor, because they obviously have better things to do than talking with me. Like, isn't it just being polite?
I have this issue too. As a youth I had a stutter and insecurity issues, which fell away when I realized my intellect was going to get me the hell away from the hick state I found myself. Through bravado and incredible luck, I managed to get a Harvard education - but while there nearly every single one of these insecurity issues cited in the article had a variation in my experience while attending Harvard. And after Harvard, I am barely and not really a member of the Harvard Network, primarily due to insecurity back then and being afraid to expose myself as not really being a Harvard Guy but some imposter hick.
If Harvard is anything like Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, it's not just that you didn't expose yourself, elite universities have their own stratification, between ones born rich who went to the most elite of private schools _before_ they went to university, where they likely _arrived_ with some connections already, and the ordinary public who got in through work and talent but can have anywhere from that level to absolutely nothing in terms of pre-existing connections and the learned social behaviours to then get them.
More generally, I've noticed being reluctant to ask others to do things for me even when it's their job is an attitude I have that's hard to shake, and is probably a result of my low-ish social class upbringing. It feels rude or imposing. This extends to hiring people to clean or work on home improvement projects for me—it's hard not to want to help out when someone else is doing stuff for me, even if I'm paying them. I feel bad if I pay someone to mow my lawn. I very much doubt folks who grew up with lots of "help" around feel that way. I expect it'd be damn hard for me to run a business with employees, for similar reasons, at least until I got over the initial discomfort—it makes me feel really bad to pay someone to do something I could do myself, not just because I'm parting with money, but because it makes me feel like a lazy, rude asshole.
IME they mostly didn't know how to teach anything once someone fell off the rails of the curriculum. I quickly learned that, for whatever reason, the "normal" way things were taught didn't work for me. The people whose job it was to navigate it didn't know how to help me. I was fortunate to have parents who, despite not having much money, knew computers would be important and always kept us in a working computer and internet connection.
Even the early web in K-12 and early YouTube in tech school were more helpful because there were ways of teaching out there that worked for me, and I could find them. Math was the hardest because the teachers were mostly people who Just Got Math and didn't know how to help someone who didn't. They would get so into explaining something that they didn't hear me begging them to slow down so I could process it.
It's definitely not anything to do with being poor. It's a confidence thing and having a will to learn and improve.
Throughout life we always learn from those who are more experienced. Your seniors are there specifically for seeking guidance.
You 100% should have spoken to teachers or tutors throughout school. Their job is to teach you and many of them enjoy sharing their knowledge and seeing someone want to better themsevles by going the extra distance to seek out information outside of the classroom.
Yes, sometimes people do have more important things to do. But no one is going to say "Go away, I don't care, I'm busy". They'll say "can we schedule this for another time?" and then you plan that.
Like, one of the most enjoyable things about my job is teaching other people things that I know and I think they can benefit from. I'll always have time for someone asking me question, it's never a bother. If someone else is blocked on work because they need help then I'll drop what I'm doing to aid them.
See it in a different way: all of those "mentor" type people, they have valuable knowledge in their heads. They have spent years and years building it up, refining their experiences and intuition etc. etc., you have the opportunity to go and ingest as much of that knowledge as possible at relatively no time expense!
As soon as I realized this, I started obsessively drilling their heads for every little scrap (up until the point they would start being annoyed with me). It's free!
Free Advil is something 99% of the people do not need and just take from home what they need. But when you are poor, you take the free offered Advil.
The phrasing was a bit complicated. She realized, she was the only one taking Advil and it was never refilled because only she took from it and she did not empty it.
"Meg Elison is a California Bay Area author and essayist"
Many people will warn you about taking drugs or dropping out of school. Far too few people will warn you about becoming an author or moving to the Bay Area.
Well played OP for finding a Tweet referenced from the hugely upvoted "The tools and tech I use to run a one-woman hardware company" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27199225).
I grew up poor and now live and work around "never been poor" folks. Classism 100% exists. The thing that I noticed most folks can't grasp is the appreciation for the small things and the security they have.
I find that people who have never experienced being poor are often lacking in both humility and "can do" attitudes.
For me, not being wealthy is a feature, not a bug. I realize I'm speaking from a place of privilege now, though.
Of course you view things differently if you've never been poor. But that doesn't make you evil, and OP is not a victim. In none of her examples was anyone treating her badly. (I know you are not claiming this, just saying).
In fact, as you hint, having been poor and then getting in to the middle class you probably have a better chance of making it big.
> She is a writer and not a software engineer. Comparing her salary to software engineer interns therefore isn't fair.
I'm going to call BS on that. Written communication is a high-leverage activity that if you are going to the trouble of having a dedicated position for it, paying that person well is a pretty good idea. Perhaps not as well as an engineering role of similar seniority, but about as well as a design or QA role (and for similar reasons).
Paying that person less than an intern is both shortsighted and insulting.
The question is not if writing is important. It's very easy to argue that a nurse is more important than any engineer, but they are never paid as well, people have more or less accepted that.
I'm not arguing for the importance of writing except in the sense that similar arguments used to be made for the importance of design.
If you actually have a dedicated writer on staff (as opposed to outsourcing it to a marketing agency), paying them less than an intern is as mind-bogglingly stupid as paying a full time designer less than an intern.
BTW, nurses may get paid less than engineers, but they don't get paid less than medical residents, which is a more appropriate parallel to an engineering intern.
The article doesn't mention they're software engineering interns, and she made less than some other jobs too: "I still made less than any of the executive assistants, or the receptionist. I was, in fact, the lowest-paid person in the building including the interns"
The way I read it, it implies that the receptionist got paid more than than the interns. Either way, she got paid less even than than receptionist, which is generally not exactly a high-paid job.
It's also not clear to me what exactly her job was by the way?
I don't know how things are in the US, but I've never seen interns being paid more than a token amount in Europe. You generally take on interns as a public service and to spot potential talent to hire, not because they're good/productive programmers. A good internship requires quite a lot of guidance from a senior developer.
After college I lived with a bunch of UT students (good university; median family income of students is $123,900[0]) while working at a school for high school dropouts (median family income unknown, but definitely under $30k) and it really impressed upon me that people coming from families in the 75th income percentile expect to live free of the poverty/class markers mentioned in the article, while for people in poverty, they're merely effects of actual, pervasive struggles.
Rich kid will thinks they're poor if they're low on petty cash, or if their phone is two years old and has a cracked screen. They never worry that they'll not be able to pay for their phone next month, or have skip a meal to make rent.
I grew up in a well-off-but-frugal household, so I had a lot of the poverty markers listed, but for me they were frugality markers.
The core of poverty isn't the visible markers. Anyone can have those. It's the pervasive stress of not having money, constantly being on the precipice of your life going into a sudden, deep dive. I never had that. Even when I earned ~$13k/year in Americorps, I was fine because I had no debt, I was used to living cheaply, and I knew that if it really came down to it, my parents could help me out. The poor high school students I worked with had the opposite family situation: they'd miss school because family depended on them to help with the bills.
If I ever have kids, I feel like I'll need to go out of my way to ensure they don't grow up segregated into wealthy enclaves. The US is sorted by income--neighborhoods, schools, social circles, and workplaces--and it makes us blind to others' situations. I don't want them to be constantly stressed about money, but it's important to be able to handle financial constraints, and to be aware and understand of the actual reality so many people live with.
I relate to being (somewhat) well-off-but-frugal, and for me there is a danger of falling into the trap of thinking: I don't care that I have some markers of being poor, so you shouldn't either.
It is largely a matter of luck to be in a situation where you don't have to worry about maintaining a certain appearance, and developing some empathy for those who do has been an important positive change for me.
I didn't grow up poor but we didn't have extra of anything and we sure couldn't afford to lose a paycheck. The thing I find absolutely unbelievable and will never understand is when people quit their job and just plan to relax for a while. What ??? You have a job you are making money, why would you give that up? I feel so lucky to have a job and to do something that isn't back breaking labor, I will never understand this and firmly feel like this is rich people stuff.
If you're poor but also have tech skills and are in the bay area, I would recommend working at a public tech company for a while first - then you're no longer poor and can afford to work at a risky startup.
That's all I could think about when reading this post.
edit: Maybe the point of the post was not losing touch with reality or becoming an ass to people when you start making money (which I can agree with), but they also came off a bit self-righteous to me.
I wouldn't consider myself poor or having grown up poor. I identify with many of the points on this list. I make less than many of my coworkers and my career has stagnated. I sometimes wonder if it has to do with this cultural gap. It seems like it's usually the people with an expensive image that are the ones who get promoted. Meanwhile I'm doing basically anything to save money and trying to leave work on time so I can watch the kid while my wife goes to work in the evening.
I won't say there's no bias (I'm sure it exists everywhere), but I think it's not an "expensive image" that gets you promoted as much as confidence.
Many people who grew up rich have a natural confidence to them (because they are protected if they lose their job, have been told they'll be someone important one day, given lots of help in life), and that helps a lot in giving a vibe that you'll succeed.
The great thing is that the confidence can be gained even if you didn't grow up in the same circumstances, it just takes more work.
I've gone the other direction. The company has screwed me over enough that I know life is shitty and all the stuff teachers and parents tell you growing up is a lie. The confidence didn't help me anyways (due to politics) as I'm 9 years in and only a midlevel dev, even though I've worked in roles above my current one (senior dev, tech lead, ASC). Most of the people in the office talk about fancy expensive things. If you don't participate in that lifestyle, there's little connection.
A lot of companies hire remotely these days, or are totally remote (Gitlab comes to mind).
Two things I would recommend if you are open to advice:
1. Consider the possibility that you have some skills to grow to achieve more senior levels. Confidence helps, but it's not enough on it's own.
2. Interview at other companies that don't require you to relocate to see what you're worth - switching jobs is (sadly) one of the easiest ways to get promoted or a pay raise.
1. I'm not posting for senior roles. I know I have more to learn about the new technologies since I'm switching stacks. It's not just confidence that makes me think I was performing at that level. The olny reason I wasn't officially given the title is because of politics and poor leadership by my superiors. I had people from other teams calling me a tech lead, a commendation letter from another team due to my involvement in an enterprise wide upgrade, my supervisor said she wanted me to get the highest performance rating but couldn't make it happen (political reasons), and everyone on the team treated me like the tech lead and even called me that. For the senior developer year, it was pretty similar but since we had an official tech lead hired on I let him handle half the elevations and half the interaction with other teams. My manager even said when he gets a new task that's highly technical and difficult, he gives it me or the tech lead. I met some people from outside my team offsite by chance. We were talking about work stuff pretty regularly. They where surprised when I said I was only a midlevel dev. They thought I was a senior dev or tech lead based on the things I was saying and doing. I had the same thing happen on the next team I went to where some techleads in the department were surprised that I was only a midlevel. Also I was the ASC for that application and recieved excellent reviews from everyone about that role. That role is supposed to be for people who are a senior dev or higher. Unfortunately there were political issues in that group too.
So after two years of working like this, my supervisor (different one) tells me that I could be promoted but I have to work extra time everyday. Now I'm fine putting in some extra hours to make a date or run an elevation. I'm not just going to work extra hours above company policy as a normal thing. Why would I take a 13% increase in hours for a 7% raise? That's taking a rate cut for a position with more (official) responsibilities.
2. I'm probably not worth anything since I have to learn the new stacks. They have me in AWS tech, which is ok. I got certified, but that doesn't mean much since I dont get a lot of chances to use it. I get some experience in Java and Python ECS and Lambdas. Some Dynamo, Cloudwatch, SNS, SQS, etc. A lot of this is stuff like synthetic alerts or increasing test coverage, which sucks. But then they also throw me on no/low code stuff like Splunk and Tableau, which also sucks. I'm never going to become an expert if the type of work is constantly changing and there are big gaps between when I last used that skill and when I'm asked to do it again.
IMHO, once you have child(ren) , the value of a senior role is questionable, especially since as you point out , more hours are expected which makes it not a real raise (besides "stealing" from quality time with your kid(s) ). Senior roles to me can be a poison chalice, more stress. IMHO when one feels a failure for not being a senior, one might need to emotionally detach, and disconnect self-worth from their job title. To those who say they can't get by on a mid-level salary, well , how does much of the rest of the workforce without tech salaries do it then? One other thought - internal promotions are often a lost cause anyway, (e:g reliant on playing politics). If you're dead set on becoming a senior, job-hopping often the best way. Good luck! :)
That's pretty much how I see it. Except the company's policies do not state any change to the required hours. I feel this is a deceptive employer practice (one of several I've seen).
The bigger issue is that I can't see myself continuing to work here until I'm able to "retire". The work is shit. I've heard many managers will look to fire people or drive them out if they are moving up. I need the job to support my family, so that causes a lot of stress. If I were single, I would have quit years ago... or just stopped trying until they fire me.
Sorry to hear that. Well.. I think workplaces with such mid-year reviews are often not good places to be. Such performance management systems can make individuals completely focused on their own performance grades instead of working together and helping each other. As result , happiness of everyone suffers, and everyone's performance, so it is IMHO not a sensible way to run a business. Some people game the system, some hurt other team members to make themself look better. Feels like a complete waste of time to me and makes for stress. As for being criticised for being too slow, well, maybe what should count is end result not sheer speed. But many businesses don't seem to understand that. Or you may genuinely be slow but that could be stress, its hard when you got young kids, in a better environment you could be more productive. The formula which has worked for me and I share all the time on HN is, learn skills that have strong long-term value e:g linux, command-line, python, ignore fads e:g js libraries, always go for open source if possible, not some vendor that could get bought out or change their strategy. Bottom line is , a happy life should be achievable in tech, we can take not necessarily the best-paying job, not necessarily the most kudos / status, but still have a decent satisfying job that pays enough to raise a family. I have achieved that, partly down to some "vigorous frugality" at times. ;) It's do-able but you have to research employers, talk to people who work different places, find out what its like, sometimes (non-fake) glassdoor reviews can be revealing too. And be prepared to leave jobs and take the plunge. It can be scary to take a risk when you've got kids. But sometimes has to be done. All the best :)
They. I kept seeing the word "they", and wondering about it. Was it really every single person in the company that thought you were joking about your GED, or was it a handful that you told?
Attributing the actions of a few individuals to an entire group is a quick way to engender feelings of alienation in yourself. Pro tip: don't do that.
I think "they" is best understood as an indicator of the author's mindset. When you feel like an outsider, it's very easy to feel that the whole of the group is unified against you.
How much of that experience is true in USA startup scene? I feel like this might be a special case for SF. Because here in Canada most of the people who work at tech aren’t rich at all and they tend to be more nerdy than snobby. I guess fintech scene might be more classist though.
This happens everywhere in the world. Also among more "normally" paid teams.
Look out for it and you will realize. In my experience, there is always someone who has a very hard life (money or time) and you do not even realize but hurt them without bad intent.
None of it's reflective of my decade plus working in the bay area. I think I've met just a couple people like that. There are almost certainly social bubbles like that, though, but that's not the vast majority of us.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 353 ms ] threadAside from the obvious "be genuinely friendly", does anyone have suggestions of what to do as a coworker to support someone suffering from this cultural barrier?
One of the largest issues which would have caused many of the others on the list seems to be that they were absurdly underpaid. So make sure your co-workers aren't making peanuts compared to you?
Telling someone to reflect, for example, is none of those. Instead, tell someone to remember that what people show and what people feel can be different when they assume about another's mental state based on appearances.
> During middle school, I would often skip lunch altogether.
> The first time I went on an out-of-state trip was during college.
> I went snowboarding (for the first time) with some friends a few years ago (age 24) and they didn't even balk at the $500 / night room prices for the all inclusive resort.
> I now feel rich because my car's check engine light is not on.
Ways you can help with this:
* Understand that your coworkers may not have the same experiences as you. If someone tells a joke ("Summering in the Cayman islands" [referencing tax evasion or similar]), perhaps pull them aside later, one on one, and explain why the particular thing was funny.
* Talk about the last book you read. Why was it interesting to you? Poor people and rich people read very different books. Offering insight into whatever issues you read through books might help them have easier conversations with others. For example I'm currently reading "An American sickness" which discusses the rising cost of health care in America. A poor person would focus on why *their* individual healthcare is so expensive, but a rich person looks at the whole system. And that is what this book more or less discusses.
It's not unlike learning a foreign language. Even if you memorize the words and phrases, there's all sorts of ways they are used that can make it difficult to use as a communication tool. Try to identify those odd words or phrases and explain those to others. However this can apply to any company / culture, its not necessarily a rich / poor thing.
It's easier for a friend to come to you with questions - not only about work, but about life in general.
Money can pop up as an excluding factor pretty easily. So, for example, insist on a hard (and low, ideally ridiculously low) upper bound on any expenses associated with optional-but-not-really events like gift exchanges or potluck meals. A company-culture norm of spending higher amounts on such things can cause a lot of stress, even if the amounts are still affordable: ie. figuring out a $25 Secret Santa gift is easier than a $50, much less $75, one.
More evidence that the "sisterhood" is a total myth.
What an awful environment to have to work in :(
There are some exceptions - not noticing missed paychecks is the biggest - but most of it is just stuff that happens every day in other offices.
Making your lunch at the office and not bringing Advil from home? I know generationally wealthy investment bankers who do these things, and they're the kind of people who spent their childhood summering at Fishers Island.
Do they have the information, experience, or responsibility to accurately categorize the specific cultural origin of every single one of those differences? Does it make the argument weaker if they miss a couple? Maybe a little but it's still strong.
> Because they have never been poor, they had no idea what I might do. Why would I steal, when everyone clearly has enough? What even is scarcity? Why drink yourself to death tonight when there’s another sponsored event a week from now? Why eat like there will never be enough, when there has always been more than enough?
...I think it's worth discussing whether they may have misidentified the real root cause.
It's worth discussing I just don't think you contributed anything useful to the conversation with that comment.
To me it reads like you're dismissing the author's experiences based on a technicality, rather than engaging with them on their terms and merits.
Personally, I see someone describing a number of points of cultural difference and an author who wholeheartedly believes they have identified the root of all of them. Is it worth discussing that the real, indisputably valid lived experience of the author, might also be linked to other things?
What if they miss almost every single one? That's how it reads to me, for almost every job I've had. That's why people are reacting like they are to the article.
Generally they don't like to waste money. That's part of how they stay rich for generations (as opposed to someone who hits the lottery and the next generation is basically back to where they started in many cases).
You might want to correct Warren Buffett since he recommends packing your lunch at least 3 days per week.
You can get lunch for £10 or less, and cooking at home doesn't cost £0, so unless you are replacing a fancy two course lunch with a made at home sandwith, I dont see you saving over £2k a year.
Warren Buffet is cool and all, but he is not the world's lunch expert
You do seem expert in peddling wisdom of internet cliches without even a bit of thinking
Surely that time is worth something, or you would commute 4 hours from a hut in the woods
(I often drive by a local Starbucks which usually has a line of cars around the block getting to go. I have to wonder who these people are who want to wait for 20 minutes or whatever to get their $5 latte at all hours of the day.)
They don't like wasting money, but what they consider "waste" is not the same thing as what someone who isn't wealthy would consider waste.
I say hello to the cleaning staff, security staff, delivery drivers, food service workers, etc at work. I can't get my job done unless they're there, and I am acutely aware that our professional experience and treatment by management is significantly different.
Do others greet every single person they see in the building?
Would I say hi to the landscaper who is working on the garden while I was walking on the path? No. Unless we know each other, a nod is all fine.
Yes I always did. Would get into some long chats with one of the cleaning ladies actually. And if someone came into my office to do maintenance on the aircon unit I'd of course greet them.
Today the cleaning person works for an agency, is a different person every night and has 4 hours to do 8 hours worth of work.
the parents were invited to the school to meet the faculty and the parents who were college educated or those went to the same type of schools understood the song and dance - the mingling with the adminstrative staff, the dean of students, the professors and lecturers - and the parents who were not educated or were part of the lower class didn't know what to do, so they hung out with the cafeteria staff, asked the cafeteria staff to take care of their kids. those were the people their families and relatives knew and understood.
and the first gen students also understood that they belonged to the same social strata as the cafeteria staff, and things like office hours or asking for help from the professors or the TAs were something that they could not possibly be entitled to.
There's no point being overly defensive about these things. People with all kinds of life experience can learn from each other.
I don’t think this is the fault of the author. When you’ve never had the chance or experience or bank account to dream of doing something that many people take for granted it’s easy to sort of clam up or realize your different and that you have to try harder to fit in.
In Europe, you don't go bankrupt when you get sick. Health care is one of the top causes of bankruptcy in America. In more socialized countries, you don't lose your housing when you lose your job. You don't need to struggle to keep a car (which you need for a job) because there is public transit and you're almost guaranteed access to higher education.
The upper middle class and higher need to realize this is a big systematic risk for the country.
I work as a consultant and I regularly forget to send invoices for a month (sometimes two). It's been years since I was living from paycheck to paycheck, I can afford to skip out on months of income and not notice for day-to-day expenses. And I'm lazy about creating invoices (I should automate this and keep a regular activity log instead of pulling stuff from git and emails but yeah).
More importantly I've worked with other consultants and I got the impression that people from finance are used to chasing them for invoices, so I don't think it's that rare.
So for your generationally wealthy investment bankers, summering at Fishers Island is a necessary conspicuous display of wealth as well a as networking and social process. Eating the office food and using the office pain killers are largely invisible, but to a person obsessed with having money, the costs are accounted for in their personal ledger.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/wealth-can-make-us-se...
But a lot of the article does strike me as stemming from wealth disparity, and is very interesting. Indeed, another thing to add to the list is being unable to distinguish between behaviors that are different because of culture vs. because of wealth.
It's very scavenger-like and I suppose we may lose it if we manage to stay well off long enough, but it definitely colours our decision making even in little things. Being poor definitely stretches beyond the literally financial.
I’m also an immigrant and have never seen such salaries in my life outside of executives so I’m just riding the gravy train. Again, I feel extremely lucky and great to be a part of it. Not beating myself up over having a bigger delta from my childhood than some of my coworkers. Isn’t that the American dream? I would also add that getting McDonalds was the summit of culinary experiences a few times a year when I was growing up. I’m sure people here would find that funny but I’m proud of my life and my background.
I do use an Uber for social calls as it buys me easily 2 hours of my life back as public transport kinda sucks
“I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because I had the only fat body in the building.”
I’m sorry, but no, being poor doesn’t make you fat. Your eating choices make you fat. Poor people have agency too. Agency is not something you buy. This is coming from someone who probably makes half of what you make in a year.
The statistics make it quite clear that it is hard, maybe your assumptions are wrong.
If there was demand for food in those areas people would sell it, but there isn't.
Edit: A strong piece of evidence is that people aren't getting poorer, but they sure are getting fatter.
Or are you talking about statistics that asked if poor people tried to not be overweight but couldn't do it? If so, could you please send link to that - as I'm not aware of any such large-scale study and quick search didn't reveal anything significant?
If we put poor people in the same conditions they had 40 years ago they would be slimmer than rich people today.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2015/july/growth-in-inf...
I asked if you see the conclusion of this view, and if you endorse it.
To be very very clear it goes like this: if poor are fat because they make bad choices and for no other reasons, then you can reasonably conclude that that is also why they are poor. That they deserve to be poor for that reason.
Is that a fair summary of your view?
Where are they saying that? This entire conversation has no relevance to what one deserves. Causality is not changed by one deserving something.
Opportunity: if your area cannot give you produce (raw materials to cook with) that's pretty direct. Time: I'm fortunate enough that I can blow at least an hour a day just cutting up meat for stir-fry or preparing my omelet and oatmeal, and a lot of this is really time-optimized but it's still way more than the microwave-box lifestyle. That hour (at least, and distributed among all my meals for the day) is also an attention sink that I can't skip, even though I make the same stuff over and over. If I couldn't do that, I'd have to not only be getting different foodstuffs, but also figuring out different recipes every time I got bored.
You can let corporate America do that stuff for you and just pick different enticing boxes of microwaveable stuff, but you will get bombed with combinations of sugar and salt because competing in the supermarket aisle is serious business and those who fail are lost. They'd be putting fentanyl in the Hot Pockets if they dared. Anything to make the sale, it's that or perish.
Then, that's what you eat, if you're poor and can't spend hours doing it yourself and doing it right. And if you're poor enough… the selection at Cumberland Farms is going to be strictly kept to whatever the other poor people in your neighborhood are addicted to, because that's what will sell.
That's it. There's a huge difference between US and many other countries
It also compounds with the social/cultural context of a living in a city full of very wealthy people.
The conception that most of the bad things that happen to an individual is because of poor choices makes perpetuating inequalities easier. Notably thoses that stem from free market capitalism.
In France we have a strong cultural awareness of our low/inexsitent free-will. This translates readily into state welfare.
If you have have access to $1 frozen veggie bags, $2/lb chicken thighs, and assortment of different legumes, you have it better food options than the majority of the world. You can certainly achieve a healthy diet if you really want to.
"Your eating choices" as a poor person might be to eat what and when and where you can afford to.
From Wikipedia: "The rate of increase in the incidence of obesity began to slow in the 2000s".
But, to attempt to answer your question: e.g., the expectation that both adults in a household will work means that people/parents are more likely to be time-poor and not able to cook. Cooking skills have been lost.
First, I dont think this accurately describes the list at all. Second, it is ok for people to express negative feelings or observations. Forced positivity is toxic.
Edit: also you seem to present the author's formulation as meaning that they believe poverty caused them to be fat. As far as I can tell she is merely pointing out a series of correlations to both prove that she, in fact, stood out as poor, and to show how this distinction affected her furthermore. Btw I'd say the only actively harmful behaviour from the company she pointed out was making her suggest a salary rather than them making an offering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
If eating was just about quantity then nobody would eat salads, there would be no Keto diet, and nobody would complain about McDonalds.
This has consistently proved false.
Being 'underweight' is associated with significant excess death; being 'overweight' is associated with a lower death rate than 'normal' BMI:
e.g. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/20073... (many other sources are available)
> Excess Deaths Associated With [...] Overweight
Results:
> Overweight was not associated with excess mortality (−86 094 deaths; 95% CI, −161 223 to −10 966).
"Are excess deaths associated with being overweight?" (The result is: no - or actually yes, but negatively).
This is nonsense. In many medical deaths such as cancer (and especially since euthanasia isn't available) the person dies by slowly withering away. One of the first things that happens is that they become skinny and frail. That doesn't associate underweightedness with mortality. It intentionally draws a false correlation.
[Edited to add: this article explicitly considers the link to cancer, and rejects it, https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1... ]
However, it doesn't explain why being 'overweight' BMI consistently proves to be protective against death, despite it being so stigmatised that it affects quality of medical care.
I don't see how the "protective of death" conclusion is able to be maintained when it was determined by comparing the mortality of overweight people to frail and dying old people and cancer patients. The reality is that it's the opposite. It's well known that being overweight damages the organs and makes a person more susceptible to dozens of diseases.
Also, being "overweight" could be for a variety of reasons, including excess muscle. I'd be interested to see mortality correlated with % body fat.
New food deserts now exist in Minneapolis (and likely other cities as well) after the recent rioting and burning there:
https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-longfellow-neighborh...
https://www.marketplace.org/2020/06/04/neighborhoods-where-s...
Ironically, in the most recent riots, many - perhaps most - of the destructive rioters were middle-class "activist" kids who don't have to live with the results of their actions.
This is a myth that's easily refuted. There's an argument to be made that poorer people aren't educated on healthy food choices but the idea that they don't have access to anything but processed food is just silly.
I gained it back.
This is a great paper I suggest you read: https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/29/1/29/433380 -- this is a good starting point, there are others spanning back the last three decades or so.
It is also worth noting that it's not necessarily how much money you have that is the contributing factor, it can be other factors. The lack of green areas or pathways to walk/exercise (especially prevalent in remote Australian communities), the number of hospitals or doctors close by. But, ultimately, lack of health services and fresh food are correlated to obesity both of which are determined by your location which, in turn, is determined by your financial status.
This simply isn't true. Most food deserts are in the poorer areas of the cities because nobody is bringing fresh produce in there to sell. If you live in the country or small town, many of these places have farm stands, farmers markets, and local farmers providing seasonal produce to the local stores.
Not to mention, lower density housing generally means that there is enough land to have a veggie garden, depending on the specific circumstances.
The farms in rural areas are generally focused on growing a single thing (either one type of livestock, or all corn, etc.), entirely for wholesale, farmers markets are a distraction for most of them, outside of smaller farms that are more of a lifestyle / hobby thing a lot of the time.
Farm stands sometimes exist, but they're an exception rather than the rule in most places, and unless you're in an area known for growing fruit or something like that (and primarily selling to tourists driving by) it'll be one-off things like sweet corn in season or eggs.
Do they not have a refrigerator? Once per week trips (maybe even less) were the norm for me growing up, and I had plenty of fresh fruits and veggies.
I've lived in multiple rural areas. Yes, many people do get food from Walmart. I can see some of the more remote people preferring some processed food. I can also see those remote people growing and processing their own (canning, like I do). Many people use frozen veggies, which I don't consider processed and are nearly as good as fresh. Most of the "fresh" stuff you see is actually months old due to the way the supply chain works. It arguably loses as much or more nutritional value than the frozen stuff. This situation is completely different from the actual food deserts you get in the city. The rural people have the option to buy fresh but may choose not to. These people living in food deserts in the city don't have the option of fresh produce in the stores they go to. They generally don't have space to grow their own either. This lack of choice is the big issue.
Every area I've lived in has had farm stands and farmers markets. It has also had local stores that contract with local farmers for seasonal produce. Individual vendors/farmers do tend to have limited selection by focusing on one or two crops. But there are usually multiple farmers focusing on different things (and coordinating through the local grange). Yes, the majority of farms are monoculture soy or corn. These other farms are usually 90% that but maybe 10% other crops, like pumpkin, corn, watermelon, tomato, cantaloupe, onion, potato, honey, hops, etc. There are also CSAs that you can join for a variety of produce, including meat and dairy. My parents live in an area where the local dairy still has delivery service - that's right a good old fashioned milk man.
Yeah, I think we're agreeing - I'm saying that going to the grocery store once a week or less is probably going to result in purchasing a smaller percentage of fresh produce (certainly not none, but for meats in particular any less than once a week is starting to get sketchy in terms of keeping things fresh when refridgerated.)
CSAs for sure exist, but I see way more usage of them in urban areas. You're certainly not prevented from using them in rural areas (although delivery might not be available and pickup might be far less convienent than it would be in an urban environment).
This might be a function of where we're from, but in the countryside here hobby side farms by actual farmers are relatively rare and usually aren't producing enough to be considered much more than an in-season treat. I've never heard of milk delivery still being a thing (despite knowing a bunch of people living on farms), so I suspect you just have a different regional experience.
In the rural areas the weekly/biweekly shopping routine involves everyone (rich and poor alike) dragging their butts to the one strip mall in a 1-2hr radius and that strip mall will have at the bare minimum a super-walmart with a good fresh produce section or a Walmart with a grocery store beside it because that's the place where rich middle and poor from the entire area shop and it needs to cater to them all in order to get them to drag their butts there and do business. The poor will buy less and fill in the gaps with Dollar General food (which is bad food at a bad price).
The poor urban areas which can't economically support supermarkets and who's residents can't economically justify traveling the range they'd need to travel to get to those supermarkets (because the run down not always running cars that underpin the transportation of the rural poor are not as economically viable in cities) so they're stuck buying food at CVS, the bodega or whatever convenience store is accessible.
If you draw the food desert line at "no Whole Foods and no farmers market" then they both suck. But if you zoom in on the area below that the rural areas have a slight edge.
"If you draw the food desert line at "no Whole Foods and no farmers market""
I don't think anyone is claiming that.
Just because farms exist in an area doesn't generally mean the people in that area are getting their food from those farmers (at least directly). That's mostly a relic of an old vision of farms that grew every type of produce and had a variety of livestock instead of the corporate monoculture farms that dominate today.
There are still farms that produce a variety of produce. Many of them only produce them as a small percentage of their operation. For example, the dairy farm down the road plants sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, watermelon, cantaloupe, and (not food, but) manure. I know of several other farms that do similar things.
And most of the farms are not only going to be growing just one thing, but the same one thing as other nearby farms (of which there won't be very many, since farms have been consolidating into ever larger operations for many decades).
No shortage of healthy food at the local grocery stores of course.
I expect that people who wave their arms about 'food deserts' could probably stand to visit either small towns or urban areas and form an opinion based on actual experience.
[1] https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/assets/4565435/food_deserts_map.jpg
Talking about things that simply aren't true.... Every major city in the US has a large farmer's market present and typically more than one happening in neighborhoods all over the city. These cities also have free/cheap public transportation to get people to the farmer's market. Additionally, you don't need a farmer's market to obtain healthy food, supermarkets are just fine.
The is just trope along the same lines of black people can't get their own ID's or figure out the internet. It's an incredibly racist way of thinking. They're not stupid or incapable people. If they want to they can certainly obtain healthy food.
I never said black people. That's your own bias talking.
I agree that people can travel to a supermarket (and that supermarkets have healthy food). It's much more difficult to take a weekly trip for a family's needs in public transportation as opposed to loading up a car. More frequent trips tend to incur higher opportunity cost due to the commute times.
IDs are a completely different matter. The need for those trips are about once every 4-6 years and generally lower expense too.
I made a comparison to it being similar, I did not say it exclusively affected black people and this is why I used the terms "along the same lines". Reading comprehension please.
>It's much more difficult to take a weekly trip for a family's needs in public transportation as opposed to loading up a car. More frequent trips tend to incur higher opportunity cost due to the commute times.
I disagree. All the elites and hipsters in big cities live this way on purpose so it can't be that hard. I find it ironic that the same people who push for more public affordable transportation will turn around and say it's too hard to use and personal transportation is better when it comes to minorities. Additionally, if we follow your logic then rural people are vastly more affected by this than anyone living in the inner-city since they have to travel much longer distances and don't even have public transportation available.
Do you really think this? I know the sticks. You apparently don't. You can live off potatoes, eggs, and oatmeal and not be fat. Those are available anywhere.
There is a "poor" culture, there is an "elite" culture, and then there is a "responsibility" culture. I grew up financially poor in a manufactured home in the sticks, but my culture of my parents was that of "responsibility". Know the difference.
The basis of their diet, therefore, is white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea and potatoes—an appalling diet. Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we'll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the PAC level. White bread-and-marg. and sugared tea don't nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the Englishman's opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.
So yeah quite irrational, but it is comforting.
The only people who think that have a very privileged upbringing. My SO worked in an archaeological site in central Asia, and the vast majority of the hosts meals were just raw onions and stale flatbread.
Yet another data point on why the poor are playing the lottery, eating crisps and not virtuously buying and cooking rice and lentil, there's a game-theory-ish idea that the poor understands that as much hard work and lentil they could shovel, they stand little chance of getting out. So with the money they have they buy the best value thing possible, discounted for future possibilities; and those best value things are junk food, lottery tickets, sometimes expensive (relative to their circumstance) and flashy things like clothes or phones.
There are lots of factors why that's the case,but to say it's not happening like this wouldn't be right either.
Sure, there is no law of physics that makes poor people overweight, but it is much easier to have a thin waistline when you have a fat bank account. And indeed we observe that in the US, poor people are heavier than wealthier people.
I think there is a self-deprecating humor to the article, and I enjoyed it. Life in tech world is strange sometimes.
I'm also coming from a poor family and area, and I also had a few revelations, but nothing like this. My very first of these experiences was at a company paid dinner, where the waiters rolled out a trolley of beverages next to our a table and went away for a couple of minutes. I joked to my colleagues at the table that we could just steal that trolley and nobody would notice it. Nobody laughed, of course and I realised that at that point in my life I could buy a truck of those beverages on my hourly wage. That was nearly 3 months into my career and I just moved on right away.
As a matter of fact, not having a lot of money only emphasizes the fact that your health is one of the things you can influence.
I know this will upset people, but if poor people are fat, food is not scarce. The quality of food may be low, but low food quality does not make one fat, a surplus of calories does.
To be absolutely clear, I know there is a strong correlation between socioeconomic status and obesity. It's much more complicated than "just eat less", many factors play into this. Including food IQ. It's much more easy to overeat on Cheetos than it is on potatoes and green beans. A persons social environment will have a big influence on how and what they eat, how much they will move, etc.
That low quality food is food with a surplus of calories. That's a large part of what makes it low quality.
I did, poorer in fact. I only stopped being thin when I got a good salary.
She's full of it[1].
[1] 'It' being 'victim complex'.
Yes I did and I'm still not obese.
(If you found this point incorrect, dumb, or worthless, consider that is how many people feel about the point I am replying to.)
I do encourage anyone who hasn't already to read the whole chapter http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html : it's not really very long though I felt that the relevant parts were a bit too long, all together, to fit in a comment.
I'm glad I didn't read that book when I was still "poor", it's so relatable and hits hard. I recommend it for anyone kind of wondering (he's not exactly kind to the working class, but he does try hard to understand it all and does have insight).
They might be right about the bad food options but what these people don't get is that if you're poor you have a lot of bigger more time pressing, more tractable problems to solve than being fat. Most of these people would still be fat if they had more ready access to "good" food because good food wouldn't magically make being fat jump to the top of their priority list.
When you have little money you can very easily justify skipping lunch everyday or something like that. Skipping breakfast or lunch, having a very minimal meal for the one you don't skip (think PB&J, maybe with a fruit cup if you're feeling like a high roller) and then having your big meal at dinner so that your hunger is focused on the parts of the day when you're working and distracted and you go to sleep full is a very, very, tractable form of dieting and cost cutting rolled into one.
But if you have enough money to indulge in food/beer then why not do it, it's about the only luxury you can afford.
That's IMO the worst behaviour of the rich listed in this article. I've heard stories that at Google, the non-engineering workers at campus may not socialize with engineers at all. What kind of society is this that Google is building? Aren't you even allowed to acknowledge someone else's humanity?
in my experience, there is no difference in how poor or rich people behave towards low-level staff.
in general, my feeling is the rich are more friendly, but it may be less genuine
There is absolutely a difference in how rich and poor people treat poor service workers.
It's not that poor people treat them better per se but it's different. Poor people can be cruel to each other because they are all suffering, crab in a bucket shit.
Rich people mostly ignore poor people because visible poverty makes them uncomfortable so they look away. They hate themselves if they see our humanity so they try not to.
I've been on both sides of this and am speaking from painful experience in both cases.
It has to be amazing having such a simple world model. Or better yet, being able to know the deepest ideas and thoughts in other people's minds and to explain their behaviour.
Going back to seriousness, and leaving sit-com cliches aside, do you have any solid evidence about this? and when you say rich, could you give a ballpark of the money they have to have to be considered rich? Because poor people in US would have better living conditions than in other countries in Europe, for example.
You, or someone else, will move the goalposts, or find some hyper specific counterexample and claim it disproves the entire thing. Or claim that the poor aren't poor enough, or someone else somewhere has it worse so their misery can't be real.
It's based on my experiences and there's no bibliography for my life. I explained the experiences and why I think they're relevant. If it doesn't work for you then it doesn't.
From experience in similar conversations I expect this to be taken as a refusal to argue in good faith. The thing is though I don't want to argue. I said what I said and I stand by it. I have nothing to add.
That's not a sign of being poor, it's a sign of not being an ass.
I worked in an Ivy League university while poor— and continued doing so for quite some time. I assure you that treating people in lower socioeconomic classes either as invisible or a mildly concerning presence, depending on the context, and coming from a wealthy, white background is closely correlated. Many of the wealthier students, faculty, and professional staff treated the cleaners, landscapers, catering staff and cafeteria workers like furniture. Of course, there were exceptions.
I saw a similar juxtaposition in tech, though the ratio of wealthy to non-wealthy wasn't as extreme as it was in an elite university.
I'm not going to post my credentials on HN but I have it on good authority that these jobs suck enough without having to pretend to relate to your customer. Hello is fine but beyond that and the janitor probably has their shields up lest they say something stupid the same way a white collar professional would be very careful talking to Bill Gates.
You share the same space. How distant are you with other people that you can't just say hi? Does it matter if you don't discuss politics after it?
When i was a kid, i had to take the bus and i forgot my bus ticket (a pupil, on one bus stop, everyday, the same bus stop the same bus driver on a school route...) and he put a lot of energy into telling me off.
A few days/weeks later i thought about it and i also thought about why i'm not greeting my bus driver when i enter. I started to say hi. I liked it. I liked saying hi to my bus driver.
I forgot my bus ticket again. No issues no worries. there was mutual respect and that mutual respect came to acknowleding him.
I like greeting my neigbhours as well. Somehow it makes a small connection between us.
and yes i read the part with the shield: The first step is a hi. Every other step is easier not harder. Finding out their names, a little bit of talking about family and friends etc.
If i would have worked close enough to Bill Gates i probably would have talked to him sooner or later. Why not? He is a human, not like Mark Zuckerburg.
Every additional complaints about my life or happenings in my life that I would have would be unrelatable to the maids and the drivers at our house and it might make them feel uncomfortable.
No interest in learning who they are? What they like? When they have birthday?
If you have a bad day, for whatever reason, you think they couldn't relate to having a bad day?
They couldn't relate - my bad day would be related to losing a few points on a foreign exam or if my favorite restaurant was overbooked.
They shouldn't have to share our burden in addition to the work they are doing and potentially feel bad.
Seriously, why wouldn't you talk to the janitor or anyone else? They're the reason you have a clean place to work. I never got the "nothing in common" routine either. They're people, with lives and families and wants and needs. Yeah, they're not spending their day banging their heads against their desks solving reference counting bugs, but they're working to support their lives as best they can.
The social interaction dynamics that happens at the Google building is a reflection of society at large. As another example, I've worked at the offices of charity institutions where the higher level white collar workers ignore the cleaning people. The common theme is that humans in general (and not Google employees specifically) like to stratify people.
I recently flipped through a high school yearbook (these books were more popular before the era of Facebook) and noticed that the cafeteria ladies were relegated to a tiny group photo. However, the teachers got individual portraits. So a public institution funded by taxpayer money implicitly stratified 2 different types of workers. Each page of printing a hardcopy yearbook costs money and the food workers are not the same value to the yearbook staff. See the common pattern across humanity?
We ignore the people that actually feed us (farmers), and instead we focus all our energy on the people that feed us bullshit (Elon M.).
Then you see the cleaning staff, and you're confronted with their reality, the fact that they have to do work that is both harder and potentially more useful than what you're doing but they don't get any of the benefits, and they get paid a fraction of what you do, and that just makes you feel even worse, like this entire system is somehow fundamentally broken, which makes you want to trow your ergonomic chair out of the unopenable glass window of your open space.
So it's easier to just look away.
Like there's an entire well known meme about rest and vest at Google. (Amazon and Netflix will bounce you though if rumors are true)
It's been true my entire life that every bracket of pay raise increase i've gotten has had a commensurate decrease in the amount of physical labor and mental exhaustion i would suffer. Going from minimum wage to 30k+ was a breath of fresh air. Going pass 100k was realizing you were living in a coal mine where everyone smoked and the 30k just meant you got to take clean air breaks every now and then. Of course then you have the attendant desperation in the US of "falling down" back to the level you were before and knowing the life style you live now can not possibly be sustained in those positions.
A simple mental exercise. When was the last time you had to ask permission to use the restroom at your place of employment?
One serious issue i've seen with alot of tech workers is that they have NO IDEA whats it's like to ever work minimum wage. They went from middle class existence to college to a tech job making more money than most people ever will. The minimum wage worker and even middle wage worker existence is invisible and nonsensical to them.
I worked at HQ as an engineer, and didn't notice any such thing.
Most of the time I probably didn't say hi to cleaning staff, for the same reason I wouldn't say hi to most of the people I pass by in the office: because they weren't someone I knew. Of course this might vary depending on context, but I was treating them the same way I treated everyone else, or at least trying to.
Do other people say hi to every single person you see in the building every day?
Yeah, pretty much.
So, sometimes, yeah.
I would argue that this has just nothing to do with poor/rich or where you work.
Perhaps its just random how your work environment or your collegues are.
I generally say hi to everyone as well, especially if I've made eye contact. At the very least, some kind of acknowledgement.
Googler for many years here. I've never heard of this kind of thing. One of the most prolific and loved content creators on the internal meme board is in sales. The closest thing I've ever heard like this in the entire valley is that at Apple they don't pay for the lunch bill of non-engineers, so having premium lunch options can feel exclusive to engineers.
One of the most widely praised decisions Google made during the pandemic was to continue to pay their vendor staff who maintain the buildings even though there was no work to be done. And they kept that promise (as far as I can tell) for the entire process even though the initial expectation was that WFH would last for a few months.
My personal experience at Google has been that people do chat with vendor staff like custodial workers and kitchen staff.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/552403-google-childcar...
> Googler for many years here. I've never heard of this kind of thing.
Not a Googler myself, but from what I heard the divide isn't between engineering and non-engineering roles, but between Google employees and contractors (and that you can tell who is which by their badges).
This isn't true at all.
Many said that the old man and wife, who built the fortune, were nice humble people that understood that they are so lucky to have made it in life. Many comments also said that their children were absolute spoiled brats who were the exact opposite to humble.
I would be curious about this one. What did happened in the gym? Not really doubting, some people in gyms are quite unfriendly when you dont look fit. But I am still curious what happened there.
It’s just easier to transfer the responsibility to ”an unfriendly environment” than taking responsibility & control of your own feelings and actions
I went to the gym I was asked to come back "later" as "the gym is near full (50% full actually) and we prefer 'regulars' to come and train for something instead of... kind of you...".
So, if I am like you - just seeing with my own eyes and not follow the feeling and facts from other persons - I would say that gym regulars are just full of s*** :)
Sorry you had foul experiences, but I’ll stick to 2% of the people being in that bucket.
I’m sure legitimate bad experiences do happen, but I also think a lot of perception is based on the stories we make up in our own heads.
"..you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do." - David Foster Wallace
Ironically (for this thread), all the private rich-person gyms I've been to have mostly been populated by people who were not in good shape, and everybody was very friendly.
But these were also "health clubs" in the old school sense, not a fancy gym like Equinox where I would never even set foot.
Edit: I also have heard enough gym bullying stories to believe that it can and does happen, but it seems maybe only under circumstances that I have never been in.
When I started out I was fairly overweight and completely out of shape, could barely do a couple of pushups, and I felt very uncomfortable and out of place.
However the others just did their programs, and I never got any looks or comments. So after a while I managed to relax and just get on with my own stuff.
When I moved to London I was never able to found a gym with that environment.
We're on news hacker out of all places, where I guess salaries range between 300$ month to $40k month easily
Temporarily embarrassed millionaire is healthier way, delusional, but healtheir in my opinion
Giving them the shit jobs, unpaid overtime, etc.
Remarks behind the back about things like weight, eating habits, and being ashamed about things they take for granted.
Having your existence denied completely (e.g. the cleaners mentioned)
I do notice a disconnect in perspective and priorities though. Also i live in europe, where this is maybe a tad different.
Status and class here is much more subtle, you often can't tell from the way a person dresses (at least at first glance) and what he drives if he's a billionaire or secretary.
People inherently trust more the judgement of people they think are rich. If you avoid looking obviously poor, you'll find out that you'd be given better assignments, more freedom, that your mistakes won't be scrutinized as much.
The day you find this out and act accordingly, it is like as if you were black and them suddenly find out you woke white one day. All the invisible barriers, the glass ceiling, are subtly not there anymore.
Yes, like racism, classism sucks. But you have only one life, your time is short, and while we must fight to try to change things, you'd also better be smart and try to work around classism just by not giving obvious clues about you have ever been poor.
A lot of these issues would probably have been fixed if they just earned market rate. It seems that they were very underpaid. It is unsurprising that they felt poor when they earned the least of anyone in the company.
This article resonates strongly with me. I grew up poor, too, and even though I have a 7 figure net worth now one of the first things I consider for anything is the cost. I don't have to, but I still do. I eat the low rent snacks and I use the company's daily cafeteria allowance to eat a sensible lunch and then take the rest home to share with the family. Being poor in America isn't just about money--it's about the psychological barriers and oppression that are erected.
I had this near mythical idea of flying business class, but when I finally joined a company that actually had me fly in it, I was sorely dissapointed.
I mean, it’s definitely better than flying economy, but you’re still stuck in a pressurized tube for 10+ hours.
Jetlag isn't as much of a problem if you're going for the nightlife.
I don't know whether Greece is that sort of destination, but know of people who jaunted off to Ibiza, for example (from the East Coast, anyway).
Sounds about right, especially when you factor in jetlag.
12+ hours for each way quickly dampens the enthusiasm for the weekend.
I definitely saw the videos of those dreamy Greek hotels with in-room balcony pools and if I were rich I would know their names too. I’m sure that if you contact them you’ll just have to drive to SFO and the rest will be taken care of by them.
Resorts are a specialty for amateurs or a resource for special cases (e.g. a safe environment in unfriendly locations like Egypt or Maldives).
Well you say that because you haven't visited greece ;). It's not the "spa" type of tourism, and those kind of luxuries are usually sought after by spoiled arabian princes. The aspirational SV person would choose one of the many hotels, book trips and food tours around the islands, or hit the beaches and the nightlife. In fact all-inclusive hotels are geared towards pensioners and budget-level UK teenagers.
But it's certainly not possible to do those in 3 days with jetlag.
Las Vegas is 14-15h away from most European hubs. NYC is 8h. Even the best case scenario (first class and the airline staff walks you through immigration) means 10h door-to-door.
If you have this kind of disposable income, why not take a few days off?
I have done it in the past went to Switzerland or Hong Kong for the weekend to buy things as it was cheaper to fly there then to buy the same product on the grey market in London (saved $3-5k).
I'd say a hundred bucks a month keeps me in shoes, chalk, and a gym membership
The fancier soccer fields with lights on cost 25€/hour, divided by 22 players it becomes just 1€ each ( and you still need to bring your ball )
I hate people that do this. We’re all human and worthy of respect and decency. A simple hello goes a long way.
That said, if I were cleaning an office building I don't think I would want everyone chatting me up - just kindly get out of my way when I'm trying to clean something but otherwise I don't see it as rude to not engage with me when I'm doing my job.
No joke. I grew up with free government dental, and it took years of earning to get at least presentable teeth. Not smiling for years doesn't help your work prospects.
I'm not from America and lucked into never needing braces or any dental work at all other than cleanings so I don't know much about this.
This one resonates very strongly with me, not sure if it's a poor-people characteristic though. It's anxiety but it may come out of the "poor person" mindset, I don't know.
From elementary school to uni, I never asked anything any teacher, or had a tutor, because they obviously have better things to do than talking with me. Like, isn't it just being polite?
Why would you not ask the teacher stuff.
Even the early web in K-12 and early YouTube in tech school were more helpful because there were ways of teaching out there that worked for me, and I could find them. Math was the hardest because the teachers were mostly people who Just Got Math and didn't know how to help someone who didn't. They would get so into explaining something that they didn't hear me begging them to slow down so I could process it.
You make it a habit to not make yourself vulnerable to people who consider themselves "your betters". It's a tough habit to break.
Throughout life we always learn from those who are more experienced. Your seniors are there specifically for seeking guidance.
You 100% should have spoken to teachers or tutors throughout school. Their job is to teach you and many of them enjoy sharing their knowledge and seeing someone want to better themsevles by going the extra distance to seek out information outside of the classroom.
Yes, sometimes people do have more important things to do. But no one is going to say "Go away, I don't care, I'm busy". They'll say "can we schedule this for another time?" and then you plan that.
Like, one of the most enjoyable things about my job is teaching other people things that I know and I think they can benefit from. I'll always have time for someone asking me question, it's never a bother. If someone else is blocked on work because they need help then I'll drop what I'm doing to aid them.
Sure, but being poor often means "just do what you're told" in jobs, schools, etc. and definitely can lead to these kind of confidence issues.
As soon as I realized this, I started obsessively drilling their heads for every little scrap (up until the point they would start being annoyed with me). It's free!
> I knew I was the only poor person at my tech startup because they thought I was kidding when I said I had a GED.
I feel that. I have almost no formal training at all. I have a GED, and attended a redneck tech school. Everything since, has been OJT.
As a manager, one of the things that I looked for, was minimal formal training, yet experience doing things that required it.
Good sign.
The phrasing was a bit complicated. She realized, she was the only one taking Advil and it was never refilled because only she took from it and she did not empty it.
Many people will warn you about taking drugs or dropping out of school. Far too few people will warn you about becoming an author or moving to the Bay Area.
I wish I'd thought of it...
I find that people who have never experienced being poor are often lacking in both humility and "can do" attitudes.
For me, not being wealthy is a feature, not a bug. I realize I'm speaking from a place of privilege now, though.
In fact, as you hint, having been poor and then getting in to the middle class you probably have a better chance of making it big.
I'm going to call BS on that. Written communication is a high-leverage activity that if you are going to the trouble of having a dedicated position for it, paying that person well is a pretty good idea. Perhaps not as well as an engineering role of similar seniority, but about as well as a design or QA role (and for similar reasons).
Paying that person less than an intern is both shortsighted and insulting.
If you actually have a dedicated writer on staff (as opposed to outsourcing it to a marketing agency), paying them less than an intern is as mind-bogglingly stupid as paying a full time designer less than an intern.
BTW, nurses may get paid less than engineers, but they don't get paid less than medical residents, which is a more appropriate parallel to an engineering intern.
The way I read it, it implies that the receptionist got paid more than than the interns. Either way, she got paid less even than than receptionist, which is generally not exactly a high-paid job.
It's also not clear to me what exactly her job was by the way?
I don't know how things are in the US, but I've never seen interns being paid more than a token amount in Europe. You generally take on interns as a public service and to spot potential talent to hire, not because they're good/productive programmers. A good internship requires quite a lot of guidance from a senior developer.
Rich kid will thinks they're poor if they're low on petty cash, or if their phone is two years old and has a cracked screen. They never worry that they'll not be able to pay for their phone next month, or have skip a meal to make rent.
I grew up in a well-off-but-frugal household, so I had a lot of the poverty markers listed, but for me they were frugality markers.
The core of poverty isn't the visible markers. Anyone can have those. It's the pervasive stress of not having money, constantly being on the precipice of your life going into a sudden, deep dive. I never had that. Even when I earned ~$13k/year in Americorps, I was fine because I had no debt, I was used to living cheaply, and I knew that if it really came down to it, my parents could help me out. The poor high school students I worked with had the opposite family situation: they'd miss school because family depended on them to help with the bills.
If I ever have kids, I feel like I'll need to go out of my way to ensure they don't grow up segregated into wealthy enclaves. The US is sorted by income--neighborhoods, schools, social circles, and workplaces--and it makes us blind to others' situations. I don't want them to be constantly stressed about money, but it's important to be able to handle financial constraints, and to be aware and understand of the actual reality so many people live with.
[0] https://thedailytexan.com/2019/04/25/median-family-income-of...
It is largely a matter of luck to be in a situation where you don't have to worry about maintaining a certain appearance, and developing some empathy for those who do has been an important positive change for me.
That's all I could think about when reading this post.
edit: Maybe the point of the post was not losing touch with reality or becoming an ass to people when you start making money (which I can agree with), but they also came off a bit self-righteous to me.
Many people who grew up rich have a natural confidence to them (because they are protected if they lose their job, have been told they'll be someone important one day, given lots of help in life), and that helps a lot in giving a vibe that you'll succeed.
The great thing is that the confidence can be gained even if you didn't grow up in the same circumstances, it just takes more work.
A lot of companies hire remotely these days, or are totally remote (Gitlab comes to mind).
Two things I would recommend if you are open to advice:
1. Consider the possibility that you have some skills to grow to achieve more senior levels. Confidence helps, but it's not enough on it's own.
2. Interview at other companies that don't require you to relocate to see what you're worth - switching jobs is (sadly) one of the easiest ways to get promoted or a pay raise.
Good luck!
So after two years of working like this, my supervisor (different one) tells me that I could be promoted but I have to work extra time everyday. Now I'm fine putting in some extra hours to make a date or run an elevation. I'm not just going to work extra hours above company policy as a normal thing. Why would I take a 13% increase in hours for a 7% raise? That's taking a rate cut for a position with more (official) responsibilities.
2. I'm probably not worth anything since I have to learn the new stacks. They have me in AWS tech, which is ok. I got certified, but that doesn't mean much since I dont get a lot of chances to use it. I get some experience in Java and Python ECS and Lambdas. Some Dynamo, Cloudwatch, SNS, SQS, etc. A lot of this is stuff like synthetic alerts or increasing test coverage, which sucks. But then they also throw me on no/low code stuff like Splunk and Tableau, which also sucks. I'm never going to become an expert if the type of work is constantly changing and there are big gaps between when I last used that skill and when I'm asked to do it again.
The bigger issue is that I can't see myself continuing to work here until I'm able to "retire". The work is shit. I've heard many managers will look to fire people or drive them out if they are moving up. I need the job to support my family, so that causes a lot of stress. If I were single, I would have quit years ago... or just stopped trying until they fire me.
Attributing the actions of a few individuals to an entire group is a quick way to engender feelings of alienation in yourself. Pro tip: don't do that.
I sometimes do the former, but now try to do the latter. It leads to a happier life, and if anything, it's closer to reflecting reality.
Look out for it and you will realize. In my experience, there is always someone who has a very hard life (money or time) and you do not even realize but hurt them without bad intent.