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Comment by cabaalis | Hacker News Reader

This article seems to be stretching to find reasons for its existence. I am willing to accept that I may be blinded by my own income/position. But it makes wild accusations and the backup feels very thin.

I also disagree that a "meritocracy" does not exist, at least in the IT world. In my own life (anecdote, sure, but how many stories are similar?) I was raised by a single father who made 20-30k a year. I'm now in the top 20% that the article refers to, and seems to imply as very hard to do from the way I was raised. This happened not due to luck or privilege, in my opinion. This happened because I spend 12-16 hours a day in front of a computer screen, and because I do what I tell people I will do.

My son will certainly have access to more than I had when I was a child. Maybe I'm just an evil rich guy? The article seems to be prefer that I am.

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I'm not sure meritocracy is a good thing. I'd much rather have mercy as the foundational theory of democratic social organization because it's just too easy for people to make what should not be unrecoverable mistakes. I don't doubt that you worked very hard to get where you are today. I too grew up lower middle class and worked hard to get where I am today, but I also made many, many mistakes along the way. Good luck combined with privilege mitigated what could have been significant detriments to my future career (including access to funding for school, interactions with law enforcement, etc.) Should we, as a society, ignore individual potential in favor of past performance, as implied by the term "meritocracy"? I think that's a rather blinkered view, preferring something much more egalitarian based on my own life experience.

I think IT is unique in that there was a time when you could sit down and teach yourself enough to get a decent job. That's becoming less true today and I'd expect that trend to continue.

That, I think, is what this article is most concerned about: once people make it up into this fabled 20%, they (consciously or not) work to change the system in such a way that they cement their advantage for themselves and their children.

It's easy to imagine it happening; if your parents pay for an expensive education and you work hard for your degree, when you end up in the field it must seem obvious that those people from the more expensive schools are simply better prepared. Now that we're talking about it, not only professionally but even socially. And they're just a better "fit" with the rest of the team... Things become more stratified and it becomes more difficult to enter the field if you're different.

I found it interesting that the author found this to be uniquely American, that in the UK people found it much easier to admit the ways in which being wealthy was to their benefit. I had always thought it was like this everywhere.

I agree with this statement, but the first one:

> I think IT is unique in that there was a time when you could sit down and teach yourself enough to get a decent job.

I think can be true, but many aspects of IT are skills-based honestly. And there will always be the ability to self-teach skills-based work. Some of this skill-based work is just well-paying right now. Because everyone needs it for something.

> That's becoming less true today and I'd expect that trend to continue.

How so? I can't think of anything I know about IT and my profession that I couldn't learn from open free sources or experience. I don't say time spent acquiring degree was wasted on me, no, there are other advantages and I am not sure I could manage to gain that knowledge without the structure of the degree and peer support and so on. But it is possible to do it, at least all the means are around.

> that in the UK people found it much easier to admit the ways in which being wealthy was to their benefit.

Maybe in UK there's no consistent narrative that wealthy (and in general any well-to-do, societally adjusted) people are somehow all evil and at fault about anything wrong with the world, constantly scheming to oppress everybody else, and need to be constantly attacked, derided and shamed? No idea, I am not familiar with UK narratives, but I certainly know in some parts of the US such narrative is pretty much the default.

>How so? I can't think of anything I know about IT and my profession that I couldn't learn from open free sources or experience.

That's irrelevant to the claim being made. It's not education or knowledge that's inaccessible to lower classes, it's the stuff around it. It's nearly impossible to judge just knowledge and skills without any context, and even if you could manage it, it would be an unwise move leading to chaotic work environments. But it's also nearly impossible to judge "would this person be disruptive?" without also sneaking in strongly-class-biased culture fit screening, even if you explicitly prohibit doing so.

(Also, having the time to learn and knowledge of where to go to start learning are class biased. The founding population of tech was a different social community from previous power but still heavily upper-middle-class. (I'd guess tech workers 1990-2010 were about 60% from the second quintile and 80% in the 2nd-4th deciles.) They're skills that anyone could learn, but only in theory; in practice they're skills that anyone with the opportunity can learn, and the opportunity is not evenly distributed.)

I disagree that there is some kind of anti-wealthy narrative that characterizes the rich as evil or at fault for the state of the nation and world. I believe there is a great deal of anti-corporate sentiment and, in my opinion, it is well deserved. But in terms of individual people who are rich, they seem as well loved and esteemed as ever. If you have some compelling articles to the contrary, I would be interested to read them.

During the past election, much was made of the wealth of the candidates. That didn't strike me as very effective... What did seem to strike a chord was the idea that some of the wealthy aren't paying taxes and that sounds entirely reasonable to me.

> I believe there is a great deal of anti-corporate sentiment

That's even weirder because "corporation" is nothing but a name that we call group of people doing some stuff together for efficiency. There are more legal aspects to it, but it's rarely what is discussed in this context. How evil is that instead of each of us making our own furniture we have people from IKEA corporation to do it for us! Makes no sense to me.

> During the past election, much was made of the wealth of the candidates.

Well, it's a convenient target. If the candidate has no money, obviously it's a loser and can't be trusted with a trillion size economy. If they do have money, obviously it was made by some kind of shady deals and they don't understand the plea of the common man. There's always something to attack here.

> the idea that some of the wealthy aren't paying taxes and that sounds entirely reasonable to me.

Overwhelming majority of the rich pay taxes, and, moreover, if taken together with upper middle class, they pay most of the taxes. If we distributed political influence according to how much taxes the person paid, the richest 1% would have 40% of all the influence, the bottom 95% would have another 40% and the middle would have remaining 20%. The rich are paying tons of taxes. Highest quintile has about 69% of overall tax burden. The next one has another about 20%. [1] This BTW undercounts corporate and other business taxes, which are not personally paid by "the rich", but paid by enterprises they own and thus diminish their income. If you count those too, the picture would be even more tilted towards most of the taxes being paid by "the rich".

Of course, that doesn't mean everybody pays the same - through some scheming, or good timing, or both, some persons may pay low marginal tax, or even for some time no tax at all (e.g. when suffering a lot of losses, but still remaining rich), or may enjoy special treatment from the government for their enterprises, including reduced tax burden. But if we look at the overall picture, it stays the same. If you take it as "somewhere, in some moment of time, I can find a rich person that doesn't pay a lot of taxes" - that would be true. If you take it as a systematic occurrence among rich people - it is completely false.

And, of course, any recent usage of this meme were complete fabrications - Romney did pay taxes, so did Trump.

So I'm not sure - which part sounds "entirely reasonable"?

[1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/49440

Most highly motivated people can teach themselves IT skills. But IT skills are no longer in such short supply that salaries are crazy high.

In the Bay Area in the late 90s, if you could build and rack a PC you could get a top 10% salary with stock options. Lots of people lifted themselves to the upper-middle class that way. Now, between the high cost of living in cities with a lot of tech jobs, and declining salaries for non-specialized IT work, comparable skills only put you in the middle-middle class. If the trend continues, general IT skills won't pay any more than auto mechanic skills. Which can be decent if you hustle, but it's not the ticket to easy street that it used to be.

Wait, he's arguing meritocracy exists, not that it doesn't exist.

You're probably a hard worker, and a capable one, but how many people were born without the proper brain power to be able to do IT? Or was not lucky enough to go to the proper school? Or was unlucky enough to have a father who'd rather gamble and drink rather than feed his kids properly. When you see a homeless or jobless person of your own age and think "Lazy bum, we're the same, why can't he be a successful guy in IT?", you're dismissing the good luck you've had in life, and the bad luck that person has suffered, and that's meritocracy...

The article is saying that people say meritocracy exists, but act in ways and expect things that contradict a meritocracy.

  This happened not due to luck or privilege, in my
  opinion. [...] Maybe I'm just an evil rich guy?

I don't think that's what the article is trying to say. I'm sure everyone has a different experience of this kind of stuff.

I'm a computer programmer, my father was a design engineer, his father was an architect.

That meant my parents could afford a house in the catchment area for a good state school, where most people's parents were university-educated, and most people were going to university. Next to no disruptive behaviour - which of course makes it much easier to retain good teachers.

My mother could take time off work after I was born, and we could always afford healthy, balanced family meals every day. My parents worked predictable, sociable hours so there was always someone to read me a bedtime story.

And it meant I was never short of educational things at home. I was one of the only people in my school to have access to a home computer; the first modem my parents brought cost $600.

Of course I could have as many books as I could read - assuming they didn't have them at the public library, which my parents had been taking to since before I could read.

I also had all the help I needed with my homework. Struggling to derive the quadratic formula? No problem, parent can do it from memory. Not doing so well in Subject X? No trouble, let's see if 90 minutes a week of private tutoring improves the situation.

I need an internship or work experience or a summer job in college? No problem, Dad can take me in where he works. Of course he made sure I knew how to behave and dress. None of my colleagues ever played pranks on the new guy or anything - after all, my dad was the manager of the design office.

There were also a bunch of less tangible things involving having seen things before and knowing not to be intimidated or feel like I didn't belong. Getting into university / starting a business might seem intimidating if you've never known someone who's done it before. I know a bunch of people who have - so when I did the same thing, it was an easy decision.

It sounds like you made it without any of those advantages - good for you!

But it'd be be pretty weird if I claimed those things I listed didn't benefit me - I plan to reproduce all of them for my children (if and when I have them), as I think they had a pretty large positive impact.

Most of the things you listed here are not that expensive. Even a lower income person can afford it. The differentiating factor is family values.

Gotta disagree with you there.

I'll agree that anyone can take their child to the library. And most families could do healthy home-cooked meals every night - unless the parents are working two jobs or unsociable hours.

But that modem? About 100 hours at minimum wage (if my country had a minimum wage at the time which it didn't - I'm using the rate from 3 years later)

The computer it was plugged into? More than three months at minimum wage - assuming you saved 100% of your income. But a luxury like a computer would come out of your disposable income, after you'd paid for food, housing, heating and travel to work.

90 minutes of tutoring a week? 11 hours at minimum wage. Did I mention that, for a time, I was being tutored in two subjects?

And that's without mentioning the opportunity costs of my mother leaving the workforce until I reached school age.

> The differentiating factor is family values.

bingo, that's the thing no one wants to talk about.

To me as well the article seems disappointing. Is not-quite-explicitly-stated assumption that most of those in the 20% income were entitled to it without doing much work is wrong. The author keeps pointing to politicians as examples of those at the top (likely because most people do not view them favorably) and ignores professionals, business owners, etc. who often built their way there without starting in the top 20%.

And the solution? "You, in the upper middle class, feel guilty!". Ouch!

I'm in a similar position to you (I grew up on free lunch and now have a well-paid engineering career). But your or my existence and success doesn't negate the trend; there will always be outliers. I don't think I've ever had a coworker who grew up anywhere near as poor as I did, and all things considered my family wasn't all that poor.

Meritocracy exists once you get to a certain class. Prior to that, it doesn't.

In IT/computer science world? Sure thing. But most likely you had a lot of advantages to get to that point.

I just want to point out that you brought the word "evil" into this discussion. I forget which logical fallacy that is... The one where you hyperbolize the other's position to draw attention away from their actual argument.

From what I can tell, without said misrepresentation your comment amounts to "yes, my relative success is fully explained by and my fathers merits"?

This article seems to posit that most people who are in this top quintile haven't had to work incredibly hard for it, or that they have worked no harder than anyone else. From what I've seen the responsibilities I have for my salary are far greater and require a far greater amount of autonomy and personal responsibility for my work than most people making 30k/year.

Okay, now try getting where you are now while being black.

In what way? IT is very diverse and some places are specifically looking to hire non-Asian minorities.

> a far greater amount of autonomy and personal responsibility for my work than most people making 30k/year.

I see a lot of jobs at the ... $50k-$80k mark which have a lot of responsibility but not much autonomy, and that's where I always have trouble (that mismatch).

The folks I know in the $50k-$80k range seem to work (measured perhaps by effort, stress and hours put in) at least as much as, often far more than, folks earning $100k-$200k. I don't have enough connections at the $300k and $30k ends to compare.

Many of my friends are in the $30k area, so I can put in a data point for you there. They work long hours, often on weekends, sometimes two part time jobs or one full time job and a side gig. The thing that's hard is there is more supply of unskilled workers than there is demand for them. If you don't put in the time and put up with your shitty boss and coworkers, someone else will, and now you're homeless because the US has no social safety structure. Coupled with our abysmal minimum wage, this results in working 60 hour weeks to acquire your barely-above-poverty wage. As someone with a very comfy job (hey, I'm posting on HN right now), it enrages me to see people who work harder than me paid less than half my salary. And I'm on the low end of the IT wage scale.

Thanks. I perhaps should have said I don't have many folks on the $300k side of things to compare against the $30k folks. I do know people in the $30k area, and yeah... you're spot on. And... while a few I know are just sort of 'content'(?) where they're at, most I know are wanting to "get ahead" but seem stuck - family/kids, long work hours... it's not impossible to do more, but often physically... almost impossible. Go back to school and take more classes to hope to get a new degree in 2-3 years? With 3 little kids, two adults working 4 jobs, 1 car which breaks down a lot... yeah, it gets hard to see any easy way out of that.

I tell that scenario and get people saying "doesn't matter, get out there, make it happen!" and... yeah - we all know some success stories who succeeded against the odds, but... we all know someone like that because it's still fairly remarkable in the first place.

You have greater responsibility and you create more value/profit for your company, but that does not necessarily mean you're working any harder than the people doing 60+ hours per week at minimum wage just to make rent.

What a lot of people miss is what advantages they had to get to that point.

People in a lower class still work hard. They might work harder than you. They just might not have had 2 dedicated parents, or a private school, or a good school system (because they were in a poorer area, so they get poor students, poor administration, poor fellow students). They don't have the freedom to take an unpaid internship to get college credits or a shot at a full-time job.

Median salary for a paramedic in the US is $40k a year (http://www1.salary.com/Paramedic-Salary.html). You got more/more important autonomy/responsibilities than trying to save someone's life? Maybe you do, I don't know. But to claim you're making more money because you have more autonomy/responsibility is arrogant and plain wrong.

If the tech/IT industry paid median wages would you still be sitting in front of your computer for 12-16 hours a day? If so, it sounds more like luck than anything that you're making decent money. I personally feel very lucky that something I would probably do anyway (coding, tech work) is paid so well. Yes, I spend an inordinate amount of time working on my skills, but I'm under no delusion that it's just those skills per se that have gotten me where I am. In many places in the world, tech jobs are not paid that much more. I simply don't see how the IT world is a meritocracy. I do see how it appears to be one, however. It's not.

You are arguing against the article's demographic arguments with your own n=1 anecdata.

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