It's especially bad here on HN where often the conversation devolves into people telling me that I'm wrong about my childhood where I grew up poor...or how poor people are a blight on society.
The single topic that I find in my career people insist on secrecy is about poverty. I continue to be open about it so that others are willing to talk about it to someone, because otherwise you just can't.
The problem with tech is the self centered elitist culture. The job filtering is extremely narrow and you need a specific background to get in the door of most places.
Blue collar workers are suffering everywhere (cities, rural) and it’s obvious the rest of America doesn’t care. When these workers turn to alternatives they’re dismissed because they weren’t lucky enough to be born with more opportunities.
You're not prepared to talk about it and honestly neither am I.
Poverty is soul crushing.
I have had a very successful and influential engineering career but I can look back at single decisions I made that could have sent me the other direction. It’s easy for people to say that the decision I made was obvious but it absolutely wasn’t at the time. I took huge risk being the first in my family to go to a prestigious University and double major in physics and mathematics in the early 90s(I was no prodigy); let alone go to graduate school.
One decision different and I’d be driving trucks in West Virginia.
I think you have it backwards. People are not naturally sociopathic; psychologically healthy people naturally care about other people. They may have limited resources to act, but that's a different issue.
As evidence of caring, people widely support social welfare programs. In most wealthy countries (and some others), everyone has healthcare on the taxpayer's dime, as well as other services such as housing. Even the U.S. spends vast amounts of money on these things. People also care about the rights and wellbeing of others worldwide; the trendy nationalism may try to argue against it, but Western democracies have been spending blood and treasure on others' freedom and prosperity for generations. (They spent those things on many sins too.)
We don't have a basis for talking about motives. I'd say people are scared and uncomfortable with what seems foreign to them.
> Given the opportunity to do something in person, most people crumble and go about their lives as usual. It's a very rare person that takes action.
Many people give money to those asking for it. Many will say that they are overwhelmed and feel like they can't help everyone (tip: don't let the great be enemy of the good: don't worry about helping everyone; if you can, help someone). Many have their own problems and reasons.
I can't remember speaking to someone who says they just don't care.
Most peers talk a good game but they can't relate and don't truly care. Its hard for me to at times as well...
Of course I would never even bring any of this up IRL, not worth the conversation.
To clarify I'm only going to destroy them because they coast. You can't coast when you're working for that milk money. God having milk is so good.
Don't fall for the trap to think this means you can admit you were poor once too. That negative attitude will still turn towards you. You will be judged and it will be remembered. You'll get a little bit of "Other" on you and everything will get a little harder. Just consider yourself lucky that unlike most race and gender concerns you can pass very easily, so do it.
I'm impressed you are committed to being open about it, but I hope during that talk you tell them to start passing and help them learn how to if they need it.
It comes with a social cost, but I'm enough of a "personality" that who I am is going to come out regardless. There's no point in being anything but honest, but it (being too different) has cost me my job two times. If you're at a good place around good people it's not a big deal.
As for the whole "lumbersexual" thing, it's sort of like putting on blackface, as far as I'm concerned.
Mostly though, part of it is just a return to valuing the different types of skills necessary in that setting. This is great, and it is great for their perception of rural people in general, because they are bad at something that people who they look down on find easy - and it changes their mind.
It is a mixed bag, and seems like an overall good to me.
And it's funny, because I generally find that the truly wealthy, silver-spoon/old-money type of people do not do this and they generally don't care about it if they like you...
...it's the ones in the middle.
As an aside, I've noticed that the American women in tech to be much more diverse in terms of background (including economic or social class) than the American men. Based on what I've learned through casual conversation I think that the various efforts to increase gender diversity have the positive side effect of catching a more diverse cross section of the population.