Hacker News Reader

Comment by crushcrashcrush | Hacker News Reader

Wow, this is a really, really powerful piece.

I love his analogy to people in Finance - how they are unabashedly "about that life" - and they're upfront about it.

After traveling across the US, I realized I prefer my wealth and power desires out in the open. Inordinate wealth is hidden so insidiously in the valley. We don't really dress in wealth signals, or even drive in wealth signals (as opposed to NYC or Miami.) - the subtler cues to social status are things like an Au Pair or private yoga lessons or an address in Menlo Park, Atherton, Woodside or Palo Alto. But they dress like us, and they drive in the same luxury cars we do.

And yet, they are so, so far above us.

View on HN

In The Big Short you read about how the guy in the baseball cap and jeans is probably a fund manager doing really well. The guy in the suit is about to go ask for more money because he's not doing so hot.

It's the same principle in Silicon Valley.

The status symbol is being enough of a hot shot to not have to play by the rules of status.

Relevant: https://qz.com/369338/this-is-what-makes-dressing-down-a-sta...

> Observers must believe the nonconforming individual is both aware of the norm and able to conform to it, but deliberately decides not to. A nonconforming behavior that seems unintentional or dictated by lack of a better alternative—such as ragged clothes on a homeless person—will not lead to a positive impression.

This part is super interesting. You need to be able to wear the baseball cap and jeans while letting people know that you _could_ be wearing a fancy suit if you cared about their norms.

It's not about the absence of taste, it's about the opposite of taste – is much more pronounced and intentional

Also, this send to be a great quote: https://youtu.be/FlzZhGr8G9w

> The status symbol is being enough of a hot shot to not have to play by the rules of status.

I definitely feel bad when I hear stories about black and hispanic men having to dress up at work because people feel scared of them when they wear hoodies and torn shorts like I do.

This is so true. When you dress like a slob, you’re basically signaling you don’t have to impress people.

I feel like it’s just more of a personality thing than anything else...people who are attracted to high finance are attracted in part by the perceived lifestyle, and there’s peer pressure to live up to it. People who grew up as nerds and work in software probably never grew up obsessing over being rich enough to afford a Lambo or designer clothes, but if they did get rich they probably have a nice home and a Tesla or BMW.

I drove alongside Larry Page on 101. He was in a Nissan sedan, maybe $30K. This was two years after IPO.

Maybe he was on his way to the airport.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/07/google_bed_plane/

Googles corp jet flies out of moffet.

Steve Jobs had his famous license plate-less Mercedes. While that man is praised for too many things, perhaps he deserves credit for not pretending to not presume himself to be above you or me, unlike so many of his successors today. An honest sort of arrogance.

Why would you give credit for that? It's not something to be emulated.

> It's not something to be emulated.

Which part? Driving a Mercedes (probably $50-100k) seems much better than driving some exotic million dollar car.

The part where he drove it for the maximum legal time he was not required to affix his license plates to the car (six months), and then leased a new one [1].

[1] https://www.itwire.com/it-people-news/enterprise/50649-the-t...

Why are people allowed to drive without a license plate at all?

You need to be able to drive before your plates are mailed to you (or you pick them up at the DMV). Usually you're required to use a temporary paper license plate... maybe California is different on that? And 6 months is a really long time, something like 14 days should be plenty of time.

There was incentive for delaying it as long as possible, for example you could evade tolls that were charged based on license plate readers.

It looks like as of this year (in California at least) there is now a requirement to have a temporary plate that is in the same location as the permanent one, partly to prevent people doing the above:

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/templp

I'm pretty sure CA just updated the law so that you now have to have a more descriptive paper plate affixed where your license plate should go. Basically they were having problems with people evading tolls and running red lights when they had no plates.

"You need to be able to drive before your plates are mailed to you (or you pick them up at the DMV)."

Do you? Why couldn't you be required to get the plates first and attach them to any car plateless you wish to drive?

You aren't, anymore. However, plate theft is booming now.

A brazen, open evil is more refreshing than a hidden one, at least in a place as falsely modest as Silicon Valley.

I think this is a weird false dichotomy...What about just no evil and having a license plate?

To tie it back to the original post at the start of this thread, and to the TC article- then we wouldn't be talking about Silicon Valley. Or other places of great wealth.

I wasn't actually praising Steve Jobs. I was just pointing that at least he was a rich elite jerk who was open about being a jerk, unlike so many of our contemporary rich elite jerks who cover it up because they're afraid of others realizing their mission statements and grand visions are just excuses to amass wealth and power.

The real jerk move if you’re a billionaire driving a Nissan is to be silent when it comes to taxing wealth. Since you don’t appear to need the money (driving a Nissan), then dump it into laying fiber, building bridges, repairing roads and paying teachers, etc... Put your algorithms to work finding the greatest good, because one way or another you ought to be putting over half back into your community (taxes or charity). That would look more like real modesty to me

Why plate-less?

Cause he can

> drive in wealth signals (as opposed to NYC or Miami.)

People in NYC use cars to show off?

Maybe there’s a secret Uber tier for centimillionaires?

Even the rank and file are completely self-deceiving by repeating all the bullshit in between cashing their checks.

Choose one:

1. Own it (finance)

2. Change it (go into teaching or something)

3. Lie about it (tech)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com