Young techies, know your place | Hacker News Reader

Young techies, know your place

pando.com

30 pointssmacktoward38 comments

I'd be interested to see data on the backgrounds of the type of young professional that the author attempts to lionize here.

Seeking risk is considerably easier when you have a solid family situation to fall back on.

It is delightful when poor kids from shitty families achieve class mobility by executing on what the author sees as the road less travelled, of course.

But my sense is that the majority of people choosing this path hew from situations wherein failure would not leave them in dire straits, and are as such giving up the expectation of extended adolescence in college, as opposed to the requirement to immediately begin taking care of themselves.

Put another way, it may be a meritocracy, but it's overwhelmingly one with pretty homogeneous participants.

(Let me be clear: I think this article is obnoxious.)

I think you're probably right. Although I, like probably many others on here, dropped everything to move countries (or states in many cases) I still could go running home with my tail between my legs if anything were to go too horribly wrong. So I suppose there is really very little worrying about having to do or die, it's more like do or suffer a bruised ego.

I recall Reed Hoffman writing in his book to have plan a, plan b, and plan z, where plan z is your absolute fall back plan when the shit hits the fan. (Tis could be hunkering down in your parents' basement while you look for a new job)

If you don't have a plan z that prevents you from being out on the streets, then you really shouldn't be taking outsized risks (though there are plenty who have defied the odds before)

Well, the plan z really just needs to be acceptable to you.

As in, if the worst can happen is that your face is eaten by wild dogs, but you're OK with your face being eaten by wild dogs, then you should be fine (absurd example for illustration only).

Of course, lying to yourself about your risk tolerance is where a lot of people go wrong, in both financial investments and in life decisions.

Sneering and attacking those who call out techies for elitism, sexism, or whatever it may be is the wrong way to go. Especially when you write an article that sounds as elitist and uninformed as this.

(One thing that stood out for me was the quote: "Did you know that those guys had two kids when they were your age? That is how things are supposed to work." A lot of people who don't have access to sex education have kids because they weren't informed, or they didn't have access to birth control, or otherwise, not because they're trying to force their lifestyle on entrepreneurs.)

We (the tech community) should lead by example. Yes, it's hard when you're scrutinized so often. But what's going to sway the public's opinion: an offensive snarky article? Or taking the high road?

I actually liked the kid quote. I decided when I was a child that I never wanted to be a parent. When it came up in conversation people would usually dismiss me and say that I'd change my mind when I got older. I got older, and I still don't want or have children. It always bothered me that people felt that my answer was invalid; that they could just overrule me and assert that I'd become wiser (e.g. agree with them) when I was older.

Now I lead a comfortable and happy life, and I got here by taking some risks I couldn't have taken if I'd had kids to care for. I'm not saying my answer was the only correct path, but it worked for me and I'm happy with it. And yes, I'm a little bitter towards the people who thought I was incapable of making life decisions for myself.

That said, you're completely right that an attack is the worst way to proceed if we want non-techies to accept us.

Oh -- don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with choosing not to have kids. I was referencing people who have kids at a very young age due to lack of sex education, no access to birth control, or some other circumstance that those who are more fortunate have access to.

It's my impression that kids don't really start to pay off until you're in your fifties and sixties.

> We (the tech community) should lead by example.

That's very hard, if not impossible, when the example isn't something people like. One example: many tech people work well over 40 hours/week, either because of ambition or passion. That's not something the rest look up to.

Well in my opinion, that's actually a paragon of the American worker (someone working hard because they're passionate).

But if you'd like, consider it this way -- it's a lot harder to dislike a group of people working hard and not appearing to do anything wrong, rather than a group of people who write attack pieces against those who do not fall into the same demographic as them. If news sources like ValleyWag do not have anything to write about, it'll be a lot more difficult to associate Silicon Valley with negativity.

Nice article, it highlights other side of the gentrification issue. People in tech are there for a reason (one or more):

1. Passion about tech.

2. Rational logic - tech is where jobs and money are.

3. Luck.

4. Whatever I am missing.

I would argue that point #2 comes to mind of quite a few people that go into tech, it certainly did for me. From that angle, people who did not go into tech (or other career path that would allow them to compete) are making irrational decision. In ancient time, tribe that did not switch to bow and arrows inevitably lost to one that did. In modern times, people who did not plan their careers are getting pushed out by people that did.

On a related note, I wish tech people would start to make more rational decisions too. Quantify cost of your time, and use that to figure out if getting $3400 apartment and having 20 minutes shorter commute is worth it.

I think your apartment vs 20 minutes 'shorter commute' is actually vastly simplifying it. I live roughly in hayes valley (I moved here only 5 years ago, before the latest bunch, so I qualify as an 'old timer'), and my commute to my last office job by bike was 8 minute. You'd be hard pressed to find a 28 minute commute that reduces your rent a ton.

As you know the trade off tends to be money vs space vs commute. Rents in concord are still in the $3000 range - only you get an entire house for it.

Also you do realize this article was satire, and points out that the so-called "rich tech" folk arent really that rich... $80k a year is plenty, but most BART and Muni employees are making that much.

(p[1] - p[0]) / (40 * (c[0] - c[1])) < H

price of the closer apartment minus price of the cheaper apartment divided by the the longer commute minus the shorter commute (aggregated over a month).

If that's greater than your hourly rate, then you're paying "more" to live closer ... if it's less, then you're saving money.

(more or less, anyway)

Yikes. People need to realize that when they're more fortunate than others, it's bad form to get so defensive. The anger towards tech is misplaced, but there's a legitimate image problem, and income inequality is a real problem in America. This is the kind of thing people hate Wall Street for -- can we try to be better?

I'm not sure all of the anger is misplaced. Tech has allowed some companies to run more efficiently; they make just as much money, but with fewer employees. As much as non-tech people love to poke fun at Instagram and Twitter for being useless, it's the genuinely useful stuff we've created that has displaced workers.

It's not like this is without precedent. Agriculture and the industrial revolution both fundamentally reshaped the nature of work, and it took some time for the system to reorganize to accommodate. We may be looking at something similar. Tech is going to displace even more employees as we continue to advance, and it's not clear what these workers should do. They might seek training to fill some of the high-skill positions that can't find candidates, but there are only so many positions like that. If the numbers I've seen are to be believed then there are more unemployed/under-employed than there are unfilled job openings. Either things will adjust and the job market will expand, or we may have to adapt to a world where not everyone is required to be part of the labor force for an economy to operate at peak efficiency.

I think the universal wage movement is an exciting development for that reason, but it seems politically impossible to get something like that passed in the US right now. Then again, 15 years ago I'd have called you crazy if you said the majority of the country would support gay rights by 2014.

I may be getting ahead of myself. It's possible that there's some new kind of product or service I've not conceived of that will come into existence and create many jobs. That would be nice, and it would solve the employment problem.

However, if that doesn't happen and we continue to insist that people need to be employed if they wish to have food and shelter, then there are likely hard times ahead for many people. And it's likely that the work we do will make workers less necessary in more fields as time passes, which hastens the problems.

What terribly written tripe. For an accomplished coder, Bryan Goldberg is surprisingly incapable of grasping nuance.

some people are born on third base and think they hit a triple.

...and some people are born outside the ball park and still manage to work their way in, practice 12 hours per day for years, hit home run after home run and have snarky people automatically assume that everything they have is due to luck or birth lottery.

I saw your deleted comment, and while I do believe you worked a lot, you should probably also realize that what you did was also a product of it's time. Now a days one cannot just write a compiler in isolation and then make a million bucks (eg: as the author of turbo-c did).

Competition is a lot stiffer, things are way more complex (at multiple levels), and finding super unique and 'big bang' ideas are not on every street corner.

In other words, the 80s was the low hanging fruit, the 90s slightly less low hanging, and so on and so forth.

that's absolutely true, however in this case I don't think a bro who went to a $35,000/year high school and $60,000/year college has ever worked very hard at much beyond keg stands and being narcissistic.

Yes because if you went to a 35,000/year high school and a $60,000/year college and now work in the tech sector, you must:

* be a "bro"

* have wasted your college years (doing keg stands, I suppose)

* be a narcissist.

no.

If you ride your genetic lottery winning privilege into success and then have a continuing history of pissing on people less fortunate than you, you must be a narcissistic ass.

Hey, come on. Some of us are quite intelligent and work hard as well as play hard. Don't be hating.

some people are born on home plate celebrating with three other people and think they hit a grand slam.

I find it incredibly amusing that people apparently think this is a real article.

What a nasty piece of trash. It doesn't do young techies any favors.

I agree with this article.

If you want to deal with income inequality, there is a really, really simple system for this: taxation and welfare.

But this doesn't satisfy some people because they don't actually care about income inequality, they just want to have a go at nerds because they are an easy target.

The author correctly identifies a whole range of unfair criticisms against "techies", from their allegedly unfair incomes, to their lifestyle choices. None of these things are even anyone else's business.

Note: this is satire. Not the good kind of satire, but satire nonetheless.

Generally speaking, satire is used to mock the powers that be:

  > Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts,
  > in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule,
  > ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, and society
  > itself, into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous,
  > its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a
  > weapon and as a tool to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in
  > society.
  > 
  > Historically, satire has satisfied the popular need to debunk and ridicule the
  > leading figures in politics, economy, religion and other prominent realms
  > of power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire

This is often summarized as "punch up, not down."

Therefore, this isn't satire. This is a person who is a part of the aforementioned group in power attempting to mock those who would be employing satire as a means of critique.

Satire would be an essay written by a non-tech person, in the voice of a tech person, in order to lambast what tech is doing to San Francisco.

To make this more concrete: I just moved to the Mission, and now commute to SOMA. You can pretty much extrapolate everything else out from there. This blog post is like me writing one laughing at all the people staring at the Google Bus, but satire would be one making fun of me.

I should have included a source :P

https://twitter.com/bgoldberg/status/419177954631901184

Ummm... where in that definition does it say that only one side in a social dispute is allowed to call its mockery "satire"? It says "shaming individuals, corporations, and even society", not "shaming The Man".

Say you disagree with it and think it's obnoxious if that's what you feel, instead of making up definitional disputes to hide behind.

I think the power dynamics are pretty clear in this situation.

If you really, really, really want to claim that the tech crowd is being trampled by everyone else in the Bay Area, I'm not sure we're going to be able to come to any kind of reasonable discussion.

I'm not - I think the objectively privileged situation of the SF techie is a great argument to make. But satire doesn't just describe things that are correct, or that are made on behalf of the underdog.

Well, they did smash a Google Bus window!

In this case, it's using satirical attacks to mock those mobilizing collective/people power who are attacking low-level people in the SF tech community.

The people riding the Google Bus may have a few creature comforts and make a nice middle-class salary, but they aren't powerful billonaires.

The problem with this definition is that it assumes that a person seems politics as a struggle between the powerful and powerless.

I would say good satire is satire that correctly mocks an argument or action that is wrong, hypocritical, etc. now matter who is saying/doing it.

In this case, it is mocking people who claim that people in tech (A) don't deserve their salaries and (B) shouldn't be spending them the way they are.

Both these criticisms are unreasonable (although not necessarily for the reasons given in the article) and deserve to be made fun of. First, all salaries are a matter between the employer and employee. There is no other basis for deciding what salary is fair. Something similar applies to lifestyle choice. How people decide to spend their money is not anyone else's business.

The attitude of "I'm privileged so you can say anything about me, and I have to interpret it as valid criticism" is not reasonable.

I think the appropriate term is caricature.

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