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> it's a window to employment conditions that techies would never accept. I absolutely would accept those employment conditions if I didn't have any other opti

> it's a window to employment conditions that techies would never accept. I absolutely would accept those employment conditions if I didn't have any other options and needed to make money to survive. I would also spend my free time learning a skill so I could get a better job at some point in the future. > It's a good reminder of privilege. It's not a matter of privilege, it's a matter of ability. In tech more than any other field, because you don't need a college degree to get a good paying job. You just need to have the desire and ambition to learn.

kdazzle 11y ago
Man, and here I thought social Darwinism was dead
lucisferre 11y ago
> free time What makes you think those people have free time after 12.5 hour days and a commute out to the middle of nowhere?
- rdtsc 11y ago
  > What makes you think those people have free time after 12.5 hour days and a commute out to the middle of nowhere? I think that's what the OP called the "privilege". Those that have it, don't see why others can't do the same. It comes from having a completely different world view and priorities. That's why it is common to hear "how come they don't sit down learn to code and become full stack developers, that would be so easy."
  - d23 11y ago
    Yes, I had the privilege of having a basic computer with dialup as a kid. My family moved so I had no friends and was bullied constantly. For this reason, I became obsessed with the computer, learned to program, and ultimately it got me a job. I'm not sure I would describe that as the height of privilege. I spent most of my childhood living in a trailer. Plenty of people I know had access to the same thing (most of them actually), they just didn't pursue it. It's frustrating to hear people make assumptions about myself and others in the industry. I had someone talk about how "disgusting" it was that there were so many white males in tech. Of course, she said this to my face, and I'm a white dude. Believe it or not, it didn't feel great. It's as though a bunch of people who had zero interest in tech for the last 20 years suddenly think they should have all of the same skills and opportunities as us that have spent our childhoods buried in it.
    - rdtsc 11y ago
      > I'm not sure I would describe that as the height of privilege. You probably have a better paying job and more free time than than most people (and as a nice side effect than people who bullied you probably). The privilege mentality is thinking that you made the decision to go into tech consciously because you knew it was going to be hot in 20 years and will end up with a well paying job. But it sounds like you didn't, just like me, you were poor, and was really passionate about computers. Being bullied (I was too) also had a side effect of isolating you for longer periods of time. Looking back, I'd like to think of myself as having great insight and a keen sense of predicting the future, knowing that computers and internet will be big and I'd have a way to crawl out of poverty. Then I methodically executed that vision over the next 20 years. But, that would be dishonest, because it is not how it happened. Maybe it did for you... In general, yeah, it would be great if more people would start coding and things would be more diverse. But sometimes we make it too simple and we re-write memories and history as to how we started coding and think -- why can't coal miners just start writing single page apps in React.js over a few weekends, why can't this part time middle aged mom from Walmart who was laid off as an HR person just write Android apps and make more money.
      - d23 11y ago
        Maybe we're just misunderstanding what each other means by privilege. > why can't coal miners just start writing single page apps in React.js over a few weekends, why can't this part time middle aged mom from Walmart who was laid off as an HR person just write Android apps and make more money Absolutely, I don't think they can. They don't have the free time, and they're worn out after a long day of work. That's not the same thing as privilege though. > privilege - a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people My point is that we didn't grow up in some special group that gave us more access than others. > The privilege mentality is thinking that you made the decision to go into tech consciously because you knew it was going to be hot in 20 years and will end up with a well paying job. I'm not sure what the "privilege mentality" means (genuinely -- not trying to be salty), but of course I didn't have some master plan to make money in 20 years. I got into computers because they were the most amazing and powerful thing I had ever seen in my life. Does that make me less or more privileged? I guess my point is: if a person wants to say I got lucky by being interested in something that ended up being world-changing, absolutely, and I recognize that. If a person wants to claim my background is privileged and that's what enabled it all and stake claim to what I have as a result -- well, they don't know anything about me, and there's a good chance they're wrong.
  - angdis 11y ago
    > common to hear "how come they don't sit down learn to code and become full stack developers, that would be so easy." Yep, that reminds me one of Phil Greenspun's smug blog posts from a while back: https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2011/01/26/rethinking-99-weeks-of-unemployment/ https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2011/01/26/rethinking-99-wee...
  - manigandham 11y ago
    There are also people who do have very tough situations and still get things done. My dad did this when he first immigrated to this country working 14 hours a day in a factory for $4/hour while learning computer engineering. There's always a way and all this talk about "privilege" just simplifies the lives and struggles of people into some silly political game. It's just not that black and white.
- n-exploit 11y ago
  Studying during a commute is a thing, right?
  - tamana 11y ago
    It is hard to study while driving across Kentucky.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
stank345 11y ago
> I would also spend my free time learning a skill so I could get a better job at some point in the future. Depending on your situation, free time that you can actually use to learn a skill -- after you've commuted home, fed yourself, done household chores, assuming you aren't too exhausted to just pass out or do something mindless -- may also be a luxury you don't have.
ra1n85 11y ago
I think you'll observe an impedance mismatch with this crowd and your thoughts on having control over one's fate. Desire and ambition don't seem to have the same appeal as being a victim of circumstances (in the first world, no less).
geofft 11y ago
> It's not a matter of privilege, it's a matter of ability. In tech more than any other field, because you don't need a college degree to get a good paying job. You just need to have the desire and ambition to learn. My takeaway from the fact that you don't need any particular formal education to get a well-paying job is that the tech industry hires and pays people without regard to ability. Like, the entire reason FizzBuzz has gotten popular is that it's not just possible but common to have the résumé of a senior developer (i.e., to have held all the jobs you'd expect a senior developer candidate to have held and be paid for those jobs, i.e., to have passed multiple tech interviews) and be unable to write it. You can argue about whether "privilege" got these people in the position of being a senior developer candidate, but it certainly wasn't ability.
- song 11y ago
  Well, to be fair, in my experience hiring, I've had far more freshly graduated potential hires that couldn't do the FizzBuzz test than senior devs. So much so that I usually gave something more complex to do than just a simple fizzbuzz like test.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Just to be clear, what do you mean by unable to write it? Are the cases where people make a common mistake, but are quickly able to fix it, counted (such as forgetting to fizz and buzz for certain numbers). What about cases where the people can code the algorithm, but can't do everything to get a program that will compile. For example, using Visual Studio with C# means some of the basic scaffolding is almost always generated and thus many developers aren't able to recall what that scaffolding is off the top of their heads. Or is it limited to cases where they just sit there staring at a blank sheet of paper not sure how to proceed?
  - geofft 11y ago
    I'm going off of the standard treatment of the problem, from people who do a ton of interviews: http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-developers-who-grok-coding/ http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-dev... My reading is that the scaffolding isn't the problem, writing that loop and conditional, within the margin of error of what compiler errors / an IDE can tell you to fix, is the problem. So essentially yes, they're staring at a blank sheet of paper.
moron4hire 11y ago
Hear, hear. I have worked in a warehouse before (part of paying my own way through college). It wasn't that bad, in the grand scheme of things. Hell, I've been treated less as a person at some of my software development jobs.
- xiaoma 11y ago
  >part of paying my own way through college That's getting a lot harder to do in the US these days.
VLM 11y ago
"I would also spend my free time learning a skill" They only get 13 hours a day away from work, minus long sounding (and expensive) public transit each way, so good luck with that. Of course its temp work so between jobs, as long as they somehow have a place to live and food to eat, they could study, in theory. Also most unskilled labor jobs are already staffed with skilled laborers. Everyone in unskilled labor older than about 20 already has some story along the lines of "I was a (blank) before the (accident | disease | downsizing | divorce) and now I'm here in the warehouse, no jobs you know." Why would a newly educated nurse or soldier get hired when there's a better qualified experienced one currently underemployed and working next to the clickbait author? There would be very little point in spending time and going in to debt to become a nurse if the best job a nurse can find is the one he already has working in a warehouse.
kalleboo 11y ago
I'm a pretty proficient programmer, but I would never have gotten there if I had to study after working 12.5 hour shifts all week - I'd still be working in the warehouse today. That's why I recognize I had privilege growing up in a country with paid-for higher education and parents who encouraged me to attend. I also support such social measures for others as I feel it would be economically inefficient if I was still working a menial job instead of what I do now just because I don't have enough desire and ambition to work that much on top of studies.
- jdavis703 11y ago
  A lot of people don't seem to realize that the term "privilege" is simply the opposite of under-privelavged and think the term means they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
  - throw2048-AZ43 11y ago
    Cool motte-and-bailey agrument, but no. Just to give 1 example: if, as you claim, "privilege" would universally mean simply the opposite of under-privileged, the "check your privilege" phrase would never exist.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  The amount of 'free time privilege' required to become a developer is less than the amount of 'privilege' required to become almost any other well paying profession. With software, you need a cheap computer, access to the internet and time to teach yourself. That can cost about $300 and $10/month in many places. With almost anything else you need all of the above plus a college or other formal education. The barrier to getting any sort of college education, not to mention even getting admitted to one, is far higher. You usually need thousands per month and 20 hours/week of scheduled time to pay for the costs of college. There are also other minimum wage jobs you can apply for with better conditions, like coffee shops, restaurants, gas stations, retail stores and so on. And in developed countries, you have the option of saving up for your computer with your minimum wage job and then going on welfare.
jhnpckr 11y ago
Ability is a privilege.
meow_mix 11y ago
Gonna second kalleboo here. I'd like to add that the un-empathetic attitude you've got there isn't doing our image as developers any favors.
Nicholas_C 11y ago
>> it's a window to employment conditions that techies would never accept. >I absolutely would accept those employment conditions if I didn't have any other options and needed to make money to survive. But you do have options, so you would never accept the conditions. That's the point he was trying to make.
OldSchoolJohnny 11y ago
"It's not a matter of privilege, it's a matter of ability." Oh, you must be very young! :)
- throw2048-AZ43 11y ago
  Nice ad hominem. Let me try it too: Oh, you must be very dumb.
  - serge2k 11y ago
    2/10. You have to use condescension to add insult to something innocuous, not just toss out an insult.
    - dang 11y ago
      Please don't feed trolls. Instead, flag such comments by clicking on the timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'flag'. (This requires a small amount of karma.)
- marknutter 11y ago
  34, and I grew up poor but in a moderately wealthy suburb. I had to pay most of my way through college, and when I couldn't find a job with my degree (Physics) I learned how to program and have been making a living off that ever since. I didn't get what I have today because of privilege but you would probably see it differently.
  - ohyes 11y ago
    I'm sure you didn't get what you had solely because of privilege. You worked hard. But that entire discussion is irrelevant. I hate it when people quote "privilege" as a way to shut someone up. It has become such a dirty word. The point for me is recognizing that yes, I have been fortunate in my circumstances (solely by being born in a first world country in this century I was ahead of the majority of people born ever). Having free time to pursue your interests is a luxury. If I could extend that same privilege to others I would in a heartbeat because I think it would be both morally right and for the greater good. If I don't recognize my already good place in the world I am disrespecting the people who worked hard to put me in the advantaged position that I am in.
pekk 11y ago
You don't just need desire and ambition to learn. You also have to convince interviewers that you are a rockstar that will be a "culture fit."
pekk 11y ago
You don't just need desire and ambition to learn. You also have to convince interviewers that you are a rockstar.
hawleyal 11y ago
Just world fallacy. Tech is not a meritocracy, despite aspirations.
s73v3r 11y ago
For a lot of those people, just having free time, let alone free time that you can use to learn a skill is a privilege.
simonebrunozzi 11y ago
If you think that it's not privilege, at least partially, you are really deluded.

kdazzle 11y ago

Man, and here I thought social Darwinism was dead

lucisferre 11y ago

> free time What makes you think those people have free time after 12.5 hour days and a commute out to the middle of nowhere?

rdtsc 11y ago
> What makes you think those people have free time after 12.5 hour days and a commute out to the middle of nowhere? I think that's what the OP called the "privilege". Those that have it, don't see why others can't do the same. It comes from having a completely different world view and priorities. That's why it is common to hear "how come they don't sit down learn to code and become full stack developers, that would be so easy."
- d23 11y ago
  Yes, I had the privilege of having a basic computer with dialup as a kid. My family moved so I had no friends and was bullied constantly. For this reason, I became obsessed with the computer, learned to program, and ultimately it got me a job. I'm not sure I would describe that as the height of privilege. I spent most of my childhood living in a trailer. Plenty of people I know had access to the same thing (most of them actually), they just didn't pursue it. It's frustrating to hear people make assumptions about myself and others in the industry. I had someone talk about how "disgusting" it was that there were so many white males in tech. Of course, she said this to my face, and I'm a white dude. Believe it or not, it didn't feel great. It's as though a bunch of people who had zero interest in tech for the last 20 years suddenly think they should have all of the same skills and opportunities as us that have spent our childhoods buried in it.
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    > I'm not sure I would describe that as the height of privilege. You probably have a better paying job and more free time than than most people (and as a nice side effect than people who bullied you probably). The privilege mentality is thinking that you made the decision to go into tech consciously because you knew it was going to be hot in 20 years and will end up with a well paying job. But it sounds like you didn't, just like me, you were poor, and was really passionate about computers. Being bullied (I was too) also had a side effect of isolating you for longer periods of time. Looking back, I'd like to think of myself as having great insight and a keen sense of predicting the future, knowing that computers and internet will be big and I'd have a way to crawl out of poverty. Then I methodically executed that vision over the next 20 years. But, that would be dishonest, because it is not how it happened. Maybe it did for you... In general, yeah, it would be great if more people would start coding and things would be more diverse. But sometimes we make it too simple and we re-write memories and history as to how we started coding and think -- why can't coal miners just start writing single page apps in React.js over a few weekends, why can't this part time middle aged mom from Walmart who was laid off as an HR person just write Android apps and make more money.
    - d23 11y ago
      Maybe we're just misunderstanding what each other means by privilege. > why can't coal miners just start writing single page apps in React.js over a few weekends, why can't this part time middle aged mom from Walmart who was laid off as an HR person just write Android apps and make more money Absolutely, I don't think they can. They don't have the free time, and they're worn out after a long day of work. That's not the same thing as privilege though. > privilege - a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people My point is that we didn't grow up in some special group that gave us more access than others. > The privilege mentality is thinking that you made the decision to go into tech consciously because you knew it was going to be hot in 20 years and will end up with a well paying job. I'm not sure what the "privilege mentality" means (genuinely -- not trying to be salty), but of course I didn't have some master plan to make money in 20 years. I got into computers because they were the most amazing and powerful thing I had ever seen in my life. Does that make me less or more privileged? I guess my point is: if a person wants to say I got lucky by being interested in something that ended up being world-changing, absolutely, and I recognize that. If a person wants to claim my background is privileged and that's what enabled it all and stake claim to what I have as a result -- well, they don't know anything about me, and there's a good chance they're wrong.
- angdis 11y ago
  > common to hear "how come they don't sit down learn to code and become full stack developers, that would be so easy." Yep, that reminds me one of Phil Greenspun's smug blog posts from a while back: https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2011/01/26/rethinking-99-weeks-of-unemployment/ https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2011/01/26/rethinking-99-wee...
- manigandham 11y ago
  There are also people who do have very tough situations and still get things done. My dad did this when he first immigrated to this country working 14 hours a day in a factory for $4/hour while learning computer engineering. There's always a way and all this talk about "privilege" just simplifies the lives and struggles of people into some silly political game. It's just not that black and white.
n-exploit 11y ago
Studying during a commute is a thing, right?
- tamana 11y ago
  It is hard to study while driving across Kentucky.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

stank345 11y ago

> I would also spend my free time learning a skill so I could get a better job at some point in the future. Depending on your situation, free time that you can actually use to learn a skill -- after you've commuted home, fed yourself, done household chores, assuming you aren't too exhausted to just pass out or do something mindless -- may also be a luxury you don't have.

ra1n85 11y ago

I think you'll observe an impedance mismatch with this crowd and your thoughts on having control over one's fate. Desire and ambition don't seem to have the same appeal as being a victim of circumstances (in the first world, no less).

geofft 11y ago

> It's not a matter of privilege, it's a matter of ability. In tech more than any other field, because you don't need a college degree to get a good paying job. You just need to have the desire and ambition to learn. My takeaway from the fact that you don't need any particular formal education to get a well-paying job is that the tech industry hires and pays people without regard to ability. Like, the entire reason FizzBuzz has gotten popular is that it's not just possible but common to have the résumé of a senior developer (i.e., to have held all the jobs you'd expect a senior developer candidate to have held and be paid for those jobs, i.e., to have passed multiple tech interviews) and be unable to write it. You can argue about whether "privilege" got these people in the position of being a senior developer candidate, but it certainly wasn't ability.

song 11y ago
Well, to be fair, in my experience hiring, I've had far more freshly graduated potential hires that couldn't do the FizzBuzz test than senior devs. So much so that I usually gave something more complex to do than just a simple fizzbuzz like test.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
Just to be clear, what do you mean by unable to write it? Are the cases where people make a common mistake, but are quickly able to fix it, counted (such as forgetting to fizz and buzz for certain numbers). What about cases where the people can code the algorithm, but can't do everything to get a program that will compile. For example, using Visual Studio with C# means some of the basic scaffolding is almost always generated and thus many developers aren't able to recall what that scaffolding is off the top of their heads. Or is it limited to cases where they just sit there staring at a blank sheet of paper not sure how to proceed?
- geofft 11y ago
  I'm going off of the standard treatment of the problem, from people who do a ton of interviews: http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-developers-who-grok-coding/ http://imranontech.com/2007/01/24/using-fizzbuzz-to-find-dev... My reading is that the scaffolding isn't the problem, writing that loop and conditional, within the margin of error of what compiler errors / an IDE can tell you to fix, is the problem. So essentially yes, they're staring at a blank sheet of paper.

moron4hire 11y ago

Hear, hear. I have worked in a warehouse before (part of paying my own way through college). It wasn't that bad, in the grand scheme of things. Hell, I've been treated less as a person at some of my software development jobs.

xiaoma 11y ago
>part of paying my own way through college That's getting a lot harder to do in the US these days.

VLM 11y ago

"I would also spend my free time learning a skill" They only get 13 hours a day away from work, minus long sounding (and expensive) public transit each way, so good luck with that. Of course its temp work so between jobs, as long as they somehow have a place to live and food to eat, they could study, in theory. Also most unskilled labor jobs are already staffed with skilled laborers. Everyone in unskilled labor older than about 20 already has some story along the lines of "I was a (blank) before the (accident | disease | downsizing | divorce) and now I'm here in the warehouse, no jobs you know." Why would a newly educated nurse or soldier get hired when there's a better qualified experienced one currently underemployed and working next to the clickbait author? There would be very little point in spending time and going in to debt to become a nurse if the best job a nurse can find is the one he already has working in a warehouse.

kalleboo 11y ago

I'm a pretty proficient programmer, but I would never have gotten there if I had to study after working 12.5 hour shifts all week - I'd still be working in the warehouse today. That's why I recognize I had privilege growing up in a country with paid-for higher education and parents who encouraged me to attend. I also support such social measures for others as I feel it would be economically inefficient if I was still working a menial job instead of what I do now just because I don't have enough desire and ambition to work that much on top of studies.

jdavis703 11y ago
A lot of people don't seem to realize that the term "privilege" is simply the opposite of under-privelavged and think the term means they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
- throw2048-AZ43 11y ago
  Cool motte-and-bailey agrument, but no. Just to give 1 example: if, as you claim, "privilege" would universally mean simply the opposite of under-privileged, the "check your privilege" phrase would never exist.
mahyarm 11y ago
The amount of 'free time privilege' required to become a developer is less than the amount of 'privilege' required to become almost any other well paying profession. With software, you need a cheap computer, access to the internet and time to teach yourself. That can cost about $300 and $10/month in many places. With almost anything else you need all of the above plus a college or other formal education. The barrier to getting any sort of college education, not to mention even getting admitted to one, is far higher. You usually need thousands per month and 20 hours/week of scheduled time to pay for the costs of college. There are also other minimum wage jobs you can apply for with better conditions, like coffee shops, restaurants, gas stations, retail stores and so on. And in developed countries, you have the option of saving up for your computer with your minimum wage job and then going on welfare.

jhnpckr 11y ago

Ability is a privilege.

meow_mix 11y ago

Gonna second kalleboo here. I'd like to add that the un-empathetic attitude you've got there isn't doing our image as developers any favors.

Nicholas_C 11y ago

>> it's a window to employment conditions that techies would never accept. >I absolutely would accept those employment conditions if I didn't have any other options and needed to make money to survive. But you do have options, so you would never accept the conditions. That's the point he was trying to make.

OldSchoolJohnny 11y ago

"It's not a matter of privilege, it's a matter of ability." Oh, you must be very young! :)

throw2048-AZ43 11y ago
Nice ad hominem. Let me try it too: Oh, you must be very dumb.
- serge2k 11y ago
  2/10. You have to use condescension to add insult to something innocuous, not just toss out an insult.
  - dang 11y ago
    Please don't feed trolls. Instead, flag such comments by clicking on the timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'flag'. (This requires a small amount of karma.)
marknutter 11y ago
34, and I grew up poor but in a moderately wealthy suburb. I had to pay most of my way through college, and when I couldn't find a job with my degree (Physics) I learned how to program and have been making a living off that ever since. I didn't get what I have today because of privilege but you would probably see it differently.
- ohyes 11y ago
  I'm sure you didn't get what you had solely because of privilege. You worked hard. But that entire discussion is irrelevant. I hate it when people quote "privilege" as a way to shut someone up. It has become such a dirty word. The point for me is recognizing that yes, I have been fortunate in my circumstances (solely by being born in a first world country in this century I was ahead of the majority of people born ever). Having free time to pursue your interests is a luxury. If I could extend that same privilege to others I would in a heartbeat because I think it would be both morally right and for the greater good. If I don't recognize my already good place in the world I am disrespecting the people who worked hard to put me in the advantaged position that I am in.

pekk 11y ago

You don't just need desire and ambition to learn. You also have to convince interviewers that you are a rockstar that will be a "culture fit."

pekk 11y ago

You don't just need desire and ambition to learn. You also have to convince interviewers that you are a rockstar.

hawleyal 11y ago

Just world fallacy. Tech is not a meritocracy, despite aspirations.

s73v3r 11y ago

For a lot of those people, just having free time, let alone free time that you can use to learn a skill is a privilege.

simonebrunozzi 11y ago

If you think that it's not privilege, at least partially, you are really deluded.