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Privilege and Inequality in Silicon Valley

• ryanwitt112 11y ago
  interesting take. I'd like to hear what PG and others think. Coming from a middle class background, I can relate a bit and see-observationally-the other components to what Ricky's calling "mindset inequality". It's almost like "new money" vs folks that have bigger dollars to spend growing up. I know a lot of friends that have deeply entrenched psychological elements they need to overcome before reaching that "next level" that were engrained because of their upbringing. And, to Ricky's post, it's sometimes more of a challenge than the monetary differentials.
  • jtolmar 11y ago
    My parents started out very poor and climbed into the middle class by the time I got to high school. The extended family is still poor, so I'm still exposed to how they think about money. I think the mindsets can break down into three levels, but not cleanly. Poor: You may have to make decisions about which bills to pay or which needs to meet, and being able to pay all your bills and eat is considered a moral virtue. Money is naturally transient, because your obligations have similar weight to your income, and having excess money in your bank account is weird, unnatural to the point that your instinct is to spend it before it goes away. If you use a budget, line-items are on the size of a grocery trip. You're more likely to budget small purchases than large purchases. If you are trying to build savings, putting money into a savings account is another bill. Middle class: Your bank account is the intermediary between your bills and income, with a mean and a natural trajectory. If your account's trajectory is positive, your natural instinct is to spend it, either on better lifestyle or a large purchase, very occasionally savings. If you have a budget, components are like "monthly food" and you deal with going over-budget by cutting a few more corners next month. Savings are still another bill. Putting the right amount into your savings account to retire in 40 years is a moral obligation. Capital class: Interest on your earnings is your primary source of income. Your rate of spending must be lower than the rate you earn interest; to do otherwise is dipping into capital, which is morally wrong. Any interest you don't plan to spend is folded back into your capital, giving you a small, permanent raise. I don't understand this class too well because I'm still working on entering it.
    • LinkPlug 11y ago
      Great insights
    • bbcbasic 11y ago
      I am planning a transition from middle class to capital class, which will take 10-20 years and require investing in real estate. Real estate is a great investment (at least in Australia) because it allows you to get access to larger amounts of credit to purchase assets which will generally go up in value over time because of the policies of central banks to target inflation. In addition buying in the right location will insure that on top of location future scarcity will add more value to the investments. It is also super transparent compared to stocks, where you don't really know what is going on inside a company, land is land and all the data you need to assess the investment is available. And you can control the asset (think renovations, rebuilds, subdivisions etc.) so there is more you can do compared to the stock (buy, and perhaps short the similar stocks) The downside to real estate is you have to be a little bit patient. Did I mention 20 years? :-)
      • jtolmar 11y ago
        I've heard that being too keen on real estate is a common pitfall for middle class investors. Between that and personal bias, I'm avoiding it (at least directly). My portfolio is primarily stocks, which I find surprisingly easy to work with. You just pick well-run companies in fields you understand, ignore financial news, and wait. I should be capable of living off interest in four years.
        • bbcbasic 11y ago
          I am not sure about the reasoning for real estate being a pitfall. Can you elaborate?
        • dba7dba 11y ago
          I've heard that being too keen on real estate is a common pitfall for middle class investors. I'm in US but I agree. I'm not old enough yet (I hope) but most of friends' parents lost all they had later in their life and from what I heard they were heavily into real estate. Some owned few houses and others worked as realtor. For those that owned houses, they were extended too thinly and couldn't sell fast enough to cover mounting interest and cost when economy tanked, resulting in bankruptcy.
• dtran 11y ago
  Has anyone done a survey of the family socio-economic status of startup founders and early employees? I'd be curious to see how many founders/early employees are from low-income families, whether their parents graduated college, etc. If not, I'd love to create one.
  • josephlau 11y ago
    This is a great idea!
  • keithba 11y ago
    There is this: http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2010/05/the-anatomy-of-an-entrepreneur http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2010/05/the-anat...
    • dtran 11y ago
      Thanks-- that's useful: "More than 90 percent of the entrepreneurs came from middle-class or upper-lower-class backgrounds and were well-educated." I'm curious about the socio-economic background of the parents as well.
      • sharemywin 11y ago
        be careful because "entrepreneurs" can be people that have to work contractor, part-time work, or the same trade "my father" was in kind of work.
        • dtran 11y ago
          That's always the problem with surveys like these. I started the form, then realized it'd be very difficult for me to group everyone into multi-choice categories for job, background, etc.
      • brudgers 11y ago
        My understanding is that there is a very strong correlation between a person's educational and socio-economic attainment and those of their parents. The number that sticks in my head is that parental status accounts for 80%+.
• Karunamon 11y ago
  Great read. I've become allergic to words like "privilege" as they usually are seen in the company of ill-thought-out and grandiose/insulting/wrong proclamations about How Things Should Be Done, ..but this is none of that - it's an honest look and deep analysis of someone's experience. And knowing how important upbringing is, and the sheer (almost superhuman) tenacity the author had to go through to even partially overcome the (poisonous? non-optimum?) mindset that was completely a result of things out of their control... what the heck is everyone else supposed to do? How does society do right by people like this? Overall, we're pretty horrible at dealing with things that are as subtle as mindset.
  • Frondo 11y ago
    To be honest, one thing you can do is retrain yourself to be un-allergic to words like "privilege", and see their use as the consequence of a lot of people's suffering systemic unfairness and injustice. When I see that word, "privilege," especially tied to attacks on white/male/hetero/whatever, my response isn't "oh jeez, not that again".....it's "yeah, that is a problem, and I really wish the other white male hetero folks in the room could see it and not just roll their eyes". It sounds like you want to be an ally, and that's great. I think the hardest part is probably recognizing that when people talk about privilege, it's really not personal, it really isn't about you, even though you're a beneficiary of it every day. Knowing about systemic injustice and doing nothing/remaining silent, though, that's pretty callous, and knowing about systemic injustice and perpetuating it, well, then it would be about you.
    • 67726e 11y ago
      Or you could stop using the fact that someone is white, male, or straight as some kind of attack, insult, or excuse. There are certainly issues in society, real problems but I'm tired of hearing it. Somehow all of my hardships in life are reduced to nothing, because I'm "privileged".
      • paulv 11y ago
        "...if you think having privilege means that you’re a bad person, or that you haven’t had struggles, or that you haven’t worked hard for what you have – then I can totally feel why you might be frustrated. If that were the case, then yes, it’d be completely unfair of me to claim that all white people or straight people or men or people of any other dominant group are living easy off their unearned privileges. But having privilege doesn’t mean any of those things." Maisha Z. Johnson, http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/what-privilege-really-means/ http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/what-privilege-really-me...
• mchu4545 11y ago
  Ricky mentions the guilt at not cashing out on his Stanford degree immediately and providing for his family. Day-to-day, how do founders in similar positions coming from cultures with tight-knit families address this? Especially as parents age?
• pfarnsworth 11y ago
  This is a really poorly written post. Where exactly is the inequality in Silicon Valley? The OP got into Stanford, and then got an entire free ride something most people can't get. How exactly does this prove inequality? And then he got into YC. If anything this proves how equal things are in the Valley, if you're hardworking enough, there isn't anything you can't do, regardless of your social status. Sure, you have to work hard, but that goes for everyone. But if you're hardworking and poor, the blog poster seemingly proves that he can get whatever he wants, ie. into Stanford, and then YC. True inequality is when you can't get into Stanford no matter how smart you are, because of bias or prejudice. Or that you can't start a startup because you're not white and rich. Yet this OP disproved this. So I don't get what the point is. The entire "mindset inequality" part of the blog post is nonsense as well. The things he mentions aren't characteristics of poor people. They're characteristic of the BLOG POSTER who just happens to have grown up poor. I know plenty of people who share a bunch of the same characteristics as well. There is nothing that pertains to poor people as whole, it really just pertains to the blog poster, who happens to have once been poor.
  • ryanwitt112 11y ago
    It's an n of 1 experiential depiction of what the person went through, combined with the attempt at extracting the points in which that n of 1 had to overcome certain challenges. It also hypothesizes that there are similar challenges that immigrants and lower income folks go through. Commenters on the post resonate with it, so I think it definitely exists despite another segment of the same economic population also existing that may not share similar challenges. Whether these challenges are more prevalent on the lower income segment of the population or immigrants versus the general population is up to a broader study. The article sparks the conversation with his post though, so I think it's worth giving it the respect of sharing it with the public and the possibility (as validated by a few comments already) that it may in fact also be a shared experience by a percentage of lower income, immigrant populations.
    • pfarnsworth 11y ago
      Yes, exactly, I agree with you that it's anecdotal, but the article make broad claims as to what poor people are like.
• ianphughes 11y ago
  What was that axiom that Red Auerbach was attributed with? "You can't teach height." Ricky demonstrated he was hungry to learn and succeed at a very early age, a quality that will always bring some level of success through life: "I had to bring my dad to the office the next day and told him to pretend to say some words in Mandarin while I just demanded that I get put in an honors-level English class." How do you identify those who are underprivileged, but carry that quality too? It can be very difficult to identify.
• zmitri 11y ago
  What an excellent post. Respect.
• rdlecler1 11y ago
  I had a similar experience starting life with opportunity debt. Single parent family whose mother had no high school education. Have ADD and dyslexia, moved around a lot with a good part my life in subsidized housing, and never graduated from high school. No one teaches you the basics, so that when you do start coming into your own and taking control of your own life you are so incredibly behind your peers socially, politically, and intellectually. I eventually went to community college as a mature student, eventually made my way to university, did a masters and then a PhD at Yale. Through it all I was always one or two steps behind and so many opportunities were missed because I didn't have money. Similarly, now as an entrepreneur I find myself being a little more conservative because you've been through a lot of bad times without a safety net.
  • josephjrobison 11y ago
    The main story, this comment, and many other user comments are really interesting and human. Would love to see someone compile a series of them, HONY style. These stories don't get talked about enough in the startup world.
    • timewarrior 11y ago
      Agreed. Wrote my story below. Not sure how ranking works on hacker news, it towards the bottom. Wish someone compiles these.
    • bloggerden 11y ago
      Sorry for my ignorance but what's "HONY" style?
      • marianoguerra 11y ago
        I think "Humans of New York" http://www.humansofnewyork.com/ http://www.humansofnewyork.com/
        • josephjrobison 11y ago
• yeureka 11y ago
  This sounds very familiar. When I was in University I didn't understand why some people didn't care about grades and partied so much. When we left school and got into the real world I understood why: they had rich parents with contacts that could get them good jobs or seed capital for their own businesses. I had lots of ideas and worked in a lot of startups for more than 10 years but now the following phrase from the article describes my situation very well: "Most of the time, potential founders who share my background tend to work at lucrative jobs in finance or tech until they can take care of everyone in their families before they even dream about taking more risks — if they ever get there."
  • nickff 11y ago
    The other possibility is that going to the parties is a good use of time, and that is where many students develop their networks. In addition to that, signalling theory would indicate that what classes you take and how well you do are much less important than the university you attend and the faculty you graduate from.
    • jhanschoo 11y ago
      Would you say that going to parties outweigh directly networking? Networking might be a benefit, but I'm sure that people go to parties with a different goal in mind, and that the time cost of partying can be better utilized in other ways.
      • aidanlister 11y ago
        In the undergrad university scene that is being discussed I'm having a hard time visualising what "direct networking" would look like. However, I can confidently say there's a big difference in the bond formed between two people chugging beer bongs together vs asking someone in a lecture if they'd like to have lunch. I also think the party scene would be difficult to replicate in terms of the sheer size of your potential network (I make no assertation about the objective quality of that network, but the article suggests it's not what be predisposed to think). Anecdotally, I've got lifelong friends from both camps; but the people I lean on now in my professional development are the people I partied (hard) with at university.
• bobby_9x 11y ago
  "but building and sustaining a company that is “designed to grow fast” is especially hard if you grew up desperately poor" Most people don't have the money or resources to build a company like this, which is why we have VC. They know you are in a desperate situation and exchange the money that you need for a % of the company. The better thing to do is choose a solid business idea that can be built slowly and at a certain point, put money you make from this venture into an idea that needs more capital to succeed.
• tn13 11y ago
  As an Indian immigrant when I see people complaining about Privilege and Inequality in SV (and in America) I feel like laughing. I lived in a society where everyone was almost the same, similar economic status, similar privilege etc. etc. Life sucked. I decided to move out to be among the top 10% instead of one of the 100%. I eventually ended up in SV. This place is awesome and the very reason I am here is because I can be in the top 10%. I dont want to be equal but I seek privileged, extra-ordinary wealth and stuff that most others can not afford. I think it is an amazing thing that places like SV exist. If you somehow take out that incentive I think I will move somewhere else. Of course I would be moving out of California sooner or later given the taxes.
  • tyre 11y ago
    This is getting downvoted because it is a shallow and selfish outlook on life, but this is not uncommon. Psychological research shows that humans care far more about their relative status than "objective" wealth. Unfortunately, happiness quickly loses its correlation with wealth. Unsolicited advice to the parent: seek out a strong community. Being "better than everyone" is a great path to dying alone.
    • dpweb 11y ago
      >> This is getting downvoted because it is a shallow and selfish outlook on life Another way to read it is: coming to America for opportunity and upward mobility.. I don't find the 'I seek wealth' shallow or selfish, rather the true feelings of most Americans. We worship money and status in this country too often. Outrage at this - is encouraging, but not from the SV crowd - they seem quite interested chasing massive wealth themselves.
    • indubitablytrue 11y ago
      Giving out unsolicited advice based on wiser-than-thou preaching is a tried-and-true way of projecting relative status.
  • GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    > As an Indian immigrant ...I lived in a society where everyone was almost the same, similar economic status, similar privilege etc. etc. Life sucked. That is certainly not a truth universally acknowledged (http://idsn.org/caste-discrimination/ http://idsn.org/caste-discrimination/ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/varanasi/Dalit-tonsured-paraded-in-Sonbhadra-7-including-gram-pradhan-held/articleshow/46461562.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/varanasi/Dalit-tonsu...)
• zanewill9 11y ago
  Excellent post. We like to think sometimes the underdog wins but sadly, success is typically given to those that were born with it. The unfortunate part to me is the credit they were given as if they were amazing, not born lucky.
• BurningFrog 11y ago
  > No one teaches you the basics Room for a startup/free service that does that!
  • knowaveragejoe 11y ago
    It's called the Internet. The problem is that people generally don't know what to search for, if they even know they should be learning more about some facet of modern life.
    • CamatHN 11y ago
      This is a ridiculous comment. Certain ways of behaviour, certain nuances, cannot accurately or reliably be picked up through reading online, only through interactions.
      • tbrownaw 11y ago
        Eh... you do need practice, but if you're willing to sort thru all the crap then reading about things online can be a massive help. Having things explicitly called out is way more efficient than trying to derive everything yourself (see also, effectiveness of supervised vs unsupervised learning).
      • brandmeyer 11y ago
        Reading about a topic involving social interaction can definitely serve as a first step to raise awareness of why you're socially awkward. I'm only slightly ashamed to admit that the Good Guy Greg and Good Girl Gina image macros were a source of basic social enlightenment for me. Once your eyes have been opened you can start to improve yourself by paying attention to those interactions when they happen.
        • NhanH 11y ago
          "Socially awkward" seems to be a loaded term in your use case. If you are "socially shy", then yes reading would help. But in the case you're not socially awkward in your natural environment (ie you just lived in a different culture), the nuisances are impossible to learn unless you encountered it. Just think of it as a different culture, no East Asian will come to the US without fucking up something small or big a few times, and vice versa. Same for people of different classes.
• namenotrequired 11y ago
  Finally someone who talks about the consequences of economic inequality. PG seemed to think all that mattered is the causes.
  • luckydata 11y ago
    I don't think PG had to face any of this, is aware or even cares about it. That article he wrote was pretty indicative of his mentality.
    • rpgmaker 11y ago
      Exactly. What people need to understand here is that pg isn't an actual prophet. He is insightful in many ways sure, particularly about entrepreneurship and SV culture but that's about it.
  • haberman 11y ago
    It's frustrating, not a single critique I've seen of PG's essay (including this one) seem to understand what he is actually saying. This essay supports PG's point, it doesn't contradict it. PG's essay calls out "kids with no chance of reaching their potential" as "very bad" aspect of inequality in the fourth paragraph! What essay did you read?
    • jeremynixon 11y ago
      I completely agree with this frustration - the bulk of my review of the responses revealed that people reacted to what they felt like PG said (or what others felt like he said), not what he actually said. My other frustration was that some of what PG actually did saw was indeed flawed, and there's only one response [1] that I could find that spoke to it. Regardless, writing about political domains riles the most base, tribal instincts in all of us. I expect him to be more careful about how he frames his arguments so that they're not overcome by readers' emotion, but can actually have a positive impact. [1] https://medium.com/@sethbannon/how-paul-graham-gets-it-wrong-in-economic-inequality-6cdb71c45136#.ac90x7i9v https://medium.com/@sethbannon/how-paul-graham-gets-it-wrong...
• nickbauman 11y ago
  There's a strong thread of meritocracy in the tech community, but there is no such thing. When you choose the clearly better developer over the other, you're often choosing the one who had better resources growing up, not just natural ability. The poorer developer may have had a natural advantage over the other one, but didn't have the money to develop it as much. So you're really just selecting for wealth all over again. This is what's behind the achievement gap anxiety: Wise rich people don't want to perpetuate a world where only money selects success. It's wasteful and ultimately unsustainable.
  • mc32 11y ago
    The thing is "merit" an be any number of things. You can say the student most in debt merits the job the most, or the person with the most experience, or the person exhibiting most ability, or the person who had to overcome obstacle. But when people invoke merit they typically mean they're avoiding favoritism, nepotism, and are looking for someone who given what they know or learn about the person would best fit into the job to execute it.
    • erikpukinskis 11y ago
      The trouble is we can only really recognize "fit" to structures we are familiar with. We simply cannot see talent unless it is a kind of talent we've seen up close before. Because of this we end up only being able to approximate "the best candidate in my social group". And we neglect better candidates in foreign social groups.
      • mc32 11y ago
        But that's a different problem altogether. That goes beyond what people mean by "merit". Yes, people only hiring people for whom they feel affinity is somewhat of an issue. I say somewhat, because it can be problematic working with people who understand things differently --say working with people who have a union attitude vs people who have a work at will attitude. So, I understand the "I'd have beer with them" kind of thing even though it does bother me. I don't drink beer and I'm not into peer dynamics. But I understand why people might be into that. That said, merit typically means not hiring someone just because they're friends, family, owed a favor, seniority, strict ethnic affinity (which happened and happens in lots of immigrant communities, of old and new), belong to some specific group, etc.
• sly_foxx 11y ago
  To all those whining about being poor - nobody owes you anything. Money, women etc. You are not entitled to any of that because you happen to be recognized as a homo sapiens. If you think you are, then please point to where it says so objectively. Is it written in the fabric of the universe that humans(or any other cluster of regular matter) are entitled to anything? Is the entitlement included somewhere in equations of general theory of relativity? Is it placed somewhere at the subatomic level - kinda like paper in fortune cookies - when you look deeper into protons/quarks, maybe there you will find "All members of homo sapiens are entitled to get free stuff from governments". What is the objective source of any of these human privileges(i.e. rights)?
• erichmond 11y ago
  Props for writing this. Often times I want to tell my (different but similar) story, but never do. I don't know why. It probably has to do with a number of the points you make in the article, so you are a couple steps ahead of me.
• Htsthbjig 11y ago
  I believe this man is confusing lots of things. I had lived in China for more than 5 years, Boston, Japan or Korea for more than 9 months each. In my opinion, minimizing conflict has nothing to do with being poor, and a lot with being Chinese educated. On the contrary, I volunteer helping poor kids like Spanish gypsies or Subsaharan African and they(and their parents) are ultra confident, and spontaneous. Being open is the default thing for them. I managed Chinese people in China and there was a world of difference between natives and those Chinese educated overseas. When living on the US, I was shocked to see parents cheering their kids for the most stupid thing, when in Europe as a kid you are forced to do 4x more effort without rewards at all(like learning multiple languages). It is just what it is expected from you. In Asia, this pressure over kids is even higher than in Europe. Family is very important for Chinese almost a religion. This has advantages and disadvantages. For innovation, it is a big disadvantage. Innovation means taking risks, being close to your family means having to convince lots of people those risk are worth it. Most people won't understand you and it is very hard. In the US, everybody is on their own, basically, nobody gives a dam, which is great for changing the world.
  • enraged_camel 11y ago
    One of my closest friends is Chinese, and what you are saying confirms my observations and what he has anecdotally told me. After finishing college here in the US, he got a very lucrative job at a consulting firm and was doing very well. Yet his parents (especially mother) kept pressuring him to go back to Hong Kong because, according to him, that's the rightful place of a family's only son. Keep in mind that such a move would mean upending his life and also taking a big pay cut (he compared salaries). He also told me that Chonese schools reward conformity above all else and strongly discourage (sometimes with physical violence) sticking out or taking initiative. That's not to say the author's observations and opinions are wrong. In fact what he shared is very valuable - people who come from middle class or above families tend to take their privilege for granted, and in fact can't even imagine what it is like to be poor. I myself only learned it by volunteering at homeless shelters and soup kitchens. It's very heartbreaking that the world's richest and most powerful country has so many struggling people, but it can also be instructive in terms of what one can do to help fix it. So I commend the author for writing this piece.
• __jal 11y ago
  I found myself nodding along the whole article. First, let me say that I am happy where I ended up. I'm successful, enjoy my work, and when I compare my personal income with our family income when I was growing up, it is an absurd multiple. We were a very poor family in a poor part of the South. I went to a top-10 small private university on a full ride, felt completely alienated and never quite figured out how to function in that environment. I dropped out and moved to San Francisco at what turned out to be a very good time (early 90's), and once Netscape dropped, discovered nobody else knew what they were doing with this web thing either, and more or less faked it until I made it. At the same time, I have had and do have ideas that others have executed on, that I know I could have made a go at, if only… The if only list is long, and most of it comes back to self-imposed limitations that I can trace back to how I grew up. Frequently it relates to economic security, but there are other habits of thought that stop me from even getting to worrying about that. One big one is that I never learned to think about entrepreneurship. A big lesson hammered into me growing up was the importance of "finding a good job", not figuring out how to make my own. I did start a company in my mid-30s, and we did OK, until we didn't. And that failure (I think) had nothing to do with the habits of thought of a poor kid. But failing in a similar way in my 20s would have left me in a position to learn from that and try again, something I'm unlikely to make a go at 10 years later. I do little things for side income, but those are hobbies. So it ends up being this thing that doesn't really bother me at this point, but does leave me to wonder what would have happened if I had picked parents from a very different walk of life. And I am quietly amused when people tell me how they built everything themselves "after a seed from Dad", or "with a great connection I made through a family friend" or similar. Those are impossible blockers for a lot of people, even if they get over some of the habits of mind better than I did.
  • nugget 11y ago
    I've known deca-millionaire trust fund kids who ended up broke (or dead). I've known immigrants who started with nothing and ended up fantastically independently wealthy. And the vast, vast majority of people who settle somewhere near the middle. What nobody teaches you is: it's all about luck. Below that, the fine print: the harder you work and the more you sacrifice, the luckier you will get. ''If only'' works both ways. If only - then I would have been successful in some way. If only - then I wouldn't have met the partner who I fell in love with. It works both ways but people tend to overweight the negative (regret) and underweight the positive (gratitude). All you can do (young, old, or in between) is get up every day, be realistic about where you are and where you want to be, and keep moving forward.
• ginsurge 11y ago
  This really resonates with me, I was the first person in my family to go to university, and my grandparents had to work multiple jobs when they migrated from Europe in order to survive. My dad did slightly better, but both my parents only had high school education and worked blue collar jobs. It does make it really hard to change your mindset when you come from this sort of background, when you've achieved more than anyone in your family and therefore can't really talk to them about your ambitions or career objectives. It sounds awful, but sometimes I wish I had been born into a different family, with highly educated parents I could have amazing conversations with, who would encourage me to achieve and grow even more. I find I constantly have a mindset of "I'm not good enough" and it's paralysing. I want to interview for the top tech jobs out there, like Google or Facebook, but my brain keeps telling me I'm not good enough, it's awful.
  • indubitablytrue 11y ago
    You are very hardworking, talented, and special. You have risen above your station. God only knows what a person of your caliber would have achieved if you had had a more fortunate background. I hope that this message massaged your ego to a satisfactory degree.
    • clock_tower 11y ago
      Why in the world are you _hostile_ to the kind of accomplishments he's describing? Are you from pre-colonization India? 13th-century Europe? Christopher Columbus called, we don't despise upward social mobility anymore!
      • ginsurge 11y ago
        I'm a she, btw.
        • jdenning 11y ago
          Off-topic, but I wanted to say that I really appreciate this comment/clarification - the matter-of-fact tone makes the point without getting anyone's back up, which (IMHO) is exactly the right way to reach hearts and minds. I'm pretty bad about defaulting to masculine pronouns myself, and this simple exchange has done a lot to motivate me to break that habit (I would have also assumed your gender to be male, and would not have really thought about that assumption if not for this comment). Conversely, I think that would have just glazed over an angry/offended response, since I think it's clear that the person you're replying to meant no offense. So, thanks! More on-topic (in response to your GP comment): I have a pretty similar family background, and have also experienced a lot of self-doubt. I think a lot of us (people in tech) suffer from impostor syndrome at times; the approach that helped me to overcome it is "fake it 'til you make it", especially in your internal dialogue. Try your best to project confidence in your abilities, and (more importantly) squash that little voice in your head that says you're not good enough whenever you hear it - even if you're inclined to agree with it. I know this is easier said than done, but I think that it really helps improve the situation. For example, say you disagree with something said in a meeting: <self-doubting inner voice>: "Keep your mouth shut, you're just going to look stupid!" <self-affirming inner voice>: "No! I may not know everything about this subject, but I know a lot, and they haven't considered X!" <out-loud>: "I'm not an expert on this topic, but it seems to me that we might be overlooking X...<make your argument>...Does that make sense, or am I missing something?" As long as you're careful not to come off as hostile (note that the "out-loud" part has a deliberately humble tone and invites further discussion if others disagree), the worst-case scenario is you get some free education from someone more experienced than you; best-case, you get some immediate, external validation that you do know what you're doing. In either case, you're working towards breaking the habit of self doubt. Anecdotally, I helped a friend get his first job in tech a couple of years back (he was previously a trash hauler), working as my assistant (I'm a DevOp) because I knew he'd be great at it if given the chance. His impostor syndrome caused him to totally choke in the final interview (upper management actively didn't want to hire him, but I managed to convince them that he'd be worth the low salary he was willing to take). It took him over a year to begin to believe that he wasn't an impostor, rather just new to the field. He worked hard, and followed my advice above, and his confidence gradually improved. Today, he's the Senior DevOps Engineer at that company (my old job), leading a team of 6, and making twice as much money as when he started. If he decides he wants to move to a "top" company at this point, he should have no problem. I guess my point is that impostor syndrome really sucks, but if you actively work at it, it gets better. Also, based on your comments on this thread, you seem pretty cool to me. If you're interested, shoot me an email (in my profile), and I'll gladly help you get an interview at my current company (Cloudera).
• ryandrake 11y ago
  "I'm a self made millionaire [0]" [0] - Apart from the safe suburban upper class childhood, the prep school and Harvard education my parents paid for, the job at Goldman Sachs my uncle got me straight out of school, and the finance network from that experience that eventually helped me with my first funding rounds, but yea, besides all that I'm TOTALLY SELF MADE!
  • mikeyouse 11y ago
    Very succinctly put by Barry Switzer, a football coach in the US, "Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple."
  • glup 11y ago
    "I pulled myself up by my bootstraps [0]" [0] at Phillips Exeter
  • dang 11y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10956699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10956699 and marked it off-topic.
• miiiiiike 11y ago
  An old friend and I were talking a few weeks ago and I smiled when he said "We were so poor growing up we didn't even realize we were poor." And we didn't, we were so poor we couldn't even pay attention. It's was good tho. It's still easy for me to live in a tiny apartment and exist on a steady diet of eggs'n'oatmeal, apples, and frozen chicken bought in bulk.
• MonadQueen 11y ago
  I grew up without privilege. While I wasn't "dirt poor" my parents and grandparents were. Two of my grandparents lost everything when they were kicked out of their homes in Gaza City in 1929, and the other two were kicked out of their homes in Belarus in 1915. Because I am Jewish and an Israeli citizen, I am hated by most of the Liberals in Silicon Valley. Yet, I managed to succeed.
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• return0 11y ago
  > We think this is the reason why poor founders tend not to be successful. The essay by PG actually meant that there are no poor founders at all. It would be interesting to have statistics on whether poor founders fail more, or don't even get a chance to try at all. I have reasons to believe that the rare poor person is more motivated and determined than the average groomed-to-be middle class entrepreneur, and there are plenty of cases of dirt-poor persons becoming millionaires.
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• forrestthewoods 11y ago
  As someone who grew up in the exceptionally poor, rural South I'm not sure what to take away. I don't know anyone who was able to go to Stanford despite bad grades in high school. That's an enviable luxury.
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• timewarrior 11y ago
  tldr; In spite of motivation, talent and hard work; financial situation and immigration (in my case) play a big role in your entrepreneurship journey. Excellent article by the writer. Apologies for the long post, however hope it is helpful for someone in similar situation. I can relate to many things that he has faced and feel incredibly lucky to not have faced some things that he had to. I grew up in a small town in a poor family in India as eldest of four siblings. Our monthly budget was 20 dollars and things were really tight. However my dad worked really hard 16 hours every day and made sure that my studies do not get hindered. He told me every single day that with hard work I can achieve anything that I can dream of. I got into IIT Bombay (one of the most prestigious colleges in India). However it was obvious to me, that I need to get a decent paying job right after school to support siblings and my dad who couldn't do 16 hours any more. It took my the next 8 years working for others, to save enough to pay for the studies and marriage of me and my siblings and to help my dad retire. During these 8 years, I built and ran the biggest social network to come of of India. Apart from this also built something which is now the Twilio of India. I was also the part of the team which built the current mobile offering at LinkedIn. If I had financial stability, I would have started working on mine own ventures 3 years into my career. But it took 5 more years. As soon as I had financial stability, I quit LinkedIn (with 2.5 years of stock unvested) to start a company. I started a company, where we had incredible opportunities. We built something like Slack for consumers around the same time as Slack. However, being on H1 visa, I was a minority stake holder in the company. And it is a bad situation to be in, if your traction is not already proven. It made sense to exit the company, so we sold it to Dropbox in an acqui-hire. Dropbox treated me really well. I met some of the smartest people I have ever met over there and it can be a great place to work for many people. However, I soon realized that it wasn't a good fit for me. Such companies are very top driven, there is little creative freedom, and most of the work is cleaning up the tangled code developed over 7-8 years. So I quit Dropbox after an year. Now I am in a job that gives me more creative freedom and I am pretty happy on that front. Meanwhile, I have been sole advisor for a few companies over the past 2-3 years and they are all profitable and didn't need to raise any money. The entrepreneur in me, keeps me raring to go and start another company. However, because I am on H1 visa, I do not want build another company with minority stake at formation (USCIS rules). To fix this, I would need to get a Green Card. However if you are from India, it will take you 8-10 years to get a Green Card in EB-2. So the next steps are either move from US, or find a way to get a Green Card on EB-1. If anyone knows any good immigration lawyers, please help introduce. However, related to the original post. In spite of motivation, talent and hard work; financial situation and immigration (in my case) play a big role in your entrepreneurship journey.
• nish1500 11y ago
  I grew up other side of the world, amazing by what I heard in the news - that there existed a world beyond mine where smart people with smart ideas built great companies overnight. I am smart. I have merit. I dropped out at 19, taught my self how to code, and built a 6-figure business with my projects online. I want to learn more. I got turned down by 15+ companies and startups in the past few weeks because they couldn't sponsor my work visa. This is Canada. The USA? Being a dropout makes me ineligible for any US work visa. So much for merit.
  • Inthenameofmine 11y ago
    Have you looked into remote jobs? Honestly, moving to the US is overrated. I'm staying in a developing country myself. Get 50% of a US salary, live on the other aide of the world, live a laid back and cheap life.
    • nish1500 11y ago
      I want more than a laid-back life. I already make more than an SF-salary. The opportunities to grow and learn are very little in a developing country. I've learnt more from 2 months spent in SF than I did 5 years in my country.
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• mempko 11y ago
  Excellent post. But I feel that we need to go beyond talking about what we can personally do to improve our situation. Either the vast majority of people are ill-adapted for success, or something else is going on. I think we should go beyond the classic argument "If we just all recycle, the world will..." Or "If we all buy electric cars, global warm....". This post had some of that individualistic attitude to a much broader and obviously systemic problem.
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  • ScottBurson 11y ago
    Yes, and we can find someone who had it even worse than you did, and still made good. Envy is something I've struggled with myself, so don't think I'm talking down to you when I tell you that you have to let it go. Your life is good now and can still get much better. And even those who seem to have had a lot more privileges than you may have also had difficulties you don't know about. Rich parents too can be alcoholics.
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  • tomcam 11y ago
    Can't say much other than thank you for sharing. What a powerful story. Heart goes out to you. My contact info is in my profile. Please use it.
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      • dang 11y ago
        I was moved by your comments in this thread as well, and would be happy to exchange some thoughts if you're ever interested. (Email the address in my profile and I'll send you my personal one.)
  • rickyyean 11y ago
    Author here. I'm inspired by your story. The responses I've been getting so far has been overwhelming. People from around the WORLD are telling me that the story resembles theirs and that they face very similar mindset challenges. I know my experience at Stanford was transformative and I feel extremely lucky, but that's part of the reason why I wrote it. I may be in a better position to talk about than most. Thank you for sharing your story.
• marincounty 11y ago
  I looked through your past posts, and you are legit! I liked to that you went to a community college. I too screwed up in high school. I didn't even know why people were taking another test--the SAT. That said, I cleaned up my act in my senior year, but it was too late. Everything, and a lot more, that I missed in high school, I made up for in two semesters at community college. If anyone in high school is reading this, and thinking, "I wish I could do it over?". You can! I had a great time at my community college. I saved a lot of money, and met some really wonderful people. The teachers really seemed to care. I didn't find that at the four year school, or even my professional school. Just make sure to transfer, and get that four year degree. So many people don't transfer to a four year university, or even get the associate degree. Yes, so much of college is absolute bull shit, but degrees are still valued in a lot of professions. It's changing though, and I couldn't be happier. British companies are taking the lead. I know at Penguin books; HR isn't even allowed to know if you went to college, or not. You are hired on your experience, and maybe a test? The way it should be.
  • dang 11y ago
    We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10956322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10956322 and marked it off-topic.
    • nitrogen 11y ago
      I'm just a random reader of HN, but I'm curious here: was that comment edited after it was moved? As it reads now it doesn't seem far outside the tone of the rest of the thread. As always when I ask such things, I ask because I want to know what I'm missing, so I can see it in the future and/or avoid making similar mistakes myself.
• zobzu 11y ago
  People feeling sorry for themselves because they're not male and white from a place with food are annoying. The world isn't fair, and it's not because Joe Smith had an okay childhood and is now making about 100k/year in a city that asks 3k/mo just to sleep there. If you wanna make a difference, it's the wrong level to look at. I'm a white male. I made everything I have. I started with no food or place to live. I got lucky to get into the right interests (computers) and find old ones that I could play with. It took me forever to even think about the possibility of starting my own company (I dont own a house, family, car, anything - I'm 35y.o. now.) I've never blamed it on Joe Smith. My boss is a women, making 6x my salary and has a large house, already paid for, a family. Who cares. Someone else probably makes 6000x my salary. and someone else has barely enough food on their plate (in fact, many of my friends in a far country are in that situation). If you want to change something, make technology that rocks, instead. It's the only constant in the human world we live in. The only thing that keeps pushing standards of living higher, for everyone, no matter the color, gender, country.
  • dang 11y ago
    > People feeling sorry for themselves because they're not male and white from a place with food are annoying. This breaks the HN guidelines: it is both a personal attack (since you're talking about the OP) and gratuitously negative. Please do not post comments like this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• tomcam 11y ago
  Made me cry. Much of it rang true. Story has similarities except about 1/5th as traumatic and am a white dude who grew up here. Have done well financially but have a compromised home situation traceable to some of the same causes.
• jcoffland 11y ago
  My favorite line: > Compare that level of confidence to a kid with successful parents who’d say something along the lines of “If you can believe it, you can achieve it!” Now imagine walking into a VC office having to compete with that kid. He’s so convinced that he’s going to change the world, and that’s going to show in his pitch. I enjoyed this article a lot but clearly this guy also made some of his own hardships. Going on ski trips just to fit in and then running out of money is incompatible with the image of a frugal poor kid.
  • dba7dba 11y ago
    Coming from a similar background like the original poster, I agree with him. And no I didn't run out of money while in college because I went on ski trips. I lived on student loan and credit card just to pay for food and not much else. My parents couldn't send me much money. And yes I worked to earn money while in college, which doesn't help with improving grade. And of course the peers with no money worry can pick and choose non-paying internships or go do something that adds to their resume. Growing up poor (I mean poor) damages one's psyche that others just don't understand. The degree of severity may vary but combine teen years + seeing parent(s) struggle with money everyday, you have a recipe for a hurt in your heart that lasts your life time that others just don't understand. And this 'hurt' is more noticeable when you know your peers around you are not suffering same issue. And no I don't advocate for a national program to eradicate poverty.
• codingsaints 11y ago
  This is a great article. I'm more of a reader than a co tributor through these articles. I just had to comment on a great, positive post. It makes me want to provide more positive feedback to others to hopefully keep them going.
• jmspring 11y ago
  I was soft in my earlier comment, but fine taking a rep hit. This is not the only post recently where the topic is "oh golly gee, look at the hardship I went through to get through college and the found something." It's a millennial post, and there have been many of them. Going through college is a challenge ... Having to work or be responsible during such sucks (I interned at Borland as well as worked for an astronomical research company). Post college, more than a few have to deal with life obligations that come up. Our profession certainly offers a bit of a cushion and flexibility, but we have to manage that and our obligations. I don't see someone here whining about having to support their parents due to the last downturn or the many other personal decisions made. The blog would have been better written as challenges met and overcome and left out the for lack of tact whiny bits... Yes, coming from poverty has challenges, and friends in such stretched into their late 20s to complete a degree...but perspective and awareness of the wider world is needed... Not another post about personal insecurities..
• osoti 11y ago
  Roger Federer Fans a Treat for you – his unknown facts http://goo.gl/DEKLwj http://goo.gl/DEKLwj
• lifeisstillgood 11y ago
  One thing striking me was how as s child the author had the "common" responsibility of dealing with landlords bills etc for the family. It may not be something a startup can solve but "administrivia as a service" - some means of connecting families who need with someone able to actually advise and not be taken advantage of In the uk we have a volunteer service called citizens advice bureau - I am thinking something like this on tap might be beneficial in ways hard to quantify ?
• frodik 11y ago
  It is a good thing that privilege is becoming a topic in these circles. It's fascinating to see how many people still try to present it as looking for excuses. Perhaps because they just don't understand what it really is. Or they need to validate their success by convincing everyone that it is only their hard work that matters and nothing else. Also, beware of survival bias. We don't exactly get to hear about the stories without a happy end here.
• dba7dba 11y ago
  This story really made me reflect on my own similar past. Growing up poor in US as son of immigrant family and somehow getting into a nationally well known college (public though), I was shocked to see things that I had never known about. The shock came from seeing how I lacked culture/experience/skills/confidence others had. And these others had grown up in more stable environments with either some or quite a bit of money. I didn't know how to play any instrument. I wouldn't say everyone I knew in college played an instrument since I wasn't at Standford :) but still it was obvious to me I LACKED the soft skills my peers had. I had not done many things as a teenager that are possible only when you grow up in a family with some means. And this weakened already not so robust confidence in myself, resulting in a mostly downward spiral as far as confidence in myself. You see growing up with money buys you a lot of soft skill that helps you later. I'm not bitter though. It is what it is. I try to be thankful for what I've had so far.
• decisiveness 11y ago
  There might be many more success stories if children growing up closer to the poverty line were able to do so in more nourishing environments. However, discouragement, lack of confidence, anxiety are things not restricted to any racial or economic background. Not having a silver spoon is in many ways a better environment in which to be raised. The OP does not say that his parents didn't show him any love, which is more important for the development of a person than any economic status. Many of the other struggles might be used as fuel for building positive character traits, unless one doesn't let it. Having read through the post, it doesn't appear that he's actually arrived at a valid point, and is just trying to brand himself as being underprivileged through the telling of his life story, which has turned out to be successful by most standards. He uses the argument that "mindset inequality" gave him a chip on his shoulder so he was able to succeed, and therefore others fail because of it, which seems contradictory.
• peter303 11y ago
  Im sorry, but if you graduate from Stanford you start near the top of the opportunity heap. Maybe people arent satisified with what they have and want more.
  • dang 11y ago
    That seems uncharitable. Going to a prominent school is a big boost—would anyone deny that?—but it doesn't cancel years of personal or family trauma, or economic or social adversity like the poverty the article is talking about. Indeed the article is all about how those things persist and continue to affect one at depth. If you'd read it with empathy, I think you'd agree, or at least phrase your criticism differently.
• jdenning 11y ago
  Forgive me for being a bit sappy here, but this post, and the discussions that it inspired here are absolute gold! It's certainly not the first time I've thought about this topic, but for whatever reason, the OP and much of the discussion is resonating very deeply for me (and apparently for a lot of folks). IMHO, this is some of the most productive discussion about privilege and opportunity that's ever appeared on the internet; for the most part, this discussion has avoided the sort of aggravated competition (i.e. pissing contests) and judgements that generally arise out of internet discussions of privilege. In place of those nastier (albeit very human) responses, this thread is full of empathy, support, and offers of help. I'm very proud of our little community here today. I'm planning on writing a more detailed post in a few days after collecting my thoughts a bit more, but I'd like to share some half-formed ideas which this post has inspired (comments and criticisms are very welcome!): 1) Part of what's awesome about this discussion is that it seems to have enabled a bit of ad-hoc group therapy. I think it's very helpful for folks who are facing these hurdles to realize they are not alone; while everyone's situation is unique, it's great that people have been acknowledging similarities in their stories, rather than arguing about the differences. We should try to do more of this (with other contentious topics as well)! 2) As several people have suggested, I believe that collecting these stories could potentially help a lot of people. I'm totally down to build and host a site towards that end - would anyone be interested in sharing their stories in that sort of venue? 3) While the specific issues that people have had to deal with are different, there seems to be some common 'flavors' that many have experienced: a) Socio-economic disparity causing an aversion to risk later in life b) Lack of confidence in oneself which adds an additional handicap compared to more self-confident people, likely resulting in missed opportunities (you can't win if you don't play vs you can't lose if you don't play); impostor syndrome. c) Lack of connections, again likely resulting in missed opportunities and increased difficulty in building new things/finding a job/etc. d) Disparity in access to knowledge that greatly improves chances of success (e.g. importance of SAT scores to college admissions; efficient resource management; interview skills) Improving the situation in (a) seems to be what the world at large is most interested in. Unfortunately, it's a difficult, heavily politicized, and therefore divisive issue. By contrast (b), (c), and (d) seem like problems that we could really improve, at least within our own community. For example, someone might have a harder time getting the type of (tech) job that they want due to a lack of personal connections (it can be really hard to get your foot in the door), however, it's likely that the personal connections they need are actually visiting this site every day. While we obviously can't just start providing references for total strangers, how much effort would it be to spend a few hours corresponding with someone and vetting their skills to see if you feel comfortable in recommending them? (I'll put my money where my mouth is on this one - if anyone feels like they'd be a good fit at Cloudera, let's talk! EDIT: just to be clear, I don't really have any hiring authority, but I'm happy to talk to anyone, and potentially help with a recommendation) Likewise, it seems that (b) could be improved for a lot of people with simple communication - impostor syndrome is very common in tech, so I assume that a lot of people here have advice on the subject, or just an empathetic/sympathetic ear. Regarding (d), this type of information is all likely available already on the internet, but perhaps it could be more usefully compiled for this particular case, minimizing the number of unknown unknowns? What about a thread (like "Who's Hiring") listing offers for mentorship ("Who Needs a Mentor?") ? I dunno, am I just being overly optimistic here? It seems to me there's a lot of low-hanging fruit here, if some of us are willing to dedicate a bit of time to it. More ideas? Criticisms?
• bluishgreen 11y ago
  Paul Graham is my one of my biggest programming heroes. He single-handedly changed the way I think about and do programming about a decade back, and I am eternally grateful for it. One of the biggest lessons I got from him is "succinctness is power". That essay was a game changer both in terms of the math work and the programming work I do. Here is one instance where that powerful way of thinking runs head on into a stone wall. He said "few successful founders grew up desperately poor" and moved on. Succinct. yes, but not powerful. This piece took a couple thousand words to say the same one succinct thing that PG said, and nails it in terms of the empathy it generates and the power with which it communicates. While PGs writing in this issue comes out as aspie. This is the lesson he needs to take from that latest article and the Internet's reaction, and not that “Life is short” and totally miss the point. Narrativity and Authenticity and Poetry and Verbosity is power! (when dealing with humans).
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• kkajanaku 11y ago
  This article was very real, and I can’t help but identify with Ricky, and other stories I’ve read on here, but it’s not just in SV, it’s entrepreneurship in general, I thought I’d share my story as well: I was born in Albania, a small, poor, European country with a GDP comparable to Zimbabwe, Namibia, or Sudan. That same year marked the fall of it's isolated strain of communism, and Albania's borders were opened for the first time since WW2. In the late 90s, after the collapse of its economy and ponzi schemes, social unrest reached its height following the violent murder of peaceful protesters by the government and police. This sparked an uprising and the government was toppled. The police and national guard deserted, leaving armories open, then looted by militia, and criminal gangs, with factions fighting in the streets to take control. My parents moved our beds to the hallway of our small apartment as there were no windows, and my little sister and I had to stay quiet so no one would hear we were there. After a UN operation, the government was restored, and the situation was relatively calm. Sometime that following summer, my dad found out about a US green card lottery, filled out an application form, and because he was in a hurry, handed it to a random stranger waiting in line to submit it for him. He then forgot about it, until a year later, when we got a letter telling us that we had won. My parent's weren't terribly off in Albania, they were comfortable, their friends, families were there, they had great jobs, and the future looked promising. But having just gone through that rebellion, then the Yugoslav Wars to the north trickling across the border, and the allure of the American Dream, they decided it would be best for my sister and I. We moved to Philadelphia in 2000, in a working class neighborhood, with a few suitcases and not one word of English. My parents took on multiple jobs, their Albanian communist degrees were obviously not recognized in the US, so my dad, once a doctor, is still working maintenance, and shoveling snow in the East Coast, as I write this. Like Ricky said, and like all immigrant kids, my family depended on me to learn english and deal with translation, and everything in between. 5 years later when we became citizens, and received our passports, my parents knew more about American History than was taught in my inner-city high school. My parents are incredibly supportive, but they moved to the US in their 40s, they weren’t familiar with the language, culture, and even more importantly capitalism. Apart from the classic model of education, they weren’t familiar with the tools required to be successful in such a strange place like this. But with their meager wages they were happy to support my hobbies, buy me lots of books, and a computer with internet access which taught me much more than my inner city schools. Eventually I got a college degree, then went on to do a dual-masters in design and engineering at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College in London. I even got to go to Tokyo and work for Sony, while studying there. I graduated this past summer, and then launched my final group project as a startup in London with my friends, two English, Oxford educated engineers, and a Spanish designer/engineer who’s father is the president of one of the largest companies in the world. Then reality sank in, I had to leave, I can’t be an entrepreneur just yet, and I moved to SV to find a high paying job in tech for the next 5-10 years, so that I can: a. afford to pay rent b. pay off my educational loans c. pay off my parent’s home d. help my sister pay for her education e. send some money home because my dad is getting too old to shovel snow
• dsfyu404ed 11y ago
  He conspicuously missed the part where time spent working a job, studying and generally acting like a responsible adult is time not spent networking. The "poor" kids also tend to find each other at college and over the first few semesters form separate networks from the rich kids. People tend to want to hang out with people who are similar to them. One group goes out partying together, the other sits in a dorm room listening to music and drinking a $15 handle. Their friend groups don't overlap over much. The poor kids tend to build networks where the members personal skills and resources they bring to the table in the present are important (or that was my observation). I guess when you can't throw money at a problem knowing who's the IT guy and the car guy becomes more important.
• ca98am79 11y ago
  There are a lot of advantages growing up poor, though, too. Learning how to work hard early on, etc.. My parents do not understand how to manage money very well, and they constantly struggled when I was growing up, and continue to do so. But this forced me to learn a better way and helped me in my life. Also growing up poor gives you an advantage in terms of risk, because you know the worst that will happen is that you will just be poor like you were when you grew up. Once you've been poor, it isn't as scary. I think many rich friends have a nightmarish fear about it and are risk-averse because of this. There is a lot of guilt, though. I care about my family and want to help them, but giving them money doesn't work - it is wasted. So they remain forever poor and I have money, and I feel bad about it.