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I was born in a trailer park in Oklahoma. Lived in a 1 bedroom shack, and then lived with my grandparents until high school after my parents got divorced. I gre

I was born in a trailer park in Oklahoma. Lived in a 1 bedroom shack, and then lived with my grandparents until high school after my parents got divorced. I grew up very poor. But I loved computers, thanks to my dad having a Commodore 64. I excelled at math, loved computers, and went to DeVry to do computer programming. I was the first in my family to go to college. Started my first tech company at 22. With a lot of hard work, I believe anyone can break out of poverty.

eropple 11y ago
While it's cool that you've managed to do that, at the same time I think "with a lot of hard work" trivializes the amount of insanely hard work that large portions of the working class does do, with almost nothing to show for it. Poverty traps are real and they are very, very difficult to escape from, and in many ways it's destiny-by-dart-board.
- wallflower 11y ago
  I recall an anecdote about a college professor who had students pull cards out of a bucket. What card you pulled out of a bucket determined your fate as a person born during the Middle Ages. Most of the cards were peasant or died at age n (where n < 25). I used to joke with some of my fellow geeks (ok, I still do) that if we were born two or three hundred years earlier, we would have had a horrible life in the fields, farming. Going back to why I replied, the sad fact about an information age economy is that working with information or your community (e.g. coding or using that information to trade) is leveraged and worth more than pure manual labor. At the highest level, you have CEOs with insane networks of personal relationships (I knew a family friend once who, with one phone call, got the best eye surgeon in the state to do an emergency operation on one of his friend's friends) and surgeons who can save lives. At the medium level, you have coders. From a rational economics standpoint, everyone is expendable. But the replacement costs are quite high for those higher up the power-law curve of the information economy.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > I used to joke with some of my fellow geeks (ok, I still do) that if we were born two or three hundred years earlier, we would have had a horrible life in the fields, farming. And some people with the talent to code don't have the physiology to last long doing manual labor.
cheez 11y ago
I'd qualify it by saying: "With a lot of hard work, and the legal freedom to move away, anyone can break out of poverty." Staying in the same place (sounds like your grandparents were kick ass people) is pretty much the death sentence and many people, after certain youthful indiscretions may not be permitted to leave the area. Plus, you're white so I'm guessing you've never been detained for "matching the description".
- eropple 11y ago
  > "With a lot of hard work, and the legal freedom to move away, anyone can break out of poverty." And, in many ways, the purest luck of the draw. If his grandfather didn't have a C64, what happens? Or for me, if my dad doesn't happen to go from selling office furniture to playing with computers when I was very young and I don't happen to then have computers lying around that I'm allowed to play with basically unimpeded from the age of three or four...am I in this field? Am I as good at it as I am? Isolating causes is so very, very difficult when it comes to the individual (easier when you are working with statistically meaningful populations, of course); trying to boil it down to "hard work" leaves out a lot of "hard workers" who end up disabled before they're 60 because their jobs grind them to powder.
  - nommm-nommm 11y ago
    It's a real lot of luck, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. I was very lucky. I didn't (and don't) work harder than my peers who didn't make it out of poverty, yet I did. Amount of effort isn't correlated with measures of financial security.
    - eropple 11y ago
      Well, there's also that, yeah? =) I don't think I work very hard. I would think less of myself if I did work very hard. I burn way more cycles on "how to be a good human" than I do anything work-related.
    - nathanasmith 11y ago
      Yeah well, in everything I've done as far back as I can remember when I worked harder I got better results and when I slacked off, I got worse results. I'm thinking how hard you work has a little more to do with success than you give it credit for.
nommm-nommm 11y ago
You had interests that lead you to financial security and an ability to pursue said interests - that's just plain dumb luck. I'm not saying that you did not work hard, I'm sure you did. I am saying that plenty of people work just as hard but stay in poverty.
- nostrebored 11y ago
  When you're poor and want to get out you choose interests that make you more wealthy. You choose majors in college that make you more money with better financial security. The starving artist routine is nearly entirely played out by middle to upper middle class people.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    Heck no on thd last part. There's tons of poor and working class people that think they'll get rich with music or something. They get reinforcement from the media and pop artists themselves that brag about getting richer than everyone with just a song or two. I run into them all the time in my area.
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      There are tons of documentaries on TV of rags to riches musicians, actors, etc. It does make it seem straightforward. There aren't so many documentaries on the more mundane and much more likely paths to a better life.
      - nickpsecurity 11y ago
        That could be part of the reinforcement. Plus, the celebrity status is fun and makes you matter to many people. Whereas sweating it out in a factory or cubicle for a souless corporation to make others rich doesnt have same appeal.
        WalterBright 11y ago
mkstowegnv 11y ago
What if you are the only child who is not mentally ill in a family where both parent have chronic illness that requires constant care and neither of them has siblings? I don't read a lot of success stories about people who spent much of their lives as caregivers. What if you are in a part of the world (read much of the world) where the only paths to success require seriously unethical behavior? The right partner makes a huge difference, but what if you only meet a suitable partner late in life or you end up sucked into their or their family's problems? If you have good health, you do not live in fear of criminals and militias, if you and your partner love each other unambiguously and have the time to really support and enjoy each other, and because of all those things you are able to achieve some measure of financial security, then you have what a tiny minority of human beings get to enjoy as a fleeting mirage, and only a vanishingly small minority get to enjoy for a significant fraction of their lives. Most human beings can only "make" a small part of their luck.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  In other countries it may very well be different, but in America people mostly make their own luck. As to working hard, that isn't what counts. It's making the right choices, i.e. working smart. Sure, lots start out with many disadvantages and will have a tougher road. But if you're able-bodied, you do have choices.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > in America people mostly make their own luck. That's clearly not the case. Off the top of my head, success depends heavily on the neighborhood and family you are born into. Are your parents divorced, in prison, are they alchoholics, do they teach you values and education, do they abuse you, do they rear you at all, can they afford food, electricity, or college? Does the school in your zip code have books the classrooms? Are you going to get shot in the streets, do your friends sell drugs? Is it a wealthy suburban school where 90% go to college, a poor urban one where 90% are literate?
    - WalterBright 11y ago
hackuser 11y ago
> With a lot of hard work, I believe anyone can break out of poverty. I'm glad you made it; that's impresssive and great news. The data and research overwhelmingly disagree with your statement; so few make it. Read the stories of those kids in the article; it's not reasonable to say that they merely lacked hard work. As I posted elsewhere, the bar obviously is set much too high for most of humanity (and I assume we are talking about people in wealthy nations).

eropple 11y ago

While it's cool that you've managed to do that, at the same time I think "with a lot of hard work" trivializes the amount of insanely hard work that large portions of the working class does do, with almost nothing to show for it. Poverty traps are real and they are very, very difficult to escape from, and in many ways it's destiny-by-dart-board.

wallflower 11y ago
I recall an anecdote about a college professor who had students pull cards out of a bucket. What card you pulled out of a bucket determined your fate as a person born during the Middle Ages. Most of the cards were peasant or died at age n (where n < 25). I used to joke with some of my fellow geeks (ok, I still do) that if we were born two or three hundred years earlier, we would have had a horrible life in the fields, farming. Going back to why I replied, the sad fact about an information age economy is that working with information or your community (e.g. coding or using that information to trade) is leveraged and worth more than pure manual labor. At the highest level, you have CEOs with insane networks of personal relationships (I knew a family friend once who, with one phone call, got the best eye surgeon in the state to do an emergency operation on one of his friend's friends) and surgeons who can save lives. At the medium level, you have coders. From a rational economics standpoint, everyone is expendable. But the replacement costs are quite high for those higher up the power-law curve of the information economy.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > I used to joke with some of my fellow geeks (ok, I still do) that if we were born two or three hundred years earlier, we would have had a horrible life in the fields, farming. And some people with the talent to code don't have the physiology to last long doing manual labor.

cheez 11y ago

I'd qualify it by saying: "With a lot of hard work, and the legal freedom to move away, anyone can break out of poverty." Staying in the same place (sounds like your grandparents were kick ass people) is pretty much the death sentence and many people, after certain youthful indiscretions may not be permitted to leave the area. Plus, you're white so I'm guessing you've never been detained for "matching the description".

eropple 11y ago
> "With a lot of hard work, and the legal freedom to move away, anyone can break out of poverty." And, in many ways, the purest luck of the draw. If his grandfather didn't have a C64, what happens? Or for me, if my dad doesn't happen to go from selling office furniture to playing with computers when I was very young and I don't happen to then have computers lying around that I'm allowed to play with basically unimpeded from the age of three or four...am I in this field? Am I as good at it as I am? Isolating causes is so very, very difficult when it comes to the individual (easier when you are working with statistically meaningful populations, of course); trying to boil it down to "hard work" leaves out a lot of "hard workers" who end up disabled before they're 60 because their jobs grind them to powder.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago
  It's a real lot of luck, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. I was very lucky. I didn't (and don't) work harder than my peers who didn't make it out of poverty, yet I did. Amount of effort isn't correlated with measures of financial security.
  - eropple 11y ago
    Well, there's also that, yeah? =) I don't think I work very hard. I would think less of myself if I did work very hard. I burn way more cycles on "how to be a good human" than I do anything work-related.
  - nathanasmith 11y ago
    Yeah well, in everything I've done as far back as I can remember when I worked harder I got better results and when I slacked off, I got worse results. I'm thinking how hard you work has a little more to do with success than you give it credit for.

nommm-nommm 11y ago

You had interests that lead you to financial security and an ability to pursue said interests - that's just plain dumb luck. I'm not saying that you did not work hard, I'm sure you did. I am saying that plenty of people work just as hard but stay in poverty.

nostrebored 11y ago
When you're poor and want to get out you choose interests that make you more wealthy. You choose majors in college that make you more money with better financial security. The starving artist routine is nearly entirely played out by middle to upper middle class people.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Heck no on thd last part. There's tons of poor and working class people that think they'll get rich with music or something. They get reinforcement from the media and pop artists themselves that brag about getting richer than everyone with just a song or two. I run into them all the time in my area.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    There are tons of documentaries on TV of rags to riches musicians, actors, etc. It does make it seem straightforward. There aren't so many documentaries on the more mundane and much more likely paths to a better life.
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      That could be part of the reinforcement. Plus, the celebrity status is fun and makes you matter to many people. Whereas sweating it out in a factory or cubicle for a souless corporation to make others rich doesnt have same appeal.
      - WalterBright 11y ago

mkstowegnv 11y ago

What if you are the only child who is not mentally ill in a family where both parent have chronic illness that requires constant care and neither of them has siblings? I don't read a lot of success stories about people who spent much of their lives as caregivers. What if you are in a part of the world (read much of the world) where the only paths to success require seriously unethical behavior? The right partner makes a huge difference, but what if you only meet a suitable partner late in life or you end up sucked into their or their family's problems? If you have good health, you do not live in fear of criminals and militias, if you and your partner love each other unambiguously and have the time to really support and enjoy each other, and because of all those things you are able to achieve some measure of financial security, then you have what a tiny minority of human beings get to enjoy as a fleeting mirage, and only a vanishingly small minority get to enjoy for a significant fraction of their lives. Most human beings can only "make" a small part of their luck.

WalterBright 11y ago
In other countries it may very well be different, but in America people mostly make their own luck. As to working hard, that isn't what counts. It's making the right choices, i.e. working smart. Sure, lots start out with many disadvantages and will have a tougher road. But if you're able-bodied, you do have choices.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > in America people mostly make their own luck. That's clearly not the case. Off the top of my head, success depends heavily on the neighborhood and family you are born into. Are your parents divorced, in prison, are they alchoholics, do they teach you values and education, do they abuse you, do they rear you at all, can they afford food, electricity, or college? Does the school in your zip code have books the classrooms? Are you going to get shot in the streets, do your friends sell drugs? Is it a wealthy suburban school where 90% go to college, a poor urban one where 90% are literate?
  - WalterBright 11y ago

hackuser 11y ago

> With a lot of hard work, I believe anyone can break out of poverty. I'm glad you made it; that's impresssive and great news. The data and research overwhelmingly disagree with your statement; so few make it. Read the stories of those kids in the article; it's not reasonable to say that they merely lacked hard work. As I posted elsewhere, the bar obviously is set much too high for most of humanity (and I assume we are talking about people in wealthy nations).