7 ms·

> It took some time to realize that having parents who are academics/engineers helps significantly in guiding you in a career such as mathematics. This is true

> It took some time to realize that having parents who are academics/engineers helps significantly in guiding you in a career such as mathematics. This is true of every good job. I'm trying to get hired at big 4 tech right now. Every person interviewing me is a rich kid. All of my competition is rich kids. Touring these big tech companies was discouraging. They're all very diverse. Rich white kids. Rich Asian kids. Rich female kids. Rich European kids. Rich Indian kids. I'm not sure there's anything I can ever do to make it past the social/socioeconomic judgment round of these interviews. These interviews make me feel like Red at a parole hearing in Shawshank Redemption.

ranman 9y ago
I was in a similar position for a long time but then I found once you make it into one of the circles all of the others open up. It’s dumb. There’s so much untapped talent out there because tech giants are relying on “namebrand” schools or other companies to do their recruiting filters for them.
gmcballsonface 9y ago
> Every person interviewing me is a rich kid. All of my competition is rich kids. Touring these big tech companies was discouraging. They're all very diverse. Rich white kids. Rich Asian kids. Rich female kids. Rich European kids. Rich Indian kids. Oh come on -- how could you possibly know this.
durandal1 9y ago
As a self taught, working class rural European white kid with a fairly successful career at one of the big four, I can tell you that this is simply not generally true. Sure, a lot of my peers come from financially well off families who sent them to prestigious universities, but many others had to make their own way. On top of that, I consider many of the "rich" kids pretty open minded, they're sure accepting of me and let me tell you I do not fit the standard mold. Interviewing is a game in its own, but if you show that you're a problem solver who can work in team, and that you have done your homework, and that you can display some sort of passion for the job you're hiring for, you have a high chance of passing the interview.
david-gpu 9y ago
Since IQ, education and wealth are all positively correlated, it's true that any group of smart highly-educated people is likely to come from privileged backgrounds, but that's not why they are being selected. A lot of those immigrants you talk about will actually be middle class people that had to work twice as hard to get hired in a foreign country.
- CJefferson 9y ago
  I went to Cambridge University, UK and got a first in maths. I have friends who did to. Those of us who came from poor backgrounds had real difficulties getting a good job. We just weren't a "good fit". One of my friends with a 2.1 Cambridge maths degree was a waitress for 3 years after graduating.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    Perhaps this is more of the case in the UK where class is more of a salient aspect of life than in the US?
    - eropple 9y ago
      Class is profoundly salient in the United States. Unless you've been on the outside it's very difficult to see, because the gradations are more subtle, but they run no less deep.
      - meri_dian 9y ago
        I've been outside the US. People care much less about where you've come from than in the places I've been (in Asia and Europe). Of course class exists in the US, but if you're able to move up in a tax bracket people won't judge you for having come from a lower tax bracket.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
snoman 9y ago
Wow. Lots to digest here, and I think I detect some strong frustration. My sympathies on that. I have worked at the big 4 (MS) but I'm a consultant now. I do a fair bit of interviewing and what I propose is that you don't actually have a clue what the finances of your interviewers are like, and you don't actually have a clue what the finances of your competitors are like. You would be far better served putting it out of your mind and focus on just trying to be a good engineer (presuming that's what you are trying to be) and enjoying it. The reason being is that, not only are you almost certainly wrong, but it doesn't matter. Interviewers don't care about how much money the candidates have because... 1. they get a perk if you get hired and retained regardless, so they're incentivized to place anyone that can do the job 2. the competition often doesn't exist: the big 4 will often just hire anyone and everyone who fit their criteria (high turnover and need leads to a few hundred engineers starting each week) 3. the job has a pay band, and if you're currently making low or nil, then you're far more likely to HAPPILY fit into the lower segment of the band BTW: The other interviewers and I can tell when the candidate is crusty and/or resentful during the interview, and it reflects negatively on their performance.
- twic 9y ago
  > you don't actually have a clue what the finances of your interviewers are like, and you don't actually have a clue what the finances of your competitors are like The point isn't about the wealth of these people, it's about their background, and the resulting confidence and comfort with which they can negotiate the social structure of interview and employment at these companies. > The other interviewers and I can tell when the candidate is crusty and/or resentful Like that, for example.
  - allthenews 9y ago
    >The point isn't about the wealth of these people, it's about their background, and the resulting confidence and comfort with which they can negotiate the social structure of interview and employment at these companies. This is simply not true, and imagined. You've been biased by a small subsample of the industry I believe. Programming is one of the few white collar industries that can be entered without a degree. Those rich kids you're interacting with are less likely to have been rich before their tech jobs than those in most other industries. I personally know multiple self taught "rich kid" programmers who lived in third world countries and dirt floors as children.
Jun8 9y ago
Honest question: How do you estimate family financials of people interviewing you? Judging by the school they graduated or from the comments they make during the interview?
- ta121313 9y ago
  Shirt, watch, haircut, jewelry, manicured nails, cleaner pressed pants, designer bag:glasses:whatever, favorite restaurants, shoes, phone, vacation stories, fraternity/sorority mentions, accent, colloquialisms, alma matter, hobbies, connections, and other off hand comments. The formerly poor are very attuned to it. We don't always know, but sometimes it's obvious.
dsacco 9y ago
Your comment exhibits a lot of disdain. Sorry to hear about the interviewing trouble. > I'm trying to get hired at big 4 tech right now. Every person interviewing me is a rich kid. All of my competition is rich kids. Touring these big tech companies was discouraging. They're all very diverse. Rich white kids. Rich Asian kids. Rich female kids. Rich European kids. Rich Indian kids. I'm not sure there's anything I can ever do to make it past the social/socioeconomic judgment round of these interviews. Is your primary issue that everyone interviewing you is much younger than you are, or that they have more money? If the latter, is it because they presently have more money or because they had a better socioeconomic upbringing? I’m not trying to invalidate your experience, just understand it. But unless you specifically mean ageism, I don’t see how you could clearly link prejudices in these interviews to a difference of wealth.
- tfehring 9y ago
  I’m not the previous commenter, but I’ll share my thoughts on this as someone from a lower-middle-class background. Having to support yourself financially while going to college makes it far more difficult to meet the standards that top firms demand. Extracurriculars? Tough to justify when you’re already working 40+ hours a week while taking a full-time courseload. Good GPA? A lot harder to keep up when you get called into work when you’re supposed to be doing homework or studying. Internships? You have to start applying at the start of your junior year nowadays, which is when a lot of students are transferring from community college to 4-year schools. So no recommendations from professors, limited relevant coursework, and limited access to a (competent) career center. And you wouldn’t believe some of the looks I got from interviewers when I told them I went to a mediocre public school instead of my state’s flagship school because I couldn’t afford the latter, even with student loans. As if it’s inconceivable that I couldn’t afford an extra $4,000/year out of pocket while working in a warehouse. So yeah, after I got a job in my field in spite of all of that, it’s hard not to resent coworkers who had easier paths because they had better support networks. This is unfounded personal bias, but I also can’t help but think of those coworkers as less capable than the minority who put themselves through school independently like I did. But mostly it’s a general sense of frustration with the difficulty of getting into competitive jobs without a significant support network.
scarmig 9y ago
This isn't meant to question your experiences, but to provide an alternative story, just for the sake of readers who might feel discouraged. I'm a senior SWE at a major tech company. My background is definitely toward the lower end of the middle: my family went without health insurance at times, we passed down clothes from sibling to sibling, and most nights of the week our usual meal was pasta with canned sauce or hot pockets (we never went to bed hungry, so we were privileged in that respect). I went to public school and got subsidized lunches. I got a full ride on need-based aid for college, and I didn't get a BS in CS. I'm smart, but far from brilliant. I'm acutely aware of class in a way most of my colleagues aren't. But most aren't from "rich" backgrounds: I'd say the most typical background is upper-middle, with at least one parent who's a working professional. Have I had to work "harder" than most? Probably, but it seems like a really messy and ill-posed question. Getting a job at one of the big tech companies is a combination of preparation and luck of the draw. It's easy to read conspiracy into the fact that most people from poor backgrounds get rejected, but the reality is that most people from rich or middle class backgrounds also get rejected. Everyone brings a different set of privileges into the job hunting process. But you have as much agency as anyone, and you're doing yourself a disservice if you trade that sense of agency in for despair or bitterness.
- learc83 9y ago
  >most typical background is upper-middle To someone who grew up working class or working poor, upper-middle is "rich". I suspect that when the OP said "rich kids" they were referring to upper-middle class kids.
siberianbear 9y ago
I have no direct knowledge of academic careers like mathematics. I'm white, but I came from a lower middle-class background in a rural area. My parents were barely supportive of me going to the university. I'm a real-life redneck. I eventually made millions in Silicon Valley and retired at age 40. One of the best pieces of advice I received in life was this: don't sell yourself short. Try, strive, and then let other people reject you. But never reject yourself. And if others reject you, stand up and try again. If they hit you harder, then get up quicker and hit back harder. Perhaps you'll find that you're not really all that you thought. Or perhaps you'll find that with each small success, your odds increase in the next round because you learned something important from your failure in the previous round. If you don't stand up and fight the next round, you'll never know the true answer.
- throwaway0255 9y ago
  > One of the best pieces of advice I received in life was this: don't sell yourself short. Try, strive, and then let other people reject you. But never reject yourself. And if others reject you, stand up and try again. If they hit you harder, then get up quicker and hit back harder. This is great advice and it's been how I live my life, and it's revealed so many opportunities to me that I never thought I would have. With these big 4 and unicorn onsites, though, that attitude didn't reveal new opportunities to me. It confirmed all of my worst suspicions about how people behave and how big tech companies operate. People actually are going to discriminate against me. These big companies actually are a socioeconomic monoculture. The circumstances of my birth actually will cause people to deny me opportunities regardless of how hard I work to prove them wrong. There actually is a glass ceiling. I guess I had to get here eventually. It just feels terrible. I spent 8 months preparing for these interviews while working full-time, I aced Facebook and Instacart, aced 4/5 at Google, and got 5 rejections and 0 offers. The engineer I ate lunch with at Facebook went to a top school. He literally told me that when he interviewed for his internship, he was asked only 1 coding question. It was Three Sum, which is a very well-known and easy question. That got him inside and he converted it to a full-time offer. Why does he get in based on 1 easy question, but I get asked ~7 algorithms questions, write asymptotically perfect solutions to all of them, and get rejected? The most frustrating thing about this is all the sacrifices I make in life preparing for this and trying to break through, despite truly not knowing whether it's even possible for me to get accepted by these people. If they are discriminating, they don't say "we're literally never going to hire you and it's for reasons you can't ever change, so you're free to give up." I would feel better about that because at least I would get my evenings and weekends back. But they would never say that, they'll just keep encouraging me to sacrifice all my evenings and weekends for the rest of my life until I give up and blame myself. So I'll never receive any signal for when I should stop. I'm just perpetually stuck in this mode of having my entire personal life on hold trying to get into companies that simply don't hire people like me regardless of technical performance or merit. I've spent 30 unpaid hours per week over the last 8 months studying for this and I have nothing to show for it. It's not like knowing how to invert a binary tree on a whiteboard is transferrable and benefits me elsewhere in life, this is completely trivial and useless knowledge for me. It's not worth anything to me anymore, it's a thousand hours of unpaid overtime devoted to passing technical interviews that I then pass and still get rejected anyway. And I honestly don't know what else to do now other than to continue giving unpaid 30-hour weeks to Google and Facebook's recruiting processes. What else am I supposed to do? That's where all the advancement is, what else is there for me to do?? Am I supposed to just accept my lot in life like a pauper in feudal Europe? Where is there any happiness to be found in just accepting this?
oh_sigh 9y ago
How do you know the people interviewing you are rich kids? I work at a big 4 company and I grew up in a low-middle class household.
opportune 9y ago
My last interview was with a big 4 and every single one of my interviewers was from a different country (China, India, somewhere in Eastern Europe). I bring that up only because I know they grew up there and didn't study in the US, so they probably weren't as privileged as me or you. I wouldn't read too much about class into it. Prestige (of college, other places you've worked) is definitely important for getting the interviews, but it's at best only a proxy for wealth, and it doesn't help you navigate the interviews themselves IMO. I'm not really sure how exactly you think SES/class plays into big 4 interviews, honestly. At my interviews my interviewers were mostly wearing jacket+tshirt+jeans, most of the other interviewers were wearing about the same thing, and I wore sweater+collared shirt+khakis, which was also fine (I got the job). The only time SES came up is when I brought up how my background coming from a more rural/poorer area could help me provide unique perspectives about users and how they might interpret the products that I contribute to.

ranman 9y ago

I was in a similar position for a long time but then I found once you make it into one of the circles all of the others open up. It’s dumb. There’s so much untapped talent out there because tech giants are relying on “namebrand” schools or other companies to do their recruiting filters for them.

gmcballsonface 9y ago

> Every person interviewing me is a rich kid. All of my competition is rich kids. Touring these big tech companies was discouraging. They're all very diverse. Rich white kids. Rich Asian kids. Rich female kids. Rich European kids. Rich Indian kids. Oh come on -- how could you possibly know this.

durandal1 9y ago

As a self taught, working class rural European white kid with a fairly successful career at one of the big four, I can tell you that this is simply not generally true. Sure, a lot of my peers come from financially well off families who sent them to prestigious universities, but many others had to make their own way. On top of that, I consider many of the "rich" kids pretty open minded, they're sure accepting of me and let me tell you I do not fit the standard mold. Interviewing is a game in its own, but if you show that you're a problem solver who can work in team, and that you have done your homework, and that you can display some sort of passion for the job you're hiring for, you have a high chance of passing the interview.

david-gpu 9y ago

Since IQ, education and wealth are all positively correlated, it's true that any group of smart highly-educated people is likely to come from privileged backgrounds, but that's not why they are being selected. A lot of those immigrants you talk about will actually be middle class people that had to work twice as hard to get hired in a foreign country.

CJefferson 9y ago
I went to Cambridge University, UK and got a first in maths. I have friends who did to. Those of us who came from poor backgrounds had real difficulties getting a good job. We just weren't a "good fit". One of my friends with a 2.1 Cambridge maths degree was a waitress for 3 years after graduating.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  Perhaps this is more of the case in the UK where class is more of a salient aspect of life than in the US?
  - eropple 9y ago
    Class is profoundly salient in the United States. Unless you've been on the outside it's very difficult to see, because the gradations are more subtle, but they run no less deep.
    - meri_dian 9y ago
      I've been outside the US. People care much less about where you've come from than in the places I've been (in Asia and Europe). Of course class exists in the US, but if you're able to move up in a tax bracket people won't judge you for having come from a lower tax bracket.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]

snoman 9y ago

Wow. Lots to digest here, and I think I detect some strong frustration. My sympathies on that. I have worked at the big 4 (MS) but I'm a consultant now. I do a fair bit of interviewing and what I propose is that you don't actually have a clue what the finances of your interviewers are like, and you don't actually have a clue what the finances of your competitors are like. You would be far better served putting it out of your mind and focus on just trying to be a good engineer (presuming that's what you are trying to be) and enjoying it. The reason being is that, not only are you almost certainly wrong, but it doesn't matter. Interviewers don't care about how much money the candidates have because... 1. they get a perk if you get hired and retained regardless, so they're incentivized to place anyone that can do the job 2. the competition often doesn't exist: the big 4 will often just hire anyone and everyone who fit their criteria (high turnover and need leads to a few hundred engineers starting each week) 3. the job has a pay band, and if you're currently making low or nil, then you're far more likely to HAPPILY fit into the lower segment of the band BTW: The other interviewers and I can tell when the candidate is crusty and/or resentful during the interview, and it reflects negatively on their performance.

twic 9y ago
> you don't actually have a clue what the finances of your interviewers are like, and you don't actually have a clue what the finances of your competitors are like The point isn't about the wealth of these people, it's about their background, and the resulting confidence and comfort with which they can negotiate the social structure of interview and employment at these companies. > The other interviewers and I can tell when the candidate is crusty and/or resentful Like that, for example.
- allthenews 9y ago
  >The point isn't about the wealth of these people, it's about their background, and the resulting confidence and comfort with which they can negotiate the social structure of interview and employment at these companies. This is simply not true, and imagined. You've been biased by a small subsample of the industry I believe. Programming is one of the few white collar industries that can be entered without a degree. Those rich kids you're interacting with are less likely to have been rich before their tech jobs than those in most other industries. I personally know multiple self taught "rich kid" programmers who lived in third world countries and dirt floors as children.

Jun8 9y ago

Honest question: How do you estimate family financials of people interviewing you? Judging by the school they graduated or from the comments they make during the interview?

ta121313 9y ago
Shirt, watch, haircut, jewelry, manicured nails, cleaner pressed pants, designer bag:glasses:whatever, favorite restaurants, shoes, phone, vacation stories, fraternity/sorority mentions, accent, colloquialisms, alma matter, hobbies, connections, and other off hand comments. The formerly poor are very attuned to it. We don't always know, but sometimes it's obvious.

dsacco 9y ago

Your comment exhibits a lot of disdain. Sorry to hear about the interviewing trouble. > I'm trying to get hired at big 4 tech right now. Every person interviewing me is a rich kid. All of my competition is rich kids. Touring these big tech companies was discouraging. They're all very diverse. Rich white kids. Rich Asian kids. Rich female kids. Rich European kids. Rich Indian kids. I'm not sure there's anything I can ever do to make it past the social/socioeconomic judgment round of these interviews. Is your primary issue that everyone interviewing you is much younger than you are, or that they have more money? If the latter, is it because they presently have more money or because they had a better socioeconomic upbringing? I’m not trying to invalidate your experience, just understand it. But unless you specifically mean ageism, I don’t see how you could clearly link prejudices in these interviews to a difference of wealth.

tfehring 9y ago
I’m not the previous commenter, but I’ll share my thoughts on this as someone from a lower-middle-class background. Having to support yourself financially while going to college makes it far more difficult to meet the standards that top firms demand. Extracurriculars? Tough to justify when you’re already working 40+ hours a week while taking a full-time courseload. Good GPA? A lot harder to keep up when you get called into work when you’re supposed to be doing homework or studying. Internships? You have to start applying at the start of your junior year nowadays, which is when a lot of students are transferring from community college to 4-year schools. So no recommendations from professors, limited relevant coursework, and limited access to a (competent) career center. And you wouldn’t believe some of the looks I got from interviewers when I told them I went to a mediocre public school instead of my state’s flagship school because I couldn’t afford the latter, even with student loans. As if it’s inconceivable that I couldn’t afford an extra $4,000/year out of pocket while working in a warehouse. So yeah, after I got a job in my field in spite of all of that, it’s hard not to resent coworkers who had easier paths because they had better support networks. This is unfounded personal bias, but I also can’t help but think of those coworkers as less capable than the minority who put themselves through school independently like I did. But mostly it’s a general sense of frustration with the difficulty of getting into competitive jobs without a significant support network.

scarmig 9y ago

This isn't meant to question your experiences, but to provide an alternative story, just for the sake of readers who might feel discouraged. I'm a senior SWE at a major tech company. My background is definitely toward the lower end of the middle: my family went without health insurance at times, we passed down clothes from sibling to sibling, and most nights of the week our usual meal was pasta with canned sauce or hot pockets (we never went to bed hungry, so we were privileged in that respect). I went to public school and got subsidized lunches. I got a full ride on need-based aid for college, and I didn't get a BS in CS. I'm smart, but far from brilliant. I'm acutely aware of class in a way most of my colleagues aren't. But most aren't from "rich" backgrounds: I'd say the most typical background is upper-middle, with at least one parent who's a working professional. Have I had to work "harder" than most? Probably, but it seems like a really messy and ill-posed question. Getting a job at one of the big tech companies is a combination of preparation and luck of the draw. It's easy to read conspiracy into the fact that most people from poor backgrounds get rejected, but the reality is that most people from rich or middle class backgrounds also get rejected. Everyone brings a different set of privileges into the job hunting process. But you have as much agency as anyone, and you're doing yourself a disservice if you trade that sense of agency in for despair or bitterness.

learc83 9y ago
>most typical background is upper-middle To someone who grew up working class or working poor, upper-middle is "rich". I suspect that when the OP said "rich kids" they were referring to upper-middle class kids.

siberianbear 9y ago

I have no direct knowledge of academic careers like mathematics. I'm white, but I came from a lower middle-class background in a rural area. My parents were barely supportive of me going to the university. I'm a real-life redneck. I eventually made millions in Silicon Valley and retired at age 40. One of the best pieces of advice I received in life was this: don't sell yourself short. Try, strive, and then let other people reject you. But never reject yourself. And if others reject you, stand up and try again. If they hit you harder, then get up quicker and hit back harder. Perhaps you'll find that you're not really all that you thought. Or perhaps you'll find that with each small success, your odds increase in the next round because you learned something important from your failure in the previous round. If you don't stand up and fight the next round, you'll never know the true answer.

throwaway0255 9y ago
> One of the best pieces of advice I received in life was this: don't sell yourself short. Try, strive, and then let other people reject you. But never reject yourself. And if others reject you, stand up and try again. If they hit you harder, then get up quicker and hit back harder. This is great advice and it's been how I live my life, and it's revealed so many opportunities to me that I never thought I would have. With these big 4 and unicorn onsites, though, that attitude didn't reveal new opportunities to me. It confirmed all of my worst suspicions about how people behave and how big tech companies operate. People actually are going to discriminate against me. These big companies actually are a socioeconomic monoculture. The circumstances of my birth actually will cause people to deny me opportunities regardless of how hard I work to prove them wrong. There actually is a glass ceiling. I guess I had to get here eventually. It just feels terrible. I spent 8 months preparing for these interviews while working full-time, I aced Facebook and Instacart, aced 4/5 at Google, and got 5 rejections and 0 offers. The engineer I ate lunch with at Facebook went to a top school. He literally told me that when he interviewed for his internship, he was asked only 1 coding question. It was Three Sum, which is a very well-known and easy question. That got him inside and he converted it to a full-time offer. Why does he get in based on 1 easy question, but I get asked ~7 algorithms questions, write asymptotically perfect solutions to all of them, and get rejected? The most frustrating thing about this is all the sacrifices I make in life preparing for this and trying to break through, despite truly not knowing whether it's even possible for me to get accepted by these people. If they are discriminating, they don't say "we're literally never going to hire you and it's for reasons you can't ever change, so you're free to give up." I would feel better about that because at least I would get my evenings and weekends back. But they would never say that, they'll just keep encouraging me to sacrifice all my evenings and weekends for the rest of my life until I give up and blame myself. So I'll never receive any signal for when I should stop. I'm just perpetually stuck in this mode of having my entire personal life on hold trying to get into companies that simply don't hire people like me regardless of technical performance or merit. I've spent 30 unpaid hours per week over the last 8 months studying for this and I have nothing to show for it. It's not like knowing how to invert a binary tree on a whiteboard is transferrable and benefits me elsewhere in life, this is completely trivial and useless knowledge for me. It's not worth anything to me anymore, it's a thousand hours of unpaid overtime devoted to passing technical interviews that I then pass and still get rejected anyway. And I honestly don't know what else to do now other than to continue giving unpaid 30-hour weeks to Google and Facebook's recruiting processes. What else am I supposed to do? That's where all the advancement is, what else is there for me to do?? Am I supposed to just accept my lot in life like a pauper in feudal Europe? Where is there any happiness to be found in just accepting this?

oh_sigh 9y ago

How do you know the people interviewing you are rich kids? I work at a big 4 company and I grew up in a low-middle class household.

opportune 9y ago

My last interview was with a big 4 and every single one of my interviewers was from a different country (China, India, somewhere in Eastern Europe). I bring that up only because I know they grew up there and didn't study in the US, so they probably weren't as privileged as me or you. I wouldn't read too much about class into it. Prestige (of college, other places you've worked) is definitely important for getting the interviews, but it's at best only a proxy for wealth, and it doesn't help you navigate the interviews themselves IMO. I'm not really sure how exactly you think SES/class plays into big 4 interviews, honestly. At my interviews my interviewers were mostly wearing jacket+tshirt+jeans, most of the other interviewers were wearing about the same thing, and I wore sweater+collared shirt+khakis, which was also fine (I got the job). The only time SES came up is when I brought up how my background coming from a more rural/poorer area could help me provide unique perspectives about users and how they might interpret the products that I contribute to.