12 ms·

I love how when this comes up, it's people either saying "Here was my experience when I was poor in the past." or "Here is what I think about economics or the w

I love how when this comes up, it's people either saying "Here was my experience when I was poor in the past." or "Here is what I think about economics or the wording of this article." Don't get me wrong, I know what website I'm on. But in all seriousness, is there room for currently poor people in this discussion?

haberman 9y ago
How does non-poor people commenting prevent poor people from commenting? The author of the original article is probably not currently poor, and yet she is writing about it. Do you see this as a problem too?
- tachyoff 9y ago
  Poor people can’t comment because they’re poor. It’s the survivorship bias problem. People who are currently poor probably can’t comment on HN (or have no idea what it is), so what you see, overwhelmingly, is people who were able to escape poverty. This can lead some people to believe that it’s easier than it is to get out of poverty. And since this is an article about true, abject poverty, “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps with my tech skills” doesn’t really help anyone learn anything.
- bojackstorkman 9y ago
  Sorry if I gave that impression. I have no problem with lots of perspectives. I specifically asked if anybody had made room for, uh, the poor people. Considering my response has already gotten one "Well you're obviously not poor if you read this", and another asking for clarification of my opinions on non-poor people, I guess this wasn't the place to make that point. Sorry.
  - haberman 9y ago
    > I specifically asked if anybody had made room for, uh, the poor people. But what does this mean? Unless someone is specifically arguing that poor people should not comment, how is anyone not "making room for" the perspectives of poor people?
    - bojackstorkman 9y ago
      I am poor and volunteered my voice on the subject of how poverty affects people. I specifically asked (as a question, not a substantive statement) whether or not my input was welcome. I have also made a point of saying that I have no issue with other perspectives. I can not speak to how you experience my intentions in my writing, but I will try to keep clarifying.
      - haberman 9y ago
        I'm sorry if you felt I was misreading your intentions. Your message did not mention that you were poor, or that you were asking if you specifically are welcome to comment. My answer to that would be: of course you are welcome to comment. Nobody needs to ask permission to comment here.
louprado 9y ago
While there may be HN readers who have little income and possessions and are therefore living in "poverty", true poverty is a lack of those things and a lack of hope that your situation will improve. If you are really feeling hopeless you don't turn to HN for news on the latest programming frameworks.
- bojackstorkman 9y ago
  I can't represent everybody, but I personally read HN so that I can eventually, one day, learn some stuff that leads to gainful employment. Like I said, I know what website I am on.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  > true poverty is a lack of those things and a lack of hope that your situation will improve. I'm not sure where your second criterion comes from. I don't think "poverty" excludes anyone who aspires to someday leave poverty.
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    Aspiration and hopelessness are not mutually exclusive.
    - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
      They're equally irrelevant, though. Poverty is when you don't have enough money. It's not a state of mind. I thought some more about part of your earlier post: > If you are really feeling hopeless you don't turn to HN for news on the latest programming frameworks. This really doesn't make sense. I've known at least one desperately poor and depressed person who found escape and satisfaction in scavenging and programming discarded hardware. There's no reason people in poverty can't be hackers. Arguably they've got more motivation to hack than people who can just buy the latest widgets off-the-shelf.
      - thomastjeffery 9y ago
bojackstorkman 9y ago
As a followup, I am a Real Poor! I am self taught, underemployed (I make less than $200 per month in the USA), and have pretty much been the poorest person in the room for my whole life. I eat exclusively off of foodstamps. I am uninsured and partially disabled. I have been able to pay rent for the past few months by working off the books for a couple places, and cashing in on a very limited amount of goodwill that I accumulated in my youth. I have no reason to believe that this will last into the future, or even rent for March. Anyway, if you have any questions, ask away! As an aside, I am not great at Angry Birds. Edited for clarity and typos.
- monktastic1 9y ago
  If you could use a few dollars, please email me.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - FuckOffNeemo 9y ago
    Me too. My e-mail is in my profile. PS: Chances aren't in our favour but are you by any chance living in Australia?
- pitaj 9y ago
  1. What is your background? 2. What is your disability? 3. Do you have access to the internet? 4. Are you on disability? 5. You say you're self taught, in what? 6. What careers have you tried? 7. Do you have family or friends? 7. Are you depressed?
  - bojackstorkman 9y ago
    No problem! 1. This is kind of open ended, so I'll give it a shot. Both of my parents were janitors. I went to a private school in middle school on a work scholarship (we had to drive an hour each way, open and close the school every day). I dropped out of high school and have a few community college credits. 2. PTSD unrelated to anything I would care to discuss on HN. 3. ? 4. No. I have applied multiple times over the past six years, but long periods of being uninsured makes people wary of making any decision based off of medical data. 5. When I was 14, I founded and ran a hosting company, so I learned how to use PuTTY, maintain PHP installations, run cPanel, etc. I guess you can say I am "Okay with computers" 6. I have worked in construction, customer service, and sales across a few different industries, but all for very short periods of time. This relates to my disability. 7. I do have a small group of friends that I am very thankful for, but not to the extent that it doesn't scare me when it is snowing outside. 8. I would love to know how my answer to this matters to your estimation. Edited for a typo.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
I was homeless for nearly 6 years. I got off the street last September. I am still quite poor. In fact, my bank account currently has zero in it and I don't get paid again until the 1st. I fairly frequently give my opinions on HN about poverty, homelessness, housing, women's issues and the negative impact being female has on my earned income. I try to be judicious and not do it too often. Testifying from firsthand experience often turns into a pile on of people pretending to care and pretending to want to help while mostly virtue signaling, doing nothing for me and dragging my name through the mud by insinuating that I somehow must have made poor choices and it must be all my fault, never mind the larger societal forces under discussion. I often worry that if I speak up too much, I will eventually be banned for disruptive behavior, never mind that I feel that a lot of the problem behaviors are due to how other people choose to react to me. When enough people pile on with problematic replies I can eventually get frustrated and lose my cool and then I feel like that will all be blamed on me and an excuse to say I am just badly behaved. I get a lot of downvotes and flags when I finally lose my cool. This tends to not happen to people talking at me like I am not really a victim of circumstances, I just am stupid, incompetent and not trying hard enough. I try to then give it a rest for a while and avoid such topics because I would prefer to not wind up rate limited, banned or otherwise penalized for daring to be the token poor person giving my two cents. Privileged people tend to have no idea how to help me. They tend to say really shitty things to me. They often want me to shut up because I make them uncomfortable. I am pretty thick skinned, well educated and come from a much more privileged background than I realized for most of my life. Most poor people are not going to stick their neck out like that. They are too vulnerable and can't afford more trouble and are very well aware that expecting rich people to be genuinely respectful and caring towards them is simply a bridge too far. It generally works better overall for the formerly poor to try to cast a little light on such subjects. It is much less of a shitshow.
- bojackstorkman 9y ago
  This is a wonderfully thoughtful response, and thank you for sharing it. While I'm not sure I agree with your final point, I share your feelings.
- NotQuantum 9y ago
zouhair 9y ago
In most societies being poor is shameful, asking for help is twice as shameful. Even if someone that is poor and read your comment will most likely post an answer. When poor people get things for "free" (like charity, I hate charity) they actually pay with pride and dignity.
- Viliam1234 9y ago
  Depends on the form of charity (and that includes government assistance). Give me basic income, and I will feel no loss of dignity. Make me stand in a line for a few hours (what's the problem wasting my time, if I am unemployed anyway, right?), fill out a ton of paperwork, send me back to collect signatures from my former employers that I really did work for them three years ago (because everyone deserves to be told that I have a problem now, especially my former employers), and so on... then I will consider not eating for a few weeks a more dignified option.
  - zouhair 9y ago
    Definitely, this said I won't call basic income charity. The difference is that charity is not a right but BI is. The same way when big corporations receive millions and millions of dollars in government subsidies they don't "feel" it as charity.
haZard_OS 9y ago
Without going into too much detail: I am exactly one semester away from a degree in the natural sciences but can no longer afford to attend classes - I am a single father with 3 children (two of which live with me) and I pay child support every month to my ex-wife who makes ~$80K per annum. I played her way through graduate school but she left and we divorced very soon after she finished school. I am almost 40 years old and I have been looking for a steady job for months...but imagine trying to convince someone to hire you for a job with the schedule restrictions that come with having multiple children in a lackluster economy. I could go on but the message here is simply that poverty can easily be a self-perpetuating condition that becomes extraordinarily difficult to extract oneself from. It often seems like I am caught between multiple Catch-22 situations like some sort of 6-dimensional Chinese finger-trap.
- sjg007 9y ago
  Sorry to hear that. If you are in the US, I am guessing that you can't take out any (more) student loans? They come with a 6 month grace period. Might get you through the semester to get your degree. Maybe you already know that and have done so. You might be able to talk to your school administrators and see if there is any chance of a tuition waiver as well. They should have resources to help. Good luck.
- bojackstorkman 9y ago
  I have also lost access to education because of resources multiple times. I cannot stress how much this has impacted me materially and in terms of morale, both in the short and long term. The amount of inertia that the self-perpetuating condition, as you aptly put it, is staggering to many that aren't actively experiencing it. It is difficult to know what aspects of being poor are seen as urgent --or even actionable at all-- by others. Communicating this is complicated, and I haven't been satisfied by the general discourse on the subject, personally.
  - psyc 9y ago
    I dropped out of college because I had to work 30 hours a week minimum to afford it. There just wasn't enough time. All I did was work, school, and homework. I was staying up until 4am doing homework, and then nodding off at the wheel all the way to school a few hours later. Something had to give. Giving up the job was a non-starter. There wasn't anything else to give up. So I gave up school. And that marked the beginning of my battle with depression. I'd grown up quite poor, but I'd never been depressed about it. Because the future I saw was me going to college and becoming successful. Once off that path, a real, deep existential horror that I'd never felt before set in.
povertyworld 9y ago
I usually just skim HN for links, but I this article and had to make an account. I've been making about 15k a year about the last five years. I live in a major metropolitan area. The section I live in is finally getting hit hard and fast with gentrification, and it's terrifying. Right now I can ride a bike to work, but if I'm forced to move somewhere that I have to pay to commute, my job won't even make financial sense anymore. I don't see anyway out. I did a bachelors in a social science at a cheap non-elite state school, so most people will say I deserve a life of crushing poverty. I suppose that's possible. I did try to make myself relevant to the economy by doing a coding bootcamp, and an associates in design, and put apps into the iOS and Android appstores. Of course I would have rather done a masters, but that is about as realistic as buying a house at this point. Everyone says they can't find programmers, but I have yet to see one job that I meet the on-paper requirements to even apply to, and I'm willing to relocate anywhere in the country (obviously I can't afford property or a family) Even if I did get an interview I'm sure I won't do well answering trick questions about data structures on a white board anyways. Other than the constant stress, being impoverished for so long has definitely given me a negative attitude. I know, you guys went through the same thing that time you had to sleep on your buddies couch after you finished your MBA at Stanford and Goldman Sachs didn't have an opening, but for some reason I'm just not handling it as well. Anyway, I'm just going to keep writing apps and pushing them out to the appstore, and maybe one day one of them will make enough money to poke my head out above the poverty level. See you then.
- xor1 9y ago
  Finding a job as a junior iOS dev is so hard right now. I would look for an entry-level iOS QA Automation Engineer position, or SDET if they use that title instead, even though I think the positions are usually distinct. You will still be using Xcode and writing Objective C/Swift, even if you're not making contributions to the source itself. It's extremely difficult to fill those positions because people looking for their first tech job don't want to start off in QA, and they'd rather just be unemployed for months or years instead. There's not enough experienced people to go around if you don't want to overpay significantly to poach them. They pay very well, easily on par with developer positions in many cases. Average where I live for entry level seems to be over $70k, and I've seen postings for $200k+ for people with experience. You could probably spend a week or two messing around with UI Automation and XCTest (if you don't already use them) and be more qualified than most of the people applying to those positions with prior QA experience but no prior iOS experience.
throwaway1748 9y ago
If anything, I find that successful people are culturally un-welcome in the conversation today. It's considered presumptive or 'privileged' to give advice on how to be self-reliant and grow wealth. Culturally this is happening in a number of areas. Victimhood has become such a powerful status to claim that we increasingly refuse to listen to so-called 'privileged' voice, regardless of how solid their advice may be.
- so33 9y ago
  One of the top posts in this very comments section at the moment contradicts your claim.
  - throwaway1748 9y ago
    Not seeing the comment you're referring to. But my point is that a broader cultural phenomenon is occurring where successful folks are demonized and individual accomplishments are considered more a function of one's 'privilege' than hard work.
    - psyc 9y ago
      Hard work is one of those things that's necessary, but not sufficient, so it all but begs for survivor bias. It may well have been the case in the past, when the economy was less abstract, that hard work could translate directly into material necessities (provided you were privileged to own land!) As far as I can tell, that's simply not the case in a society like this one.
      - throwaway1748 9y ago
        I don't understand how that's not the case today. I grant you that there are a small percentage of folks who in such a disadvantaged position where this wouldn't be possible, but a lot more could follow this advice and get ahead: learn how to code. That could take a number of forms, whether it's online training, coding bootcamps (some of which are free until you land a job), or studying computer science in college / community college.
SubiculumCode 9y ago
Sure. Just listen. If they mention that they are a graduate student or post-doc, then that is code for poor and in debt.
shoxty 9y ago
United States has become a government of corporations, by corporations and they have modeled the country after their image. I think we might have to turn to other organizations for solutions. I'm from Utah, the LDS Church (Mormons) for example have a whole welfare program (that works) for anyone who needs help (no need to be a member or religious). Just walk into any local church, ask to see the bishop and tell him you need help. The bishop can hand you money (no joke), provide housing options, food, jobs, medical care, etc. No strings attached. Here is an article: http://www.economist.com/node/988818 http://www.economist.com/node/988818 And a video on it: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2016/06/24/mormon-welfare-program/31091/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2016/06/24/mormon-... Find a meeting house. Just tell a bishop you need help and he'll hook you up: https://www.lds.org/maps/meetinghouses/ https://www.lds.org/maps/meetinghouses/

haberman 9y ago

How does non-poor people commenting prevent poor people from commenting? The author of the original article is probably not currently poor, and yet she is writing about it. Do you see this as a problem too?

tachyoff 9y ago
Poor people can’t comment because they’re poor. It’s the survivorship bias problem. People who are currently poor probably can’t comment on HN (or have no idea what it is), so what you see, overwhelmingly, is people who were able to escape poverty. This can lead some people to believe that it’s easier than it is to get out of poverty. And since this is an article about true, abject poverty, “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps with my tech skills” doesn’t really help anyone learn anything.
bojackstorkman 9y ago
Sorry if I gave that impression. I have no problem with lots of perspectives. I specifically asked if anybody had made room for, uh, the poor people. Considering my response has already gotten one "Well you're obviously not poor if you read this", and another asking for clarification of my opinions on non-poor people, I guess this wasn't the place to make that point. Sorry.
- haberman 9y ago
  > I specifically asked if anybody had made room for, uh, the poor people. But what does this mean? Unless someone is specifically arguing that poor people should not comment, how is anyone not "making room for" the perspectives of poor people?
  - bojackstorkman 9y ago
    I am poor and volunteered my voice on the subject of how poverty affects people. I specifically asked (as a question, not a substantive statement) whether or not my input was welcome. I have also made a point of saying that I have no issue with other perspectives. I can not speak to how you experience my intentions in my writing, but I will try to keep clarifying.
    - haberman 9y ago
      I'm sorry if you felt I was misreading your intentions. Your message did not mention that you were poor, or that you were asking if you specifically are welcome to comment. My answer to that would be: of course you are welcome to comment. Nobody needs to ask permission to comment here.

louprado 9y ago

While there may be HN readers who have little income and possessions and are therefore living in "poverty", true poverty is a lack of those things and a lack of hope that your situation will improve. If you are really feeling hopeless you don't turn to HN for news on the latest programming frameworks.

bojackstorkman 9y ago
I can't represent everybody, but I personally read HN so that I can eventually, one day, learn some stuff that leads to gainful employment. Like I said, I know what website I am on.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
> true poverty is a lack of those things and a lack of hope that your situation will improve. I'm not sure where your second criterion comes from. I don't think "poverty" excludes anyone who aspires to someday leave poverty.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  Aspiration and hopelessness are not mutually exclusive.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    They're equally irrelevant, though. Poverty is when you don't have enough money. It's not a state of mind. I thought some more about part of your earlier post: > If you are really feeling hopeless you don't turn to HN for news on the latest programming frameworks. This really doesn't make sense. I've known at least one desperately poor and depressed person who found escape and satisfaction in scavenging and programming discarded hardware. There's no reason people in poverty can't be hackers. Arguably they've got more motivation to hack than people who can just buy the latest widgets off-the-shelf.
    - thomastjeffery 9y ago

bojackstorkman 9y ago

As a followup, I am a Real Poor! I am self taught, underemployed (I make less than $200 per month in the USA), and have pretty much been the poorest person in the room for my whole life. I eat exclusively off of foodstamps. I am uninsured and partially disabled. I have been able to pay rent for the past few months by working off the books for a couple places, and cashing in on a very limited amount of goodwill that I accumulated in my youth. I have no reason to believe that this will last into the future, or even rent for March. Anyway, if you have any questions, ask away! As an aside, I am not great at Angry Birds. Edited for clarity and typos.

monktastic1 9y ago
If you could use a few dollars, please email me.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- FuckOffNeemo 9y ago
  Me too. My e-mail is in my profile. PS: Chances aren't in our favour but are you by any chance living in Australia?
pitaj 9y ago
1. What is your background? 2. What is your disability? 3. Do you have access to the internet? 4. Are you on disability? 5. You say you're self taught, in what? 6. What careers have you tried? 7. Do you have family or friends? 7. Are you depressed?
- bojackstorkman 9y ago
  No problem! 1. This is kind of open ended, so I'll give it a shot. Both of my parents were janitors. I went to a private school in middle school on a work scholarship (we had to drive an hour each way, open and close the school every day). I dropped out of high school and have a few community college credits. 2. PTSD unrelated to anything I would care to discuss on HN. 3. ? 4. No. I have applied multiple times over the past six years, but long periods of being uninsured makes people wary of making any decision based off of medical data. 5. When I was 14, I founded and ran a hosting company, so I learned how to use PuTTY, maintain PHP installations, run cPanel, etc. I guess you can say I am "Okay with computers" 6. I have worked in construction, customer service, and sales across a few different industries, but all for very short periods of time. This relates to my disability. 7. I do have a small group of friends that I am very thankful for, but not to the extent that it doesn't scare me when it is snowing outside. 8. I would love to know how my answer to this matters to your estimation. Edited for a typo.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

I was homeless for nearly 6 years. I got off the street last September. I am still quite poor. In fact, my bank account currently has zero in it and I don't get paid again until the 1st. I fairly frequently give my opinions on HN about poverty, homelessness, housing, women's issues and the negative impact being female has on my earned income. I try to be judicious and not do it too often. Testifying from firsthand experience often turns into a pile on of people pretending to care and pretending to want to help while mostly virtue signaling, doing nothing for me and dragging my name through the mud by insinuating that I somehow must have made poor choices and it must be all my fault, never mind the larger societal forces under discussion. I often worry that if I speak up too much, I will eventually be banned for disruptive behavior, never mind that I feel that a lot of the problem behaviors are due to how other people choose to react to me. When enough people pile on with problematic replies I can eventually get frustrated and lose my cool and then I feel like that will all be blamed on me and an excuse to say I am just badly behaved. I get a lot of downvotes and flags when I finally lose my cool. This tends to not happen to people talking at me like I am not really a victim of circumstances, I just am stupid, incompetent and not trying hard enough. I try to then give it a rest for a while and avoid such topics because I would prefer to not wind up rate limited, banned or otherwise penalized for daring to be the token poor person giving my two cents. Privileged people tend to have no idea how to help me. They tend to say really shitty things to me. They often want me to shut up because I make them uncomfortable. I am pretty thick skinned, well educated and come from a much more privileged background than I realized for most of my life. Most poor people are not going to stick their neck out like that. They are too vulnerable and can't afford more trouble and are very well aware that expecting rich people to be genuinely respectful and caring towards them is simply a bridge too far. It generally works better overall for the formerly poor to try to cast a little light on such subjects. It is much less of a shitshow.

bojackstorkman 9y ago
This is a wonderfully thoughtful response, and thank you for sharing it. While I'm not sure I agree with your final point, I share your feelings.
NotQuantum 9y ago

zouhair 9y ago

In most societies being poor is shameful, asking for help is twice as shameful. Even if someone that is poor and read your comment will most likely post an answer. When poor people get things for "free" (like charity, I hate charity) they actually pay with pride and dignity.

Viliam1234 9y ago
Depends on the form of charity (and that includes government assistance). Give me basic income, and I will feel no loss of dignity. Make me stand in a line for a few hours (what's the problem wasting my time, if I am unemployed anyway, right?), fill out a ton of paperwork, send me back to collect signatures from my former employers that I really did work for them three years ago (because everyone deserves to be told that I have a problem now, especially my former employers), and so on... then I will consider not eating for a few weeks a more dignified option.
- zouhair 9y ago
  Definitely, this said I won't call basic income charity. The difference is that charity is not a right but BI is. The same way when big corporations receive millions and millions of dollars in government subsidies they don't "feel" it as charity.

haZard_OS 9y ago

Without going into too much detail: I am exactly one semester away from a degree in the natural sciences but can no longer afford to attend classes - I am a single father with 3 children (two of which live with me) and I pay child support every month to my ex-wife who makes ~$80K per annum. I played her way through graduate school but she left and we divorced very soon after she finished school. I am almost 40 years old and I have been looking for a steady job for months...but imagine trying to convince someone to hire you for a job with the schedule restrictions that come with having multiple children in a lackluster economy. I could go on but the message here is simply that poverty can easily be a self-perpetuating condition that becomes extraordinarily difficult to extract oneself from. It often seems like I am caught between multiple Catch-22 situations like some sort of 6-dimensional Chinese finger-trap.

sjg007 9y ago
Sorry to hear that. If you are in the US, I am guessing that you can't take out any (more) student loans? They come with a 6 month grace period. Might get you through the semester to get your degree. Maybe you already know that and have done so. You might be able to talk to your school administrators and see if there is any chance of a tuition waiver as well. They should have resources to help. Good luck.
bojackstorkman 9y ago
I have also lost access to education because of resources multiple times. I cannot stress how much this has impacted me materially and in terms of morale, both in the short and long term. The amount of inertia that the self-perpetuating condition, as you aptly put it, is staggering to many that aren't actively experiencing it. It is difficult to know what aspects of being poor are seen as urgent --or even actionable at all-- by others. Communicating this is complicated, and I haven't been satisfied by the general discourse on the subject, personally.
- psyc 9y ago
  I dropped out of college because I had to work 30 hours a week minimum to afford it. There just wasn't enough time. All I did was work, school, and homework. I was staying up until 4am doing homework, and then nodding off at the wheel all the way to school a few hours later. Something had to give. Giving up the job was a non-starter. There wasn't anything else to give up. So I gave up school. And that marked the beginning of my battle with depression. I'd grown up quite poor, but I'd never been depressed about it. Because the future I saw was me going to college and becoming successful. Once off that path, a real, deep existential horror that I'd never felt before set in.

povertyworld 9y ago

I usually just skim HN for links, but I this article and had to make an account. I've been making about 15k a year about the last five years. I live in a major metropolitan area. The section I live in is finally getting hit hard and fast with gentrification, and it's terrifying. Right now I can ride a bike to work, but if I'm forced to move somewhere that I have to pay to commute, my job won't even make financial sense anymore. I don't see anyway out. I did a bachelors in a social science at a cheap non-elite state school, so most people will say I deserve a life of crushing poverty. I suppose that's possible. I did try to make myself relevant to the economy by doing a coding bootcamp, and an associates in design, and put apps into the iOS and Android appstores. Of course I would have rather done a masters, but that is about as realistic as buying a house at this point. Everyone says they can't find programmers, but I have yet to see one job that I meet the on-paper requirements to even apply to, and I'm willing to relocate anywhere in the country (obviously I can't afford property or a family) Even if I did get an interview I'm sure I won't do well answering trick questions about data structures on a white board anyways. Other than the constant stress, being impoverished for so long has definitely given me a negative attitude. I know, you guys went through the same thing that time you had to sleep on your buddies couch after you finished your MBA at Stanford and Goldman Sachs didn't have an opening, but for some reason I'm just not handling it as well. Anyway, I'm just going to keep writing apps and pushing them out to the appstore, and maybe one day one of them will make enough money to poke my head out above the poverty level. See you then.

xor1 9y ago
Finding a job as a junior iOS dev is so hard right now. I would look for an entry-level iOS QA Automation Engineer position, or SDET if they use that title instead, even though I think the positions are usually distinct. You will still be using Xcode and writing Objective C/Swift, even if you're not making contributions to the source itself. It's extremely difficult to fill those positions because people looking for their first tech job don't want to start off in QA, and they'd rather just be unemployed for months or years instead. There's not enough experienced people to go around if you don't want to overpay significantly to poach them. They pay very well, easily on par with developer positions in many cases. Average where I live for entry level seems to be over $70k, and I've seen postings for $200k+ for people with experience. You could probably spend a week or two messing around with UI Automation and XCTest (if you don't already use them) and be more qualified than most of the people applying to those positions with prior QA experience but no prior iOS experience.

throwaway1748 9y ago

If anything, I find that successful people are culturally un-welcome in the conversation today. It's considered presumptive or 'privileged' to give advice on how to be self-reliant and grow wealth. Culturally this is happening in a number of areas. Victimhood has become such a powerful status to claim that we increasingly refuse to listen to so-called 'privileged' voice, regardless of how solid their advice may be.

so33 9y ago
One of the top posts in this very comments section at the moment contradicts your claim.
- throwaway1748 9y ago
  Not seeing the comment you're referring to. But my point is that a broader cultural phenomenon is occurring where successful folks are demonized and individual accomplishments are considered more a function of one's 'privilege' than hard work.
  - psyc 9y ago
    Hard work is one of those things that's necessary, but not sufficient, so it all but begs for survivor bias. It may well have been the case in the past, when the economy was less abstract, that hard work could translate directly into material necessities (provided you were privileged to own land!) As far as I can tell, that's simply not the case in a society like this one.
    - throwaway1748 9y ago
      I don't understand how that's not the case today. I grant you that there are a small percentage of folks who in such a disadvantaged position where this wouldn't be possible, but a lot more could follow this advice and get ahead: learn how to code. That could take a number of forms, whether it's online training, coding bootcamps (some of which are free until you land a job), or studying computer science in college / community college.

SubiculumCode 9y ago

Sure. Just listen. If they mention that they are a graduate student or post-doc, then that is code for poor and in debt.

shoxty 9y ago

United States has become a government of corporations, by corporations and they have modeled the country after their image. I think we might have to turn to other organizations for solutions. I'm from Utah, the LDS Church (Mormons) for example have a whole welfare program (that works) for anyone who needs help (no need to be a member or religious). Just walk into any local church, ask to see the bishop and tell him you need help. The bishop can hand you money (no joke), provide housing options, food, jobs, medical care, etc. No strings attached. Here is an article: http://www.economist.com/node/988818 http://www.economist.com/node/988818 And a video on it: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2016/06/24/mormon-welfare-program/31091/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2016/06/24/mormon-... Find a meeting house. Just tell a bishop you need help and he'll hook you up: https://www.lds.org/maps/meetinghouses/ https://www.lds.org/maps/meetinghouses/