4 ms·

The growing divide between the haves and have-nots. I have found that people in tech are generally completely oblivious to the massive amounts of impoverished

by IpV8 8y ago

The growing divide between the haves and have-nots. I have found that people in tech are generally completely oblivious to the massive amounts of impoverished people around them and have no idea how to help them. Also the technical advancements that we are seeing nowadays mostly seem to help people who are already well off. It is difficult to find good tech companies that have a high social good output.

vector_spaces 8y ago
Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, it was strange to see 22 year old recent graduates arriving and immediately making six figure salaries while constantly complaining about homeless people and describing certain areas with large black and Latino populations as "sketchy"/"ghetto"/"unsafe". It was very surreal (and sad) watching the demographics become much more homogenous in the little corner store in the Castro I worked in. Our customer base was once incredibly diverse, lots of LGBTQ folks, and also lots of families. Slowly it became predominantly white and East/South Asian, young, single, and affluent. We went from seeing EBT card usage drop from about 4-5 customers a day ($200 daily average) to one (literally) every 3 and half weeks by the end of 2016. In a similar vein: every tech company I've known whose product involves manual labor (think: delivery, cleaning, retrieving scooters, packing/receiving, food preparation, etc) treats and thinks about the workers doing the manual labor very differently than the creatives, engineers, product folks, sales leads, etc. The employees doing the manual labor are held to very different standards of productivity and timeliness, often don't get benefits, definitely don't get equity, and generally enjoy little room for advancement, and often they will be employees in all but name and rights (1099). Some of this is understandable to a point as their work is mission critical -- if your cooks show up late constantly and your product is "Uber but for tapas", then your customer experience is going to suffer. But a tendency I've observed personally and heard from friends in those jobs is that it seems acceptable for manual workers to be shouted at, threatened, and generally be treated abusively, while the same certainly wouldn't be ok if directed at someone making salary. Meanwhile as an engineer if I have a zero day, no one says a word to me, or if they do they're very polite about it.

by IpV8 8y ago

vector_spaces 8y ago

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, it was strange to see 22 year old recent graduates arriving and immediately making six figure salaries while constantly complaining about homeless people and describing certain areas with large black and Latino populations as "sketchy"/"ghetto"/"unsafe". It was very surreal (and sad) watching the demographics become much more homogenous in the little corner store in the Castro I worked in. Our customer base was once incredibly diverse, lots of LGBTQ folks, and also lots of families. Slowly it became predominantly white and East/South Asian, young, single, and affluent. We went from seeing EBT card usage drop from about 4-5 customers a day ($200 daily average) to one (literally) every 3 and half weeks by the end of 2016. In a similar vein: every tech company I've known whose product involves manual labor (think: delivery, cleaning, retrieving scooters, packing/receiving, food preparation, etc) treats and thinks about the workers doing the manual labor very differently than the creatives, engineers, product folks, sales leads, etc. The employees doing the manual labor are held to very different standards of productivity and timeliness, often don't get benefits, definitely don't get equity, and generally enjoy little room for advancement, and often they will be employees in all but name and rights (1099). Some of this is understandable to a point as their work is mission critical -- if your cooks show up late constantly and your product is "Uber but for tapas", then your customer experience is going to suffer. But a tendency I've observed personally and heard from friends in those jobs is that it seems acceptable for manual workers to be shouted at, threatened, and generally be treated abusively, while the same certainly wouldn't be ok if directed at someone making salary. Meanwhile as an engineer if I have a zero day, no one says a word to me, or if they do they're very polite about it.