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EDIT: For comparison: * "Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers" (5hrs ago, 110 points, 30 comments) -> rank 2 * this post (2hrs ago, 1000 points, 500 co

EDIT: For comparison: * "Common Mistakes of New Engineering Managers" (5hrs ago, 110 points, 30 comments) -> rank 2 * this post (2hrs ago, 1000 points, 500 comments) -> rank 20 Why is this post being penalized? Too many black folks commenting and up voting? (/s) ----- Amazingly well written. I'm going to say some things. You'd guess wrongly if you infer that I'm bitter - since I'm personally very lucky. Having been born in a not so privileged family (more common than not in the world), by the luck of the draw I am today very privileged because I work in tech (in itself not that common). The actual problem that is at the core of all of this is - incredible disconnectedness from the plight of even regular people by the world's tech bubbles. On average, people of color have it (!!!) even worse (!!!), but it seems that these SV/NY/LDN/etc. tech bros are completely devoid of any conception of how difficult any average Joe has it. To illustrate disconnectedness: there was an interview with a YC partner a few years back that went like this: INTERVIEWER: "What would you advise to the young folks interested in startups?" YC-PARTNER: "I would tell them to be ambitious, try their best, work hard and if it doesn't succeed - it doesn't succeed. You should take a vacation and try again." (the emphasis and the exact phrasing of the vacuous advice are mine) How the fuck does one TAKE A VACATION after your startup fails?! It goes without saying that the YC partner and their brother received tech stocks from their grandparents for one of their teen-birthdays. Here's a litmus test to know whether you're likely disconnected: As a techie/doctor/engineer did you become by far the highest paid person in your wider family by your mid 20s? If the answer is "NO", then you would be disconnected by default - unless you consciously invested effort to educate yourself.

KaiserPro 6y ago
indeed, the thing that struck me was how much of a middle class sausage factory SV-tech is. I had worked in VFX/media for a long time, and we at least knew that we were mostly rich middle class fops. Having heard all the noise about how upset the tech bros were when diversity increased at FAANG, when I got here I expected to have some, well diversity. I went from a team that had 8/30 female-male, which the company felt was too small, to a team inside FAANG which is all male. Every. fucking. team that I've been in contact, bar one, is an entire sausage factory.
- nicbou 6y ago
  The problem is further upstream. This is the people who graduate. This is the people who enrol. This is the people who fall in love with computers. At some point, we lose everyone else, and I wish I knew why. I have theories sure, but I don't actually know why.
  - bregma 6y ago
    Some years back I hiked the Inca Trail in Peru. The second day started with a long trek up the side of a mountain, covering a vertical distance of about 1500 m in about 4 hours. You could see the trail ahead pretty much the whole time, including the people on it. It was incredibly challenging to keep going as you were exhausted by altitude and effort and could see it was only going to get more difficult as the day progressed, and still you could see the people who were already on the trail ahead of you. This was the point where many hikers turned back. What I learned was challenges that defeat you are never what's behind you, only what's in front of you. When it's an uphill climb, the people at the top are causing more of a challenge than what you left or even where you are. I frequently encounter the position that "we shouldn't do anything at my level because the problem is further down the system" just like the parent comment says. Yes, it makes you feel better to deny you're part of the problem. Unfortunately it's not true in a way that makes the problem worse. It's a close cousin to "she shouldn't have dressed like that" or "she shouldn't have gone out alone". Or maybe "I was just following orders".
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      What if it was a hike that got less steep toward the top? The lesson you learned would completely fall apart. I don't think you can apply a blanket logic to this. It's possible for problems to be all over, or clustered near the start or middle or end. It depends on the actual scenario. It seems quite likely that being pushed out as a child is the biggest problem, and that's not because the kids are peering forward to look at job specifics, it's because of harmful stereotypes about boys vs. girls.
    - rhines 6y ago
DetroitThrow 6y ago
When I entered engineering in the early 2010s, I quickly started earning more than my parents and their parents did combined at their peak incomes. Hearing my background, most of my peers who weren't immigrants from south/near asia, africa, or latin america seemed surprised that life in the USA could be so "third world" in their words. I always get a chuckle reading things by these VC types who grew up in upper middle class homes very far from impoverished people and their views on both the problems communities they've never interacted with will face and/or how to solve those problems, as recent as yesterday's post by sama on how innovation will end poverty. Based on my experiences with people's depth on the subject, I think you have a half decent litmus test.
dvh1990 6y ago
I understand your anger, but that piece of advice was meant for the kind of people that CAN afford a vacation after a startup failure. Is something wrong with that? If you can afford a vacation, you take it. If you can't, you don't. I myself have a failed startup that I ran in 2018-2019. Could I afford a vacation afterwards? Nope. Can I afford another entrepreneurial run now? Nope. Am I bitter about it? Nope. Also, you mention "incredible disconnectedness from the plight of even regular people by the world's tech bubbles", but then you talk about starting a STARTUP. Regular people don't start companies.
- neronero 6y ago
  > but that piece of advice was meant for the kind of people that CAN afford a vacation after a startup failure. Is something wrong with that? If you can afford a vacation, you take it. If you can't, you don't. If they really intended that advice for the audience of 5, they could've sent them an email (or a Clubhouse invite /s) and not put it in an interview on YT. The rest of the audience is just facepalming while listening to this.
- DetroitThrow 6y ago
  >Regular people don't start companies They do, they're called small businesses instead of startups most often times though. I worked at businesses throughout my adolescence which were created and run by "regular people" - people of color, without generational wealth, who were raising children, and were primary caretakers for elderly family at the time of the company's creation. In the same vein, I've met a lot of "regular people" in the same situation who've kicked off startups. Do you really think only those with the privilege of being sufficiently disconnected from impoverished communities end up having the opportunity to create a startup, or is there some reinterpretation/disconnect of the previous paragraphs going on?
  - intricatedetail 6y ago
    Unfortunately in many countries progressive taxation means people likely to start business are unable to save and invest in it for long before they have no choice but take a bank loan or look for VC money. It is rarely possible to start a business only with your own money that you saved. I think that's bad, and is often overlooked by people supporting high progressive tax. We are cutting the wings of people who are more likely to succeed and provide jobs and force them to share their business with the rich who likely never worked hard in their lives.
Uberphallus 6y ago
> How the fuck does one TAKE A VACATION after your startup fails?! That's hilarious. But hey, you could technically do that in France without swimming in money: you legally can keep your position in a company on-hold while creating a startup, for 1-2 years (3 if you do tricks with your right to a sabbatical year). If it fails after that, you just go back to work. [0] The holidays you might have saved before leaving are deferred until you join again, so you can literally have paid holidays after your project fails. [0] https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F2382 https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F2382
- johanneskanybal 6y ago
  Same in Sweden and some basic easy to get by programs apart from the more traditional grants. I'd still pick sf and infinite funding for every silly project but for the small business rather than startup it's pretty sweet.
- Kydlaw 6y ago
  No you can't. There are requirements that you are not displaying here, because you are using a source article in a language that probably 5% of the HN community can read. You are gaming the system and profit of social advantages offered by the nation for your personal interest. I hope people like you get caught and that you will pay every cent you owe.
  - Uberphallus 6y ago
    > No you can't. The link says otherwise. > There are requirements that you are not displaying here, because you are using a source article in a language that probably 5% of the HN community can read 100% of the HN community knows how to use a translator if they're interested. Yeah, you need to be for at least 2 years in the company, and there are deadlines for requests, approvals and so on. Obviously you can't just say "hey, not coming tomorrow, plz keep my job for a while" overnight. Anyone that wants to know the precise terms can translate them, they're right in the link. > You are gaming the system and profit of social advantages offered by the nation for your personal interest. No, I use the established procedure in law to follow through with what the government has tried to incentivize. > I hope people like you get caught and that you will pay every cent you owe. That's funny, because you don't get paid during those 1-2 years, so it roughly amounts to 0. Why do you accuse random strangers of violating a law that you seem not to be familiar with?
YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
>> Here's a litmus test to know whether you're likely disconnected: As a techie/doctor/engineer did you become by far the highest paid person in your wider family by your mid 20s? If the answer is "NO", then you would be disconnected by default - unless you consciously invested effort to educate yourself. As the article hints at, many people who come from er, non-traditional tech backgrounds, enter the tech industry later in life. Your test of "by your mid 20's" would hoover them up along with the people you're trying to point to. Let's just not group people together indiscriminately, shall we? That should be a rule of thumb that might work once in a while.
- neronero 6y ago
  I think you're using "indiscriminately" as if it meant "if I personally don't like it". But you're right, my litmus test is very sloppy and it could be phrased much more precisely. I hope most people will understand the spirit of it though.
  - munchbunny 6y ago
    I think the spirit of it is pretty clear. If you grew up with access to upper middle class (or higher) wealth, which is what your parents would need to be to match today's early career Silicon Valley software engineer incomes, you probably don't know what it's like to not have access to many of the institutionalized resources you grew up with, because you probably never lived that experience. That might be an overly broad test, but the underlying point is pretty clear.
adamjb 6y ago
>Why is this post being penalized? HN has an anti-flamewar mechanism that kicks in when posts get too active.
dang 6y ago
> Why is this post being penalized? Too many black folks commenting and up voting? (/s) That's a nasty swipe, "/s" or no "/s". Your question is answered twice in HN's FAQ: once at the top and once again ("Why is A ranked below B even though A has more points and is newer?") for people who don't realize that it was already answered at the top. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html Matter of fact, this thread has been carefully unpenalized by moderators who work tirelessly to support substantive, thoughtful discussion on HN. (Edit: that seems to have been a mistake—not about the thread, a lot of which was reasonably good and some of which was remarkably good, albeit on a tired topic. But it seems to have been a mistake about the article—see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26507622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26507622.)
- neronero 6y ago
  My bad. The emotions were high. I wanted to remove it, but I can edit the post anymore.
  - dang 6y ago
    Much appreciated! I wouldn't worry about removing it - we're all learning this stuff together and examples are good for that.

KaiserPro 6y ago

indeed, the thing that struck me was how much of a middle class sausage factory SV-tech is. I had worked in VFX/media for a long time, and we at least knew that we were mostly rich middle class fops. Having heard all the noise about how upset the tech bros were when diversity increased at FAANG, when I got here I expected to have some, well diversity. I went from a team that had 8/30 female-male, which the company felt was too small, to a team inside FAANG which is all male. Every. fucking. team that I've been in contact, bar one, is an entire sausage factory.

nicbou 6y ago
The problem is further upstream. This is the people who graduate. This is the people who enrol. This is the people who fall in love with computers. At some point, we lose everyone else, and I wish I knew why. I have theories sure, but I don't actually know why.
- bregma 6y ago
  Some years back I hiked the Inca Trail in Peru. The second day started with a long trek up the side of a mountain, covering a vertical distance of about 1500 m in about 4 hours. You could see the trail ahead pretty much the whole time, including the people on it. It was incredibly challenging to keep going as you were exhausted by altitude and effort and could see it was only going to get more difficult as the day progressed, and still you could see the people who were already on the trail ahead of you. This was the point where many hikers turned back. What I learned was challenges that defeat you are never what's behind you, only what's in front of you. When it's an uphill climb, the people at the top are causing more of a challenge than what you left or even where you are. I frequently encounter the position that "we shouldn't do anything at my level because the problem is further down the system" just like the parent comment says. Yes, it makes you feel better to deny you're part of the problem. Unfortunately it's not true in a way that makes the problem worse. It's a close cousin to "she shouldn't have dressed like that" or "she shouldn't have gone out alone". Or maybe "I was just following orders".
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    What if it was a hike that got less steep toward the top? The lesson you learned would completely fall apart. I don't think you can apply a blanket logic to this. It's possible for problems to be all over, or clustered near the start or middle or end. It depends on the actual scenario. It seems quite likely that being pushed out as a child is the biggest problem, and that's not because the kids are peering forward to look at job specifics, it's because of harmful stereotypes about boys vs. girls.
  - rhines 6y ago

DetroitThrow 6y ago

When I entered engineering in the early 2010s, I quickly started earning more than my parents and their parents did combined at their peak incomes. Hearing my background, most of my peers who weren't immigrants from south/near asia, africa, or latin america seemed surprised that life in the USA could be so "third world" in their words. I always get a chuckle reading things by these VC types who grew up in upper middle class homes very far from impoverished people and their views on both the problems communities they've never interacted with will face and/or how to solve those problems, as recent as yesterday's post by sama on how innovation will end poverty. Based on my experiences with people's depth on the subject, I think you have a half decent litmus test.

dvh1990 6y ago

I understand your anger, but that piece of advice was meant for the kind of people that CAN afford a vacation after a startup failure. Is something wrong with that? If you can afford a vacation, you take it. If you can't, you don't. I myself have a failed startup that I ran in 2018-2019. Could I afford a vacation afterwards? Nope. Can I afford another entrepreneurial run now? Nope. Am I bitter about it? Nope. Also, you mention "incredible disconnectedness from the plight of even regular people by the world's tech bubbles", but then you talk about starting a STARTUP. Regular people don't start companies.

neronero 6y ago
> but that piece of advice was meant for the kind of people that CAN afford a vacation after a startup failure. Is something wrong with that? If you can afford a vacation, you take it. If you can't, you don't. If they really intended that advice for the audience of 5, they could've sent them an email (or a Clubhouse invite /s) and not put it in an interview on YT. The rest of the audience is just facepalming while listening to this.
DetroitThrow 6y ago
>Regular people don't start companies They do, they're called small businesses instead of startups most often times though. I worked at businesses throughout my adolescence which were created and run by "regular people" - people of color, without generational wealth, who were raising children, and were primary caretakers for elderly family at the time of the company's creation. In the same vein, I've met a lot of "regular people" in the same situation who've kicked off startups. Do you really think only those with the privilege of being sufficiently disconnected from impoverished communities end up having the opportunity to create a startup, or is there some reinterpretation/disconnect of the previous paragraphs going on?
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  Unfortunately in many countries progressive taxation means people likely to start business are unable to save and invest in it for long before they have no choice but take a bank loan or look for VC money. It is rarely possible to start a business only with your own money that you saved. I think that's bad, and is often overlooked by people supporting high progressive tax. We are cutting the wings of people who are more likely to succeed and provide jobs and force them to share their business with the rich who likely never worked hard in their lives.

Uberphallus 6y ago

> How the fuck does one TAKE A VACATION after your startup fails?! That's hilarious. But hey, you could technically do that in France without swimming in money: you legally can keep your position in a company on-hold while creating a startup, for 1-2 years (3 if you do tricks with your right to a sabbatical year). If it fails after that, you just go back to work. [0] The holidays you might have saved before leaving are deferred until you join again, so you can literally have paid holidays after your project fails. [0] https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F2382 https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F2382

johanneskanybal 6y ago
Same in Sweden and some basic easy to get by programs apart from the more traditional grants. I'd still pick sf and infinite funding for every silly project but for the small business rather than startup it's pretty sweet.
Kydlaw 6y ago
No you can't. There are requirements that you are not displaying here, because you are using a source article in a language that probably 5% of the HN community can read. You are gaming the system and profit of social advantages offered by the nation for your personal interest. I hope people like you get caught and that you will pay every cent you owe.
- Uberphallus 6y ago
  > No you can't. The link says otherwise. > There are requirements that you are not displaying here, because you are using a source article in a language that probably 5% of the HN community can read 100% of the HN community knows how to use a translator if they're interested. Yeah, you need to be for at least 2 years in the company, and there are deadlines for requests, approvals and so on. Obviously you can't just say "hey, not coming tomorrow, plz keep my job for a while" overnight. Anyone that wants to know the precise terms can translate them, they're right in the link. > You are gaming the system and profit of social advantages offered by the nation for your personal interest. No, I use the established procedure in law to follow through with what the government has tried to incentivize. > I hope people like you get caught and that you will pay every cent you owe. That's funny, because you don't get paid during those 1-2 years, so it roughly amounts to 0. Why do you accuse random strangers of violating a law that you seem not to be familiar with?

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago

>> Here's a litmus test to know whether you're likely disconnected: As a techie/doctor/engineer did you become by far the highest paid person in your wider family by your mid 20s? If the answer is "NO", then you would be disconnected by default - unless you consciously invested effort to educate yourself. As the article hints at, many people who come from er, non-traditional tech backgrounds, enter the tech industry later in life. Your test of "by your mid 20's" would hoover them up along with the people you're trying to point to. Let's just not group people together indiscriminately, shall we? That should be a rule of thumb that might work once in a while.

neronero 6y ago
I think you're using "indiscriminately" as if it meant "if I personally don't like it". But you're right, my litmus test is very sloppy and it could be phrased much more precisely. I hope most people will understand the spirit of it though.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  I think the spirit of it is pretty clear. If you grew up with access to upper middle class (or higher) wealth, which is what your parents would need to be to match today's early career Silicon Valley software engineer incomes, you probably don't know what it's like to not have access to many of the institutionalized resources you grew up with, because you probably never lived that experience. That might be an overly broad test, but the underlying point is pretty clear.

adamjb 6y ago

>Why is this post being penalized? HN has an anti-flamewar mechanism that kicks in when posts get too active.

dang 6y ago

> Why is this post being penalized? Too many black folks commenting and up voting? (/s) That's a nasty swipe, "/s" or no "/s". Your question is answered twice in HN's FAQ: once at the top and once again ("Why is A ranked below B even though A has more points and is newer?") for people who don't realize that it was already answered at the top. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html Matter of fact, this thread has been carefully unpenalized by moderators who work tirelessly to support substantive, thoughtful discussion on HN. (Edit: that seems to have been a mistake—not about the thread, a lot of which was reasonably good and some of which was remarkably good, albeit on a tired topic. But it seems to have been a mistake about the article—see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26507622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26507622.)

neronero 6y ago
My bad. The emotions were high. I wanted to remove it, but I can edit the post anymore.
- dang 6y ago
  Much appreciated! I wouldn't worry about removing it - we're all learning this stuff together and examples are good for that.