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On that last point. It’s incredible that as one crab is about to climb out of the bucket (tech workers becoming financially independent) and is pushed back down

On that last point. It’s incredible that as one crab is about to climb out of the bucket (tech workers becoming financially independent) and is pushed back down, the others take so much joy in it. While idolizing the fisherman that pushed that crab back down. They never, ever, seem to think — wow someone almost escaped this bucket, maybe we should try too. It’s incredible how self sabotaging we humans are.

jonhohle 3y ago
I think a lot of middle America sees a tech crab kicking blue collar crabs down to get themselves out of a bucket (true or not). Having spent all of my career outside of SV (worked remote for a company in SV for a while), but having spent a reasonable amount of time interviewing technical people from SV, I came away with a general sense of hubris that was not justified that I never saw from other parts of the country (n = several hundred at a FAANG and unicorn startup). Perhaps I was unlucky, but 9 times out of 10 I was astounded to find individuals commanding 6-figure engineering salaries who couldn’t code or even seemed put out that I was asking them to write code in an interview… for a role that required writing code. From an outsiders perspective, if one was laid off from Twitter (with a generous severance package), they either will find themselves in a new role fairly quickly and it’s Twitter’s loss, or they were dead weight and may or may not want to consider adjusting their career path. In either case they’ll have more job opportunity than a laid off factory worker typically has. The whining about it only reinforces the perception of petulance.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  > I think a lot of middle America sees a tech crab kicking blue collar crabs down to get themselves out of a bucket (true or not). This is a deliberate tactic used by the people actually kicking us all down. People who make $40M/yr have gotten very good at convincing people who make $40K/yr that it's those snooty, elitist tech workers making $400K/yr who are the big problem in the world. Divide and conquer.
  - p_j_w 3y ago
    >People who make $40M/yr have gotten very good at convincing people who make $40K/yr that it's those snooty, elitist tech workers making $400K/yr who are the big problem in the world. These same people have convinced the people making $40k/yr that Starbucks workers making $30k/yr demanding a union are also part of the problem, as well. Just call them millenials, woke, or coastal elites and people will be chomping at the bit to hate them.
  - medvezhenok 3y ago
    It's not as absurd a proposition as you think. The people making 40K are not competing for resources with the people making $40M - their consumption likely has relatively few overlaps (and the people at the $40M/year level are likely in a different social class altogether - so they are not seen as competitors). Additionally, the number of people making $40M/year is relatively tiny - probably less than 1% of those that make $400K/yr. You will notice that in Europe, the good social fallback systems / health insurance / safety net in place are at the expense of the people that make $400K a year (in the US), not at the expense of the millionaires.
    - tsunamifury 3y ago
      Your first observation is very apt. We are competitive with those in our league and not outside. And your second is a deep cut Europeans aren’t ready to hear if I understand correctly n
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  I’ll Push on your thesis and argue that maybe you were not in the superior position you thought you were. Many times I’ve seen small (often midwest) firms try to engage me when I worked in FAANG and what they were tackling and how they were doing it lacked sophistication or experience to a degree that wasn’t even worth me engaging with. Their goals were small, their technology was unambitious, and their business lacked scale. They thought I was being smug, even when I was polite and said none of this out loud — but honest to god they were actually a bit insecure about the reality that they didn’t have much to offer and slowly realized it. I’m sorry but it’s really rich when someone from a small firm barely making millions would lecture me on how to do it right when I ran multi billion dollar programs. But that didn’t stop them from lecturing to feel superior. And the more I didn’t engage with that the more they seemed to think I was being “smug”.
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    I completely agree with the lack of sophistication. A lot of that comes from (imho) not being around a culture of software engineering and typically being a small group inside a non-software business. Seattle is an example, at least when I was there, where people knew what they were doing and could get things done without the arrogance. Night and day from SV in my experience.
kipchak 3y ago
I agree, but I don't know if it's fair to say that people just never thought "maybe we should try". See for example the Mined Minds program. This self sabotaging goes the other way too also, remember "learn to code"?
redditor98654 3y ago
Christopher Nolan's Interstellar had a line of dialogue from Matt Damon's character that went something like: "As a species, we can care deeply, selflessly about those we know, but that empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight." Still resonates with me.

jonhohle 3y ago

I think a lot of middle America sees a tech crab kicking blue collar crabs down to get themselves out of a bucket (true or not). Having spent all of my career outside of SV (worked remote for a company in SV for a while), but having spent a reasonable amount of time interviewing technical people from SV, I came away with a general sense of hubris that was not justified that I never saw from other parts of the country (n = several hundred at a FAANG and unicorn startup). Perhaps I was unlucky, but 9 times out of 10 I was astounded to find individuals commanding 6-figure engineering salaries who couldn’t code or even seemed put out that I was asking them to write code in an interview… for a role that required writing code. From an outsiders perspective, if one was laid off from Twitter (with a generous severance package), they either will find themselves in a new role fairly quickly and it’s Twitter’s loss, or they were dead weight and may or may not want to consider adjusting their career path. In either case they’ll have more job opportunity than a laid off factory worker typically has. The whining about it only reinforces the perception of petulance.

ryandrake 3y ago
> I think a lot of middle America sees a tech crab kicking blue collar crabs down to get themselves out of a bucket (true or not). This is a deliberate tactic used by the people actually kicking us all down. People who make $40M/yr have gotten very good at convincing people who make $40K/yr that it's those snooty, elitist tech workers making $400K/yr who are the big problem in the world. Divide and conquer.
- p_j_w 3y ago
  >People who make $40M/yr have gotten very good at convincing people who make $40K/yr that it's those snooty, elitist tech workers making $400K/yr who are the big problem in the world. These same people have convinced the people making $40k/yr that Starbucks workers making $30k/yr demanding a union are also part of the problem, as well. Just call them millenials, woke, or coastal elites and people will be chomping at the bit to hate them.
- medvezhenok 3y ago
  It's not as absurd a proposition as you think. The people making 40K are not competing for resources with the people making $40M - their consumption likely has relatively few overlaps (and the people at the $40M/year level are likely in a different social class altogether - so they are not seen as competitors). Additionally, the number of people making $40M/year is relatively tiny - probably less than 1% of those that make $400K/yr. You will notice that in Europe, the good social fallback systems / health insurance / safety net in place are at the expense of the people that make $400K a year (in the US), not at the expense of the millionaires.
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    Your first observation is very apt. We are competitive with those in our league and not outside. And your second is a deep cut Europeans aren’t ready to hear if I understand correctly n
tsunamifury 3y ago
I’ll Push on your thesis and argue that maybe you were not in the superior position you thought you were. Many times I’ve seen small (often midwest) firms try to engage me when I worked in FAANG and what they were tackling and how they were doing it lacked sophistication or experience to a degree that wasn’t even worth me engaging with. Their goals were small, their technology was unambitious, and their business lacked scale. They thought I was being smug, even when I was polite and said none of this out loud — but honest to god they were actually a bit insecure about the reality that they didn’t have much to offer and slowly realized it. I’m sorry but it’s really rich when someone from a small firm barely making millions would lecture me on how to do it right when I ran multi billion dollar programs. But that didn’t stop them from lecturing to feel superior. And the more I didn’t engage with that the more they seemed to think I was being “smug”.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  I completely agree with the lack of sophistication. A lot of that comes from (imho) not being around a culture of software engineering and typically being a small group inside a non-software business. Seattle is an example, at least when I was there, where people knew what they were doing and could get things done without the arrogance. Night and day from SV in my experience.

kipchak 3y ago

I agree, but I don't know if it's fair to say that people just never thought "maybe we should try". See for example the Mined Minds program. This self sabotaging goes the other way too also, remember "learn to code"?

redditor98654 3y ago

Christopher Nolan's Interstellar had a line of dialogue from Matt Damon's character that went something like: "As a species, we can care deeply, selflessly about those we know, but that empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight." Still resonates with me.