5 ms·

Well, for starters, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Uber and Apple were effectively founded by white, highly educated men. As far as I know, in none of

Well, for starters, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Uber and Apple were effectively founded by white, highly educated men. As far as I know, in none of these cases were their families actually poor. Gates came from a straight up wealthy family; Zuckerberg's family is one of doctors and other highly-paid professionals too.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
unabst 11y ago
But the key common denominator is still education and software. Not poor does not equal rich, and even in Gates case his family wealth was never a factor in funding his company that was profitable early. You just have to be not-poor and surround yourself with smart people. I find race and gender a more relevant study than wealth.
- kylebrown 11y ago
  Microsoft's first customer was IBM because an IBM VP sat on the board of Seattle National Bank with Bill Gates's mother (the bank was founded by Bill's grandfather).
  - unabst 11y ago
    Bill was upper middle class. Sure he had ties, but it wasn't wealth that made Microsoft a non-failure, nor was the IBM deal a simple handshake based on privilege.
adventured 11y ago
Apple's founders came from a middle class background. Paul Allen came from a middle class background. Sergey Brin and Larry Page were also middle class. Larry Ellison was semi-poor. Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Mark Cuban and Marc Andreessen were middle class. Jan Koum was poor. Gordon Moore was middle class. Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner were middle class. The majority of Americans fall into the same (or better) economic category as those people.
- Daishiman 11y ago
  Wait. So Paul Allen was friends with a friend from a wealthy family who sent their son to Harvard. He himself attended a private school. Sergey Brin and Larry Page were PhD students at Stanford... Marc Cuban was middle class... in an affluent neighborhood known for the quality of its school district. And the dude was a beast of an intellect and was pushed by his family to be entrepreneurial from age 12. Koum got extremely lucky in being in the right place at the right time in what was essentially the app store lottery, not to mention that he seems like an incredibly bright guy. Honestly, your arguments are not helping. All these people, aside from being white, working on tech and being extremely talented, were in the right place at the right time. I don't doubt that they would have been succesful in other fields since the common theme is that they're also incredibly smart. But from all these examples I just can't help thinking that if these guys had decided to, for example, go into medicine, civil engineering, or other traditional paths, or if they had been of a different gender things would have been different. Also, dude, what part of being a PhD student at Stanford doesn't scream a tremendous amount of privilege? Wealth and class are not just a question of the amount of money in the bank, but also being raised in families from highly educated backgrounds, a culture of hard work, a selection of professions that promote entrepreneurial and technical values, the sheer luck of having chosen a field that's expanded exponentially, and also not having to deal with shit like, say, malnutrition, which is a not uncommon theme in the US, where a significant child population lives on food deserts. Rest assured, I really, really think that if Brin and Page had been to any other university with a not-so-stellar track record of professors being intimately involved in Silicon Valley corporations, they would have been "merely" very good researchers. There's a ton of people who have the skills to study in Stanford, yet for monetary issues, difficult childhoods, and the plain fact that a lot kids have no idea what CS education is about, they never get the chance to be exposed to the people, and most importantly, the money there.
  - ectoplasm 11y ago
    > Also, dude, what part of being a PhD student at Stanford doesn't scream a tremendous amount of privilege? Grad school is often fully paid for, particularly in STEM fields, because it's like indentured servitude. Undergrad at a fancy US school is much harder financially, but you can still go for free if you're on an elite scholarship and poor. So, go to a cheap undergrad / master's somewhere and then transfer to Stanford for the PhD, if that's what you want and are capable of doing. Is one privileged to have the opportunity to attend grad school at Stanford? Yes, but that doesn't make it categorically unfair.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

unabst 11y ago

But the key common denominator is still education and software. Not poor does not equal rich, and even in Gates case his family wealth was never a factor in funding his company that was profitable early. You just have to be not-poor and surround yourself with smart people. I find race and gender a more relevant study than wealth.

kylebrown 11y ago
Microsoft's first customer was IBM because an IBM VP sat on the board of Seattle National Bank with Bill Gates's mother (the bank was founded by Bill's grandfather).
- unabst 11y ago
  Bill was upper middle class. Sure he had ties, but it wasn't wealth that made Microsoft a non-failure, nor was the IBM deal a simple handshake based on privilege.

adventured 11y ago

Apple's founders came from a middle class background. Paul Allen came from a middle class background. Sergey Brin and Larry Page were also middle class. Larry Ellison was semi-poor. Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Mark Cuban and Marc Andreessen were middle class. Jan Koum was poor. Gordon Moore was middle class. Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner were middle class. The majority of Americans fall into the same (or better) economic category as those people.

Daishiman 11y ago
Wait. So Paul Allen was friends with a friend from a wealthy family who sent their son to Harvard. He himself attended a private school. Sergey Brin and Larry Page were PhD students at Stanford... Marc Cuban was middle class... in an affluent neighborhood known for the quality of its school district. And the dude was a beast of an intellect and was pushed by his family to be entrepreneurial from age 12. Koum got extremely lucky in being in the right place at the right time in what was essentially the app store lottery, not to mention that he seems like an incredibly bright guy. Honestly, your arguments are not helping. All these people, aside from being white, working on tech and being extremely talented, were in the right place at the right time. I don't doubt that they would have been succesful in other fields since the common theme is that they're also incredibly smart. But from all these examples I just can't help thinking that if these guys had decided to, for example, go into medicine, civil engineering, or other traditional paths, or if they had been of a different gender things would have been different. Also, dude, what part of being a PhD student at Stanford doesn't scream a tremendous amount of privilege? Wealth and class are not just a question of the amount of money in the bank, but also being raised in families from highly educated backgrounds, a culture of hard work, a selection of professions that promote entrepreneurial and technical values, the sheer luck of having chosen a field that's expanded exponentially, and also not having to deal with shit like, say, malnutrition, which is a not uncommon theme in the US, where a significant child population lives on food deserts. Rest assured, I really, really think that if Brin and Page had been to any other university with a not-so-stellar track record of professors being intimately involved in Silicon Valley corporations, they would have been "merely" very good researchers. There's a ton of people who have the skills to study in Stanford, yet for monetary issues, difficult childhoods, and the plain fact that a lot kids have no idea what CS education is about, they never get the chance to be exposed to the people, and most importantly, the money there.
- ectoplasm 11y ago
  > Also, dude, what part of being a PhD student at Stanford doesn't scream a tremendous amount of privilege? Grad school is often fully paid for, particularly in STEM fields, because it's like indentured servitude. Undergrad at a fancy US school is much harder financially, but you can still go for free if you're on an elite scholarship and poor. So, go to a cheap undergrad / master's somewhere and then transfer to Stanford for the PhD, if that's what you want and are capable of doing. Is one privileged to have the opportunity to attend grad school at Stanford? Yes, but that doesn't make it categorically unfair.