"But anyways. Like most of us, I am also very fortunate to be in tech, and have a passion for programming. But I do not pretend that my good fortune some how means I work or harder or am smarter than other people in our society.",
but then deleted their comment:
you really should repost it. it captures my feelings too and i wanted to thank you for putting them into words.
again and again, i encounter people in my circles of well-employed colleagues who do not realize how lucky they are to have interests coinciding with aptitudes coinciding with particular economic demands in their productive years.
and it makes them sickeningly self congratulatory.
again and again, i encounter people in my circles of well-employed colleagues who do not realize how lucky they are to have interests coinciding with aptitudes coinciding with particular economic demands in their productive years.
and it makes them sickeningly self congratulatory.
It's one of the things that delayed my entry into the technical profession. I grew up a passionate and involved hobbyist, but seeing this kind of self-aggrandising Randian narrative played out over and over in forums and bodies of knowledge that I considered proxies for the values of the profession (i.e. Slashdot) nauseated me. For a long time, I was determined not to go into tech out of loathing for the idea of working with such people.
Ultimately, I went anyway, and realised--as teenagers are wont to do once they grow up--that any world is more diverse than meets the eye. But I can definitely say that the mythos of the well-earning "self-made" IT man was a major blemish on the idea, not an asset.
I am fully aware that I'm "lucky" that I have an interest in computer programming -- a highly marketable skill. But when people harp on that fortune, it really comes across as trying to devalue the effort I put into developing those skills. Just as an idea has no value without execution, luck is worthless unless you put in the hard work to exercise it. People are emphasizing the former at the expense of the latter to make others feel guilty about their successes and obligated towards the "less fortunate," and that's why people push back.
I in part agree with the sentiment of good fortune. But only in part. I went into Engineering not out of passion, but out of economics. I knew it was safer than continuing with my first path in studying History.
And I know people who are at the protests. And I know many more who would be there if they could. And I try and ignore their pleas for economic help when they also demand that Walmart be shut down.
"But I do not pretend that my good fortune some how means I work or harder or am smarter than other people in our society"
What a defeatist attitude. I do work harder and smarter than other people in our society. My work and success reflects this.
"and it makes them sickeningly self congratulatory."
It's sickening that you would equate having a good job with mostly luck. Winning the lottery is pure luck.
I chose to get involved in the tech industry. If I would have been in any other time, I would have chosen a different industry and most likely been successful. Less than 1% of it has to do with luck. If I would have just sat here and done nothing, my career wouldn't have fallen into my lap and my skill set wouldn't have suddenly appeared.
You must be an odd person if you have equal aptitudes and passion for a huge range of things, and can choose them based solely on current economic demand. Few to no people I know in tech are like that, though. I'd be into hacker culture if the field was full of shit jobs; the way some people live and breathe music and can't imagine doing anything else, others can't imagine not doing something that involves hacking technology. It's just sugar on top that there's all this money floating around in the field too.
I mean, I got hooked on computers when I was 6 or 7, from Logo. I'm pretty sure I didn't get hooked due to my great foresight and economic responsibility. It was just interesting. Other people get hooked on other things, whether it's math or music. I'm fortunate that my thing pays well, but I don't think that makes me better than them. Makes my life easier, sure, but for exogenous reasons.
I don't think it's uncorrelated with merit, but I do think the correlation is very inconsistent. I know brilliant mathematicians with much poorer incomes, for example (pure math doesn't pay well... despite its long-term usefulness, it's hard to capture the value / monetize it).
I started programming because I was fascinated by computers. It wasn't until years later that I found out it was a lucrative job. It sounds like your recommendation would be for everyone to chase money regardless of their passions. You have to admit that people who are passionate about things that pay well get a better deal in that situation. There are a lot of things that are worthwhile that are not well rewarded economically. If all of the artists and idealists disappeared and we were only left with money-chasers, the world would be that much poorer.
Also, regarding success: hard work and intelligence matter a lot, but so does opportunity. Have a look at Gladwell's Outliers for an interesting analysis of this.
Plus, there's the negative effect of having our market flooded with people who go into programming "because that's where the money is".
I'm as critical as anyone when people decide to get liberal arts degrees without at least working on other skills on the side, but let's not be so naive to think that if a CS degree was the new liberal arts degree, that we wouldn't be having the same exact problem in society.
Only we (people on HN) would probably be making much less money.
I sometimes wonder what a bizarro-world hacker culture would be like. What if tech didn't pay well at all, and there was a lot of social pressure to get a "real job" and a "real degree", like Political Science or English Literature, instead of wasting your time getting a worthless CS degree?
It'd probably be less pleasant in a lot of ways, but the people still in tech would probably be an interesting group.
I agree with that as well. One subset of this is "The MBA Effect" where managers who are also engineers are replaced by profesional managers. This is what leads to things like trying to compete on lowest costs rather than building the best product. Steve Jobs was a great leader in the technology area, precisely because his vision wasn't about money. It was about excellence.
As for causes of economic distribution: liberals tends to emphasize the role of circumstances and conservatives tend to emphasize the role of individual effort. The error, however, is to become blinded to half the equation because it flatters the ego or is politically expedient. For instance, the successful who only see their own virtue at work (Wallstreet?), or the unsuccessful who only see the context and not their own failures (the "victim mentality").
"It sounds like your recommendation would be for everyone to chase money regardless of their passions."
If you don't think about the money at some point, then don't complain when you can't find a job. It's not your job to chase money and it's not society's job to pay you for something that's worthless.
"You have to admit that people who are passionate about things that pay well get a better deal in that situation."
You can make money with almost any passion, you just need to be smart enough to find the market. Most people want to be handed it...which just isn't going to happen.
"Also, regarding success: hard work and intelligence matter a lot, but so does opportunity. Have a look at Gladwell's Outliers for an interesting analysis of this."
I don't need to. I see opportunities every day that people in my exact same position at the exact time (at work for instance) miss. Why? Because I have the skills and experience and I know what I'm looking for. Without the skills, knowledge, and experience, the opportunity is worthless.
The more knowledge and skills you have, the more opportunities you will see and the better chance you have at becoming successful.
It's really sad to see so many people equating success with pure luck.
In some sense, I sympathize with you. I too have worked hard and been successful. I chose (out of passion, but I don't begrudge those who chose based on economics) to go into engineering while friends of mine went into less lucrative fields.
I myself was fortunate. Lucky, to be honest. My parents took advantage of things like student loans so that they could work hard and be successful. The result was that I didn't have to worry about student loans and graduated without debt. I worked hard to graduate, but I don't have illusions that my financial situation was anything other than luck on my part.
You may not call it luck, and I don't know your specific situation, but I'm going to hypothesize that you had some help along the way. How did you educate yourself? How did you pay for it? Did you go to a public school system? Was it better than the ones that exist now? Did you go to a private school? Did you pay for it yourself? My point is, we often take this sort of assistance for granted, and it is gratifying to credit ourselves with 100% of our success. Maybe you are 100% responsible for your own success. If that's the case, you're the first such person that I've ever met.
"You may not call it luck, and I don't know your specific situation, but I'm going to hypothesize that you had some help along the way. How did you educate yourself? "
We could go very far with attributing luck to success. Einstein must have been very lucky to come up with the theory of relativity.
In fact, everything we do must be due to luck because it's lucky our planet is in a position from the sun that's habitable.
"How did you educate yourself"
By going to the library in the beginning (which is free) and then later through the Internet (which is also now free at almost any library in the US). Most people in Highschool and in college are out partying every weekend with their friends..and then they wonder why they aren't successful when it comes to getting a job. I chose to sacrifice my time to learn things that I knew would help advance my career.
"How did you pay for it?" With a crappy retail job that didn't really have much to do with my career.
"Did you go to a public school system". Yes.
"My point is, we often take this sort of assistance for granted, and it is gratifying to credit ourselves with 100% of our success. Maybe you are 100% responsible for your own success. If that's the case, you're the first such person that I've ever met."
I'm still not sure what your point is. It seems to only be brought up when anyone successful achieves anything great or when someone wants an excuse as to why they can't succeed.
I also said luck has less than 1% to do with it. I know people that were in my exact same position at the exact same time. They chose to do things differently and now are working paycheck-to-paycheck. I saved my money (instead of buying the new $500 android phone when it came out) and now I don't have to worry about emergencies because I have enough money to pay for it.
I'm really just tired of people not taking personal responsibility for their actions.
You were lucky to have a quality library available to you. They aren't really free, and not everyone has the good fortune to grow up in a place that can afford one. You were lucky that your public school education was able to get you into a college. Not everyone has that opportunity, no matter how hard they work in school. You were lucky that you were able to find a crappy retail job to put yourself through college. Some people can't find jobs to do that, and not for lack of looking.
Libraries and public schools are excellent examples. While I can't speak for these protesters as I'm not there with them, a lot of the sentiment that people are expressing is a sense of fewer opportunities. Schools and libraries are getting their budgets slashed across the entire country. This due in large part to fiscal policy. Bad policy leads to lower tax revenues leads to cutting teachers and library resources. I don't have the solution, but I can see how it's related to the finance industry as a whole.
I agree with you that people should be responsible for making use of the opportunities that they have. Being offered a public education doesn't guarantee you anything, you have to actually take the time to learn from it. But that only works so long as we continue to offer quality public educations.
I'm really just tired of people saying "I made it, why can't everyone else?" without considering that their situation may be different.
I grew up in relatively poor small towns most of my life, where the town library was lucky if it had more than a thousand books. Certainly had no internet.
But you know what? I did the same thing rick888 did and I was at that library all the time learning, trying to make myself better.
I took advantage of every opportunity that came my way and I made the most of them.
I didn't have wealthy parents with connections like so many of the rich spoiled brats I see around me bitching about how "lucky" I am to have a good job, or moaning about how there's so many fewer opportunities around them.
Bullshit. Open your eyes. Stop making excuses.
If you want something bad enough, like I (and clearly rick888) did, you will be successful.
Do some people have more opportunities because of who their parents are and/or how much money they make? Sure, but so what? That's life.
I overcame. Rick888 overcame. So can everyone else.
Stop expecting things to just fall in your lap and complaining about how the world "isn't fair" and cast aside your damned entitlement complex.
The world doesn't owe you jack. You have to fight for everything you want. That's the reality, and nothing these protesters do will ever change that.
I'm so sick of people whining about how I'm "so lucky" to have my job. To hear these people talk about how lucky I am is a huge fucking insult because they act is if it just fell in my lap.
It didn't.
I worked my ass off for it, seemingly just like you did. I worked shitty part-time jobs to pay for my own college education. I worked one summer AS A VOLUNTEER (i.e. unpaid) in order to get noticed and it worked, too, because at the end of that summer the company offered me my first decent-paying job in the tech industry (well, it was only $10-something/hr, but it sure beat $5.25 that I was making before).
All this time I was working on contributing to Free Software projects - not just in the hopes of getting noticed, but in order to improve my skills.
After several years of this, I got noticed and got an internship at a start-up and I grabbed that opportunity and I've become very successful because of it.
Saying this was all "luck" is bullshit. I made my own luck. I worked my ass off for everything I got.
I had friends in college that came from much wealthier families than I came from (my family isn't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination) who had plenty of opportunities in their lives but didn't act on them. Where are they now? Probably at those protests whining that they didn't get a job handed to them just for being them.
I'm serious.
Someone I knew in college (studying anthropology iirc) was offered, through a friend, a job interview at the Smithsonian. He didn't take it. Why? Because it wasn't a "sure thing". He was upset that he'd actually have to (heaven forbid) interview.
Where's he now? Living with his parents because he hasn't been able to get a job in the past 8 years.
He had better opportunities than I did, but I made more out of mine than he did.
He's one of the people who tell me how "lucky" I am that I have such a good job.
"But anyways. Like most of us, I am also very fortunate to be in tech, and have a passion for programming. But I do not pretend that my good fortune some how means I work or harder or am smarter than other people in our society.",
but then deleted their comment:
you really should repost it. it captures my feelings too and i wanted to thank you for putting them into words.
again and again, i encounter people in my circles of well-employed colleagues who do not realize how lucky they are to have interests coinciding with aptitudes coinciding with particular economic demands in their productive years.
and it makes them sickeningly self congratulatory.