
Young techies, know your place - smacktoward
http://pando.com/2014/01/03/young-techies-know-your-place/
======
joncooper
I'd be interested to see data on the backgrounds of the type of young
professional that the author attempts to lionize here.

Seeking risk is considerably easier when you have a solid family situation to
fall back on.

It is delightful when poor kids from shitty families achieve class mobility by
executing on what the author sees as the road less travelled, of course.

But my sense is that the majority of people choosing this path hew from
situations wherein failure would not leave them in dire straits, and are as
such giving up the expectation of extended adolescence in college, as opposed
to the requirement to immediately begin taking care of themselves.

Put another way, it may be a meritocracy, but it's overwhelmingly one with
pretty homogeneous participants.

(Let me be clear: I think this article is obnoxious.)

~~~
hkmurakami
I recall Reed Hoffman writing in his book to have plan a, plan b, and plan z,
where plan z is your absolute fall back plan when the shit hits the fan. (Tis
could be hunkering down in your parents' basement while you look for a new
job)

If you don't have a plan z that prevents you from being out on the streets,
then you really shouldn't be taking outsized risks (though there are plenty
who have defied the odds before)

~~~
theorique
Well, the plan z really just needs to be acceptable to you.

As in, if the worst can happen is that your face is eaten by wild dogs, but
you're OK with your face being eaten by wild dogs, then you should be fine
(absurd example for illustration only).

Of course, lying to yourself about your risk tolerance is where a lot of
people go wrong, in both financial investments and in life decisions.

------
dylandrop
Sneering and attacking those who call out techies for elitism, sexism, or
whatever it may be is the wrong way to go. Especially when you write an
article that sounds as elitist and uninformed as this.

(One thing that stood out for me was the quote: "Did you know that those guys
had two kids when they were your age? That is how things are supposed to
work." A lot of people who don't have access to sex education have kids
because they weren't informed, or they didn't have access to birth control, or
otherwise, not because they're trying to force their lifestyle on
entrepreneurs.)

We (the tech community) should lead by example. Yes, it's hard when you're
scrutinized so often. But what's going to sway the public's opinion: an
offensive snarky article? Or taking the high road?

~~~
actsasbuffoon
I actually liked the kid quote. I decided when I was a child that I never
wanted to be a parent. When it came up in conversation people would usually
dismiss me and say that I'd change my mind when I got older. I got older, and
I still don't want or have children. It always bothered me that people felt
that my answer was invalid; that they could just overrule me and assert that
I'd become wiser (e.g. agree with them) when I was older.

Now I lead a comfortable and happy life, and I got here by taking some risks I
couldn't have taken if I'd had kids to care for. I'm not saying my answer was
the only correct path, but it worked for me and I'm happy with it. And yes,
I'm a little bitter towards the people who thought I was incapable of making
life decisions for myself.

That said, you're completely right that an attack is the worst way to proceed
if we want non-techies to accept us.

~~~
codex
It's my impression that kids don't really start to pay off until you're in
your fifties and sixties.

------
TrainedMonkey
Nice article, it highlights other side of the gentrification issue. People in
tech are there for a reason (one or more):

1\. Passion about tech.

2\. Rational logic - tech is where jobs and money are.

3\. Luck.

4\. Whatever I am missing.

I would argue that point #2 comes to mind of quite a few people that go into
tech, it certainly did for me. From that angle, people who did not go into
tech (or other career path that would allow them to compete) are making
irrational decision. In ancient time, tribe that did not switch to bow and
arrows inevitably lost to one that did. In modern times, people who did not
plan their careers are getting pushed out by people that did.

On a related note, I wish tech people would start to make more rational
decisions too. Quantify cost of your time, and use that to figure out if
getting $3400 apartment and having 20 minutes shorter commute is worth it.

~~~
ryanobjc
I think your apartment vs 20 minutes 'shorter commute' is actually vastly
simplifying it. I live roughly in hayes valley (I moved here only 5 years ago,
before the latest bunch, so I qualify as an 'old timer'), and my commute to my
last office job by bike was 8 minute. You'd be hard pressed to find a 28
minute commute that reduces your rent a ton.

As you know the trade off tends to be money vs space vs commute. Rents in
concord are still in the $3000 range - only you get an entire house for it.

Also you do realize this article was satire, and points out that the so-called
"rich tech" folk arent really that rich... $80k a year is plenty, but most
BART and Muni employees are making that much.

------
gdubs
Yikes. People need to realize that when they're more fortunate than others,
it's bad form to get so defensive. The anger towards tech is misplaced, but
there's a legitimate image problem, and income inequality is a real problem in
America. This is the kind of thing people hate Wall Street for -- can we try
to be better?

~~~
actsasbuffoon
I'm not sure all of the anger is misplaced. Tech has allowed some companies to
run more efficiently; they make just as much money, but with fewer employees.
As much as non-tech people love to poke fun at Instagram and Twitter for being
useless, it's the genuinely useful stuff we've created that has displaced
workers.

It's not like this is without precedent. Agriculture and the industrial
revolution both fundamentally reshaped the nature of work, and it took some
time for the system to reorganize to accommodate. We may be looking at
something similar. Tech is going to displace even more employees as we
continue to advance, and it's not clear what these workers should do. They
might seek training to fill some of the high-skill positions that can't find
candidates, but there are only so many positions like that. If the numbers
I've seen are to be believed then there are more unemployed/under-employed
than there are unfilled job openings. Either things will adjust and the job
market will expand, or we may have to adapt to a world where not everyone is
required to be part of the labor force for an economy to operate at peak
efficiency.

I think the universal wage movement is an exciting development for that
reason, but it seems politically impossible to get something like that passed
in the US right now. Then again, 15 years ago I'd have called you crazy if you
said the majority of the country would support gay rights by 2014.

I may be getting ahead of myself. It's possible that there's some new kind of
product or service I've not conceived of that will come into existence and
create many jobs. That would be nice, and it would solve the employment
problem.

However, if that doesn't happen and we continue to insist that people need to
be employed if they wish to have food and shelter, then there are likely hard
times ahead for many people. And it's likely that the work we do will make
workers less necessary in more fields as time passes, which hastens the
problems.

------
clin_
What terribly written tripe. For an accomplished coder, Bryan Goldberg is
surprisingly incapable of grasping nuance.

------
erobbins
some people are born on third base and think they hit a triple.

~~~
300bps
...and some people are born outside the ball park and still manage to work
their way in, practice 12 hours per day for years, hit home run after home run
and have snarky people automatically assume that everything they have is due
to luck or birth lottery.

~~~
erobbins
that's absolutely true, however in this case I don't think a bro who went to a
$35,000/year high school and $60,000/year college has ever worked very hard at
much beyond keg stands and being narcissistic.

~~~
fderp
Yes because if you went to a 35,000/year high school and a $60,000/year
college and now work in the tech sector, you must:

* be a "bro"

* have wasted your college years (doing keg stands, I suppose)

* be a narcissist.

~~~
erobbins
no.

If you ride your genetic lottery winning privilege into success and then have
a continuing history of pissing on people less fortunate than you, you must be
a narcissistic ass.

------
ryanobjc
I find it incredibly amusing that people apparently think this is a real
article.

------
codex
What a nasty piece of trash. It doesn't do young techies any favors.

------
yetanotherphd
I agree with this article.

If you want to deal with income inequality, there is a really, really simple
system for this: taxation and welfare.

But this doesn't satisfy some people because they don't actually care about
income inequality, they just want to have a go at nerds because they are an
easy target.

The author correctly identifies a whole range of unfair criticisms against
"techies", from their allegedly unfair incomes, to their lifestyle choices.
None of these things are even anyone else's business.

------
elwell
/s

------
minimaxir
Note: this is satire. Not the good kind of satire, but satire nonetheless.

~~~
steveklabnik
Generally speaking, satire is used to mock the powers that be:

    
    
      > Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts,
      > in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule,
      > ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, and society
      > itself, into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous,
      > its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a
      > weapon and as a tool to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in
      > society.
      > 
      > Historically, satire has satisfied the popular need to debunk and ridicule the
      > leading figures in politics, economy, religion and other prominent realms
      > of power.
    

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire)

This is often summarized as "punch up, not down."

Therefore, this isn't satire. This is a person who is a part of the
aforementioned group in power attempting to mock those who would be employing
satire as a means of critique.

Satire would be an essay written by a non-tech person, in the voice of a tech
person, in order to lambast what tech is doing to San Francisco.

To make this more concrete: I just moved to the Mission, and now commute to
SOMA. You can pretty much extrapolate everything else out from there. This
blog post is like me writing one laughing at all the people staring at the
Google Bus, but satire would be one making fun of me.

~~~
azernik
Ummm... where in that definition does it say that only one side in a social
dispute is allowed to call its mockery "satire"? It says "shaming individuals,
corporations, and even society", not "shaming The Man".

Say you disagree with it and think it's obnoxious if that's what you feel,
instead of making up definitional disputes to hide behind.

~~~
steveklabnik
I think the power dynamics are pretty clear in this situation.

If you really, really, really want to claim that the tech crowd is being
trampled by everyone else in the Bay Area, I'm not sure we're going to be able
to come to any kind of reasonable discussion.

~~~
azernik
I'm not - I think the objectively privileged situation of the SF techie is a
great argument to make. But satire doesn't just describe things that are
correct, or that are made on behalf of the underdog.

