
Talent Is Everywhere, Opportunity Is Not - kebede
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1081619342377156608.html
======
dvt
> Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not.

The Valley is so disconnected from the "real" America. I hate using that term,
but to anyone that's lived in more rural non-coastal areas will quickly
realize that the issue is not racism or sexism (although these do play a
part). Rather, it's a purely economic stratification. I'm a 1.5-generation
American (moved here when I was 11) and attended HS in Georgia at a mediocre
high school -- underfunded, understaffed, etc. Our valedictorian is the only
one from my graduating class that went to an Ivy League school (and he could
"only" manage to get accepted by Cornell). Just about everyone else went to a
local school: either UGA (barely breaks the top-50), GSU (terribly ranked,
like top-200; I went here my freshman year), or GA Tech (which was extremely
competitive and hard to get into). Compare this to my sister's high school
(which she graduated from after my family and I moved to Southern California):
about 20% attended Ivy League schools, and a significant portion attended
highly-ranked California institutions: Stanford, CalTech, UCLA, Berkeley,
Harvey Mudd, etc.

It's hard to argue that these Californian students were _that_ much smarter
than my Georgia cohort, and yet fate threw these two different sets of
youngsters on widely different life trajectories. Race, gender, religion all
play a role -- but more importantly, it's economic segregation we need to
watch out for.

~~~
40acres
Economic stratification is not simply a natural phenomenon. Especially at the
current global levels of inequality. Policies and institutions had to be built
to create and sustain this level of inequality. I'm not surprised that
California in your opinion has done a better job of providing opportunities
for it's high schoolers to get a better education compared to Georgia. For all
of California's flaws I think if you look at the data you can see that it's
clear that they invest more in providing equal opportunity for their residents
than Georgia does.

~~~
dvt
> For all of California's flaws I think if you look at the data you can see
> that it's clear that they invest more in providing equal opportunity for
> their residents than Georgia does.

I'm not sure I'd blame the state. It's pretty obvious that admissions
committees don't take socioeconomic factors in mind. Some states are always
going to be wealthier than others -- that's just a fact of life -- but why are
universities punishing (poor) students by culling opportunity? After all, a
poor black kid has more in common with a poor white kid than a black one-per-
center.

~~~
pm90
The parent is praising California not because of their superior admissions
policies, but due to the sheer number of Universities and opportunities
available to students in California because of the State investing in
education/Universities.

~~~
rhizome
I would assume a lot of that is due to California's initiative process
allowing its residents to put more school bonds on ballots, both locally and
statewide. Georgia's initiative process only allows amendments and repeals for
existing laws, and only for cities and counties.

------
simonbarker87
I have a guy who’s worked on my assembly line for 3 years now. He can
dismantle and rebuild anything, he can understand how complex mechanical
things work with a quick glance and a short tinker, he knows the internal
workings of a car engine as well as any formally trained mechanic and he has a
wealth of practical electronics assembly that surprises me regularly. He
should be a lead engineer at his age given his aptitude, not working on an
assembly line for a fraction above minimum wage.

In his younger years someone should have given him some guidance, realised his
ability and set him towards that path, instead he was missed by the school,
his family were in no position to help him realize his potential and a couple
of bad choices in his 20s has left him with a chaotic home life and
unfulfilled potential that I don’t even think he realised he had.

I worked hard to do well in school but I had a supportive family, teachers to
guide me and ultimately a personality (and background) that suited the
education system in the 1990s and early 2000s. One size does not fit all and
when I find myself surprised at another insight from this employee I wonder
how many other people out there who fell through the cracks of the education
system, through no fault of their own and how poorer our society is for it.

~~~
justaguyhere
_In his younger years someone should have given him some guidance_

I've had many jobs and these are all software development jobs. Even in a
relatively privileged field like software, I never had any kind of mentorship,
ever. The days of older folks mentoring and helping younger folks are gone,
because most older folks themselves are struggling with their own
careers/lives. Unless young people specifically seek and forge good relations,
put effort into finding mentors - it isn't going to happen. By the time most
young people (me included) realize this, it is too late. Some people get lucky
with good teachers and parents, but many don't.

This is what happens in a system where profit is put above everything else,
no-one has the time or interest to think about anything else other than this
quarter's profits.

~~~
sokoloff
That seems odd to never gotten mentorship. I was at one time a very good
coder. I obviously wasn't born that way, but became that after many years of
working alongside [often much] better coders and, in one case, quitting a job
when I was ~4 years out of school and realized I wasn't going to get any
better at that particular job.

Did you never work with better coders? Did they never talk to you or never do
a code review? If they did, that's mentorship.

~~~
devonkim
Mentorship is hard to come by or even give when the common advice for
ambitious people is to job hop every year or so basically - what kind of a
professional relationship can develop within maybe just a year that is of
substance? This is easy enough to do in an area with a lot of good tech
companies and community to develop a stronger professional network but is
really unlikely to happen in a lot of places with maybe a handful of employers
with any decent size (software) engineering organization. I lived in
Asheville, NC (about as isolated as any rural area in the US) for a bit and I
was a little surprised to see I got more LinkedIn job recommendations for
mechanical, chemical, or other “hard sciences” type of engineering jobs
because Greenville, SC was the closest metro area evidently and even the
Google and Apple datacenters were pretty darn sparsely staffed. Most of the
software community there worked remotely as can be expected, but I was glad to
see how talented and passionate everyone I met was. Thing is, almost everyone
there had developed their careers before moving - staying put in an area that
can’t reward you is obviously not good for a career but this begs the question
of why decently talented people do not move to better opportunities.

But really, moving makes it super hard to build a good professional network
and you have fewer opportunities as a result which causes a downward spiral of
lack of improvement in skills. I’m really not that much better at anything
besides rote memorization of some trivial technical facts than I had 10 years
ago because I never have been challenged technically in that time period. This
causes atrophy no different than lack of physical exercise. And unless you
work another 20-30 hours / week outside of work you’re not going to catch up
with those that do spend their time at jobs that appropriately challenge them
and help them realize their full potential. Hence, location is among the more
important factors as someone early in a career I’ll stress and is precisely
why moving to some high cost area is worthwhile... if you can make use of what
they have to offer.

Most of the advice I give to my juniors isn’t about code itself as much as
larger design and architectural patterns that can cause years and years of
effort to go down the tubes or require millions of dollars of human effort to
correct. These are the decisions that cause major rifts even for architects.
Heck, some older programmers I’ve worked with refused to write tests because
they thought they’re a waste of time / crutches - does this mean I am a bad
student or something? Not necessarily.

~~~
jessicatechexp
Good points. I liked how you put "job hopping" which is #1 advise on HN for
improving your wages against "lack of mentorship" which people here often
complaint about.

Maybe it's high time we realize that the problem doesn't exist outside of us
and maybe we are part or significant part of the problem.

------
yowlingcat
Fantastic thread. Identity politics flavored social justice warfare peeves me
because it misses this grand overarching point: there is untapped potential
here. When I hire an unorthodox candidate that is typically given short shrift
for not matching a given profile, I am not hiring in order to foster diversity
and inclusion. No, it's the other way around.

Building a diverse and inclusive team full of highly competent people is
actually _how_ I successfully compete against firms with larger pockets than
me. It lets us not just outrace them but out-strategize them. I'm getting not
just an underpriced call option, but an underpriced put option as well. Along
with a lack of bureaucracy, it's one of the few (but powerful) advantages I
have over a larger firm. More than anything else (for me), at an early stage
startup, hiring is arbitrage. If you find a passed over gem with an unorthodox
background that don't fit the typical "pattern matching" that many tech
companies use to build a monoculture and yet executes well, you can easily
generate six to seven figures of alpha for your company. Of course, the
employee gets the opportunity to advance their career, but in order to do so,
they generate value for your company first. It's a win-win.

I've seen this so many times during my career. It's the hungry person with the
unorthodox background that laps the Ivy educated wonder kid who by all
external indicators and pedigrees should not have been outproduced. And yet,
not only did it happen, but when it did, those folks became absolute
superstars. I've been that person before, and I've seen (and help coached)
others to become that person. It's one of the most magical things I've
experienced career-wise.

Hiring is about risks and rewards. If you find a risk with an asymmetric
reward profile, you can build an organization that is seriously ahead of the
curve -- in part because the competing opportunities are not, by definition.

~~~
lkdjjdjjjdskjd
Being a woman or black is not unorthodox, though. And priding yourself for
hiring somebody black or female seems odd. It should be a normal thing - if
the skills (or whatever unorthodox aspects you fancy) are a match.

~~~
yowlingcat
I agree with everything you said. I don't pride myself for hiring anybody
based on their appearance. However, I dispassionately acknowledge that it is
because other firms do not do the normal thing that if I do it, I'm at an
advantage to them. It doesn't mean I'm a better person, or I have something to
be proud of. It only means that I am more competent than folks who are
incompetent.

~~~
lkdjjdjjjdskjd
That just seems like business as usual to me. Companies have always competed
over talent. Nevertheless, if you are good at it, I am happy for you :-)

------
EdgarVerona
This quote within the article really drives the point home:

"The goal of inclusion work is not "More black folk!" Or "More women!" The
lack of black folk and women is a symptom of the root cause: opportunity to
succeed and thrive is not evenly distributed."

I agree entirely with this statement, and I have seen it happen in both poor
white and latino communities that I have lived in during the course of my
life. There's a lot of intelligent and capable people out there who aren't
going to get their foot in the door: they're never even going to know where
the door _is_.

~~~
microcolonel
Well, I'd argue that "the lack of ... women is a symptom of the root cause:
opportunity to succeed ... is not evenly distributed" is jumping the gun. The
author assumes that this outcome will change when "opportunity" is more
"evenly distributed". If you look to cultures which are further along the
trail of extending opportunities to women, but without the exact same types of
ideological baggage, you'll generally find that there are _fewer_ women in
positions where the author would expect _more_.

I figure the moral legwork is to be done _only_ in terms of "opportunity",
whereas the outcome should be trusted as long as the opportunity is equal; and
it is clear that the outcome (in a univariate, or primitive multivariate
analysis) is a bad indicator of the opportunity.

~~~
fromMars
I found this article to be an enlightening analysis of the "Gender Equality
Paradox".

[https://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-
gir...](https://www.thejournal.ie/gender-equality-countries-stem-
girls-3848156-Feb2018/)

In particular,

“Broader economic factors appear to contribute to the higher participation of
women in STEM in countries with low gender equality and the lower
participation in gender-equal countries.”

I agree that outcome as an indicator is not entirely reliable.

Most likely many factors, including cultural, genetic, and economic, also play
large roles in these outcomes.

However, I think it is a reasonable policy to try and reduce differences in
outcomes if a group has been historically denied opportunities, at least for
some period of time.

~~~
microcolonel
> _However, I think it is a reasonable policy to try and reduce differences in
> outcomes if a group has been historically denied opportunities, at least for
> some period of time._

Honestly, at some point the corrupting effect of history (especially in sex
discrimination, where the effect is not generational [everyone is the
descendant of a woman]) is less severe than the corrupting effect of accepting
discrimination today as some sort of "balance" to that perception of history.

You could make a credible case that Gen Z (my generation, by a hair) North
American girls have had considerably more encouragement and opportunity to
enter TEM fields (the S is more evenly split) than the boys who grew up with
them; so will we still discriminate in their favour when it comes to hiring?

Well, to some companies it seems the answer is still _no_. That first company
I worked at is still today pouring resources into a free training program only
for women and girls.

~~~
fromMars
> Honestly, at some point the corrupting effect of history (especially in sex
> discrimination, where the effect is not generational [everyone is the
> descendant of a woman]) is less severe than the corrupting effect of
> accepting discrimination today as some sort of "balance" to that perception
> of history.

Agree, which is why I stated that these policies should only last a limited
time. The tough question is how long should these policies last.

> You could make a credible case that Gen Z (my generation, by a hair) North
> American girls have had considerably more encouragement and opportunity to
> enter TEM fields (the S is more evenly split) than the boys who grew up with
> them; so will we still discriminate in their favour when it comes to hiring?

I would not find such an argument credible. Clearly males are not being
prevented from entering these fields as the ratios of males to females is
still greatly skewed.

So it would be far fetched to claim that the effect of these programs that
encourage women to participate has denied a significant number of men to enter
into these fields.

I would be interested in some concrete facts on just how many of these
programs even exist and the monetary expenditure of such programs. As someone
from generation X, I know that no such programs existed at that time.

~~~
microcolonel
> _I would not find such an argument credible. Clearly males are not being
> prevented from entering these fields as the ratios of males to females is
> still greatly skewed._

Part of my point is that you can not know that by looking at the outcome. That
is, it is not clear that the ratio of males to females says that either is
being excluded.

> _So it would be far fetched to claim that the effect of these programs that
> encourage women to participate has denied a significant number of men to
> enter into these fields._

This is a claim that nobody is making. The claim that can be made is that no
equivalent effort is made to include men. That is, there is more _opportunity_
for women, but still fewer women ultimately participate.

> _I would be interested in some concrete facts on just how many of these
> programs even exist and the monetary expenditure of such programs. As
> someone from generation X, I know that no such programs existed at that
> time._

If you have had any connection to an HR department at a typical North American
company in the 2010s, you would know that programs to specifically recruit men
are effectively nonexistent; so it doesn't much matter what the specific
measurements for the female recruitment programs are, because no matter how
much or how little the investment, it is infinitely more than _no investment
whatsoever_.

~~~
fromMars
> This is a claim that nobody is making. The claim that can be made is that no
> equivalent effort is made to include men. That is, there is more opportunity
> for women, but still fewer women ultimately participate.

I think we are at an impasse here. Our definitions of what it means to be
denied opportunity in a field are divergent.

I was imagining systemic hurdles to participation. I don't think outreach to a
community or even specific scholarships qualify as such.

> If you have had any connection to an HR department at a typical North
> American company in the 2010s, you would know that programs to specifically
> recruit men are effectively nonexistent; so it doesn't much matter what the
> specific measurements for the female recruitment programs are, because no
> matter how much or how little the investment, it is infinitely more than no
> investment whatsoever.

I would also posit that focusing on any particular program and claiming since
it isn't accessible by all that there is unequal opportunity.

Do you object to the myriad of scholarships that are only available to
specific ethnicities?

~~~
microcolonel
> _I think we are at an impasse here. Our definitions of what it means to be
> denied opportunity in a field are divergent._

I haven't talked about anyone being "denied" opportunity. The vast majority of
all people have _some_ opportunity. The unequal part is that _more_
opportunity is extended to some, not that _all_ opportunity is denied to
others.

The inequity would not be so much _my_ problem if it didn't mess with the
priorities of a functioning business or other organization. If I send my money
to a non-profit, I want them to be _effective_ ; if they spend resources on
discriminatory programs, they will inevitably be less effective than if they
had run those programs without arbitrary discrimination.

> _Do you object to the myriad of scholarships that are only available to
> specific ethnicities?_

Yes, and those are under tremendous scrutiny over the last couple years,
particularly Harvard's treatment of East Asian applicants. I think MLK had the
right general premise with his "multiracial army of the poor".

------
andrewstuart
I disagree - in a certain context.

When it comes to the programming context in particular, opportunity is just
about as "everywhere" as it can be.

Anyone who can afford a computer and a connection to the Internet can learn to
program, can contribute to global projects, can self-educate in programming
and can do amazing things.

All you need is a computer, and Internet connection and commitment. It does
not even take privilege - although it used to (Bill Gates for example was from
a privileged family in Seattle and went to a school that bought a computer
incredibly early - that was a direct outcome of the money of his family).

I always recommend against careers that "require the grace of others to
practice your art/craft/career". What I mean by this is that to do your chosen
job, you need someone else to give you the opportunity/permission/resources to
do the work you want to do. Consider a guy I knew when I was much younger. He
REALLY wanted to be a movie director, but back then you needed money, a
crew/team, equipment and a whole bunch of other people helping - and to really
succeed in that career you need high level industry connections. That's a huge
barrier to being able to actually do the thing you want to do. You're much
better to choose a career that does not require anyone else's
permission/money/approval - such as programming, or drawing.

~~~
synthmeat
I disagree with your disagreement in two ways.

First (anecdotal, and adjusted to regional variety, but stands to common
sense) - all people who I personally know to have gotten rich off of software
were all _bar none_ rich to have access to top of the line
hardware/software/services to begin with:

1\. accounting software in early 90s (there were literally three or four PCs
around in my city there at all. Even software they just cloned locally from
some experience they acquired studying abroad in USA)

2\. internet/security in mid 90s (guy had T1 while most of us didn't even know
internet existed or were dreaming of owning US Robotics modem sometime in the
next century)

3\. games in late 90s/early 00s (when we all fappped to pictures of VoodooFX
and Riva TNT, they had them)

4\. web in early 00s (most of us just begged for some limited shared hosting
account to even see what it's about)

5\. iPhone gold rush (price of iPhone was about my yearly non-disposable
income back then)

Secondly, and this is part where I partly agree - software development really
is one of the more democratized areas - but when field is so approachable that
anyone can make money, anyone does. And that means goalpost has shifted to
other things - social network, privileged experiences, marketing investment,
time allocated to project, being able to fail enough times to succeed, etc.

~~~
microcolonel
I will say that your anecdote is largely only applicable to obtaining a first-
mover advantage on a whole platform, and specifically one which has not become
a commodity yet. Today, commodity computers profit software developers the
most, and the tools are more available and cheaper than ever before. A person
with a second hand Chromebook and some library internet can research, build,
test, market, and sell an Android application, if they know to try.

It is incomparably easier to become a useful professional software developer
than a licensed electrician (provided you're of a sufficiently-suitable
mindset), at least where I've been (though, the one time I was flown out to
interview at a company in Silicon Valley, I was straight-up told by one of the
interviewers that “Here in the valley, we place a high premium on education”,
so maybe it's different there and probably some other places).

Now, I will say I was very lucky to be able to fail a little bit later, and
very lucky to have met somebody in grade school who would basically win me my
first full time job while I was still a teenager, I was not in any particular
luck when it came to access to computers or really much else.

------
sethammons
This is one of the best reads I've seen on HN in a long while. The D&I
presented in a way that is the true spirit of it.

I grew up poor, white, male, and in a mountain community in SoCal. I honestly
had no clue how to achieve success as an adult. I had literally zero role
models for success, just a series of examples of what not to do. The only
thing I could lean on was "do good in school, go to a decent college, get a
job." Add to that that I became a parent at 15.

I got a near full ride due to grades plus economic status to a decent
university. But I could not be part of that community; I had a kid to raise
and that meant my wife and I had work (and she skipped college entirely). I
never learned that I was supposed to be networking at that time. Today, I
don't know one person from college.

I got a business degree because a friend's dad said it was the way to go. I
minored in CS because I liked it and it was an easy A. At the time,
programmers made like $30k usd if they could get a job (and there were no jobs
like that within two hours of home). So I went for an insurance gig. Did
slightly better than the $30k. Tried investments advisor; that was a bad
choice for me. Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. So I did
construction and substitute teaching while I got my teaching credential in
math. Did that for a few years.

All the while, I tinkered with programming. Built a few projects for folks.
When it was time to leave teaching (man, inner city schools are hard), I had
enough of a portfolio for programming that a recruiter reached out. I went on
a few interviews and landed a real programming job! $70k a year! Nearly double
what I made as a teacher! From there, I worked with really talented folks. I
learned so much. I finally had access nto real advice and real role models. I
quickly became mid level, then senior, now a principal developer at a unicorn.
It took about a decade to reach the same level of success that some kids get
right out of school. I don't really regret it. My journey makes me "me." It
would have been nice to have earned better for that decade.

I really understand the value of opportunity and how it is unfairly
distributed. I appreciate the story the article presents and it resonates with
me deeply. Crafting more access to opportunity is so vital.

~~~
syndacks
What exactly do you mean by "those who can do, those who can't teach"?

Assuming you mean teachers are failures at other fields, I fundamentally
disagree. There are plenty of people who go into teaching to help others. To
help underprivileged people like yourself. You had a CS minor, no? Do you
consider your CS teachers to have been "those who can't"? At the very least
they gave you a foundation and an interest in something that elevated your
career.

~~~
sethammons
It is a saying, usually given as as a disparaging joke. It is not to be taken
literally.

------
Barrin92
Tom Mueller is a good example to pick and has had a great career path. The
author I think is right that more focus should be put on hard working talent
than on celebrity CEOs in culture. It might help more people from remote
places to move up in the world.

That said it also is depressing how concentrated and closed up networking
circles are, how important signalling from prestigious schools still is, and
how little diversity there is in where capital goes. I can't remember the
exact number, but almost all VC in the US goes to just a handful of counties.

It should be the task of all institutions, from government to business and
think tanks, to open up these spaces to talent from all over the place.

~~~
kanox
The word "celebrity" has negative connotations but Elon is famous for very
good reasons: he gets results and he helps other people get results.

Tom Mueller and Gwynne Shotwell could have worked at other more traditional
companies but it is thanks to Elon's leadership and aggressive business
tactics that they achieved far more at SpaceX. This is not just Elon being
rich: space history has plenty of well-capitalized failures.

The article presents a story of very successful vertical mobility from people
who received relatively little outside help, it's not clear how this makes a
case for various forms of affirmative action. If anything it shows the system
works reasonably fine.

~~~
Barrin92
>The word "celebrity" has negative connotations but Elon is famous for very
good reasons: he gets results and he helps other people get results.

I didn't want to deny that Elon is an exceptionally hard working individual as
well, but I honestly think it would help _both_ Elon and people like Tom
Mueller if the attention was more evenly distributed.

We have seen the downsides of the media attention, drama and inflated egos
that are produced by the focus on founders or CEOs.

------
jondubois
A big part of the problem is the belief that talent always gets noticed and is
rewarded. This is very far from reality.

Talent very rarely gets noticed (especially in complex and innovative fields;
managers simply don't have the necessary knowledge to be able to identify real
talent). Even when noticed, talent is rarely rewarded because office politics
get in the way.

------
lkdjjdjjjdskjd
Most people don't obsess about rockets. I would find the story more convincing
if there were also examples of "talents" who didn't go anywhere. I find it
rather likely that people with his talents would always find a way.

Of course there is always untapped potential, for the time being. That is why
there are still startups and entrepreneurs, who try to release that potential.
But it is not as simple as hiring diverse genders and races.

It is simply a hard problem to enable people to make the most out of their
talents and potentials.

The Tom Mueller case seems to illustrate that well. What if there had been no
SpaceX during his lifetime. Who would have been to blame? What would there
have to be done? Perhaps Tom Mueller would have started his own Space company?
Or maybe not. But whose duty would it supposedly be to provide a space company
for people like him to work at?

Most people are not even sure how to enable their own children to make the
most of their talents (or to develop some talents to begin with) - let alone
some strangers. I think that also shows that it is not primarily an issue of
diversity. We simply don't know enough about developing talents and making the
most out of life yet. So we experiment - sometimes it works out, and sometimes
it doesn't.

What exactly made Tom Mueller obsessed with rockets? If I want my kids to
become rocket scientists, should I send them to lumber jack camps in the
summer?

~~~
wpietri
There's a contradiction between your two statements:

> I would find the story more convincing if there were also examples of
> "talents" who didn't go anywhere.

> I find it rather likely that people with his talents would always find a
> way.

The latter is basically the just world fallacy. [1] It assumes that the
outcomes are correct. If you were offered examples of people who the writer
said were talented but didn't go anywhere, I think you'd just just bring the
just world fallacy to bear, believing that their bad outcome was proof that
they weren't really talented.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-
world_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis)

~~~
lkdjjdjjjdskjd
I am not the one who wrote an article making claims, so why should the burden
of proof be on me? I dnn't think your criticism of my comment is fair at all.

The author made a claim, so they should support it. That has nothing to do
with just world hypothesis. Also, he actually provided an example of somebody
prevailing against the odds.

The only evidence that talent might be wasted is our feelings that it may be
so. That's not enough.

As for contradicting statements, it seems to me my statements both say the
same thing. Both are a request for providing evidence of (unfairly) wasted
talents.

~~~
wpietri
It wasn't an article. It especially wasn't a scientific study. They were
offering a viewpoint and an example.

But if you're right, and people should always offer ironclad proof of claims,
please show me the studies that back your claim that "The author made a claim,
so they should support it." I will only accept high-n, double-blind studies
published in major journals. Thanks in advance.

~~~
lkdjjdjjjdskjd
They are not obliged to provide examples or proofs, but I am also not obliged
to believe their claims. If you want, I "offered" my "viewpoint" that the
support of their argument was insufficient.

Moreover, I am ENTITLED to having doubts. Isn't that what the modern world
(and also the article here) is all about? Entitlement?

In general, more double-blind studies would be a good thing, so what is your
point?

~~~
wpietri
My point is that you're bringing up an absurd, inapplicable standard to
further justify your application of the just-world fallacy.

~~~
lkdjjdjjjdskjd
All I did was ask for some examples. That's not an absurd, inapplicable
standard.

And I am not applying the just-world fallacy. I think it is a completely
misguided way to think about the world to begin with.

Of course not everybody reaches the optimal outcome in life. That doesn't make
it unfair or an injustice.

Why did nobody inspire me to buy Google stock when I was a teenager? Then I
would be a millionaire by now. Other people became millionaires because they
bought Google stock.

So unfair! It is such an injustice! Obviously I am entitled to be bestowed
millions by society now, because the only reason I am not a millionaire is
because society didn't point me towards buying stock as a youth.

Also, I think I am entitled to at least 1000 Bitcoin. Can I send you my
address? It is not my fault that society didn't encourage me to become a
computer geek who would then experiment with Bitcoin mining in 2009.

So obviously I don't believe in a "just world", because I myself am a living
example of it not being just!

While you can frame your view of the world that way, and not rest until
everybody in the world is EXACTLY the same (you may also look into genetic
engineering, because it won't do that some people are more beautiful than
others), I think it is a completely silly approach.

~~~
wpietri
Cognitive biases don't work like that. Yes, you may believe in some fashion
that the world isn't just. But that doesn't mean you won't apply the fallacy
when it backs some previously held view.

------
jacknews
I agree, too many talented people not reaching their potential, and not even
having it nurtured. How many potential African engineers grew up to be
illiterate cowherds because of a lack of education?

Also, why is Elon regarded as genius inventor, when it's clearly the people
who work for him how are the geniuses. Why aren't they the multi-millionaires?

~~~
leesec
Maybe they should risk everything and start their own companies.

~~~
gamblor956
Risking other people's money now counts as risking everything?

------
zafka
This article is dead on in my opinion. I feel that there is so much talent
wasted because of social repression. I think in many cases it is just because
of lack of awareness. The lower and middle layers of most bureaucracies are
made up of people who are not looking for ways to boost the few highly
talented new people who show up.

~~~
blakesterz
"not looking for ways to boost the few highly talented new people who show
up."

But isn't that incredibly hard to do? I totally agree with the article and
you, but at the same time, aren't the middle layers of most bureaucracies
super stretched already? Most of those people just don't have the
time/energy/motivation to do that, do they? Their bosses probably don't care,
so how could they? It seems like only the very best of them do that.

I so wish that wasn't true, but it may be.

------
HillaryBriss
I agree with the article's main points about the requirement for opportunity
and for positive inspiration and nudges along the way. Absolutely.

But another thing strikes me as very mysterious: where does a Tom Mueller (or
any high performing individual of any identity group in any field) get that
drive, that energy, that interest in the first place? How and why do they keep
on going? What inner mechanism fuels their passion? Why do they even _have_ a
passion?

~~~
sethammons
Not sure why you are down voted. I think not is a fantastic question. I've
seen raw intelligence in some high schoolers and near zero motivation. What
about their lives and environment prevents them from stretching and self-
motivating?

I think part of it is environment: they don't see others who they can emulate
that they can relate to or others that support them in their peer group. Part
of it is innate - and this is the part I relate to. For me, I did not know
what I was going to do after, but I knew that school/university was the only
way I would get there. I put my efforts towards that. My passion was to not be
in the situation(s) my parents were in. That meant waking up at 4am in
highschool to do homework or study to help get the eventual near-fullride
scholarship to a university. Some of my cohort would rather just play
videogames or do other things to escape their reality.

------
petra
Talent is everywhere.

Tom Mueller is a great Engineer, no doubt. But SpaceX would probably have
existed without Tom Mueller.

Opportunity is not.

The opportunity to build a rocket company is rare. For it to exist, you need
someone to bet Billions on a crazy idea.

Tom Mueller is poor. He can't bet that kind of money.

Elon Musk is rich. He's willing to make the bet, but in return he wants to
feel important.

It seem like a pretty good trade, in my eyes.

As for diversity and inclusion - sure, that's a good thing.

~~~
zanny
Every talent unrealized is a failure of society to provide opportunity.

The fact that nine billion of us can produce one billionaire investor to found
one successful private rocket company in half a century of space travel is a
mark against the species.

We would all be immortal digital consciousnesses traversing the stars at
fractions of C by now if we had managed to capture an order of magnitude more
talent in previous generations.

------
mohankumar246
This is an universal truth. It is an individual's choice to do what he/she
wants. This is one instance of where a person was guided and he took the
advice. There will 100's of youth who won't accept advice, they will just be
happy with what they are doing. If at all a person will listen more to his
peer's words than a teacher's. I grew up in a small town in India, I had asked
my friends to move to bigger city for college - many of them didn't want to
move..I did. And i would say my career has so far been better than theirs.
There will also other factors which affect a person's decision on career
location - family pressure/bonding- most often to pursue a career of your
choice you will have to travel long distance/relocate, many people wouldn't
want to do that..People who go that extra length do succeed.

------
SamReidHughes
Speaking of SpaceX -- Musk himself is African. He had to go to America in
order to have a chance to do this.

------
neogodless
Can someone define D&I? I guess diversity and... I got nothing. It's too short
to Google effectively!

~~~
ftio
Diversity and Inclusion.

~~~
neogodless
Thanks, seems awfully intuitive in retrospect!

------
kaveh_h
The teachers or other sets of people who recognize talent must in themselves
have a certain ability or “talent” for spotting talents in others. So if
talent was abundantly everywhere why aren’t there enough of these talented
teachers/mentors/parents who can nudge all the other talents so they can reach
their potential?

The answer could be that talent is not well distributed over life time. For
instance it would be safe to assume the bulk of the best teachers/mentors do
not voluntarily work in places which pay them bad wages (usually poor areas)
and so often opt to move to richer areas. And thus many of those talented kids
from rural places grow up with much less chance of getting noticed and more
importantly good “nudges” as a result.

If this is true and if society wanted to maximize utliziation of talent
there’s perhaps no clear simple way, but a strategy might be to artificially
redistribute this kind of talent for instance by giving poorer areas more
funding for education.

~~~
sethammons
In school, usually the only talent noticed is "they do well in (some part of)
my class." And the only real advice most teachers can give at that point is
"you should go to college (and most likely study this same subject)." Most
teachers are not aware of even a fraction of the opportunities that would
transcend that kid to a better life. Given the adversities some kids face, the
advice to even go to college could fall on deaf ears.

------
ken
> In high school, he wanted to be an aviation mechanic, a big step up from
> lumberjack for a kid that likes rockets. His geomoetry teacher recognized
> the under-matching, and asked him: ‘Do you want to be the guy who fixes the
> plane or the guy who designs the plane?’

Good for them, maybe, but ... I also hate this. It's set up to make it sound
like being a mechanic is somehow inferior to being a design engineer. Your
plane won't fly without plenty of both people.

Having worked both kinds of jobs, I much prefer fixing to designing. And I'm
the last person you would have expected to say this, back in high school! I
never even considered this type of work before I was 35.

Alternative phrasing: "Do you want to deal with office politics for the rest
of your life, or hit things with a hammer?"

------
sudeepj
> In Idaho, a lumberjack had a son, who he hoped would also become a
> lumberjack. But this kid liked rockets...

Reminds me of the movie "October Sky". Highly recommended.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Sky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Sky)

------
buboard
> opportunity to succeed and thrive is not evenly distributed

That needs a discussion about how to distribute it not so much evenly to all
people, but to all the right people. The approach of e.g. throwing more money
to all underprivileged students has failed in the past (I believe it the Gates
foundation ran such experiment). Perhaps it is lazy to handwave a problem away
by giving everyone a little more opportunity. It is much more painstaking to
find the gifted ones and give them a lot more opportunity. Another thing that
is not often discussed is that privileged people also groom their average
performers consistently until they rise above average, something that never
happens for hte underprivileged.

~~~
thinkr
Your proposed approach could very well be the right way to distribute
opportunity, but on some level it’s hard for me to fully buy in to it. To me,
it would come down to using data to decide who gets a helping hand and even
though it’s the logical/practical approach, it just feels a bit icky (personal
opinion of course). And does that mean we ignore a group of individuals
because the data points tell us so? We would miss out on outliers or late
bloomers.

So yes, you’re right that it’s painstainking, and just an outright difficult
problem to solve.

------
cipriancaba
First of all, why would you need a threadreader?? And secondly, if it wouldn't
have been for Musk with his vision, Mueller wouldn't have had the chance to
build the Merlin engine.. Point being, nobody succeeds by himself, everybody
needs a team

------
techslave
meh. opportunity is everywhere, as demonstrated by the protagonist of this
story.

in the US anyway.

ok not exactly everywhere, but at least in the lumberjack backwoods of Idaho
(as portrayed). we can do better, but you know what? i’ll take it.

how can he argue opportunity is lacking when his example is the son of a
lumberjack, discouraged from being other than a lumberjack, is designing the
rocket to go to mars?

------
the_other_guy
this website has been exploiting HN to get popular

------
the_other_guy
this website has been systematically exploiting HN and reddit to get popular,
see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=threadreaderapp.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=threadreaderapp.com)
and
[https://old.reddit.com/domain/threadreaderapp.com/](https://old.reddit.com/domain/threadreaderapp.com/)

